stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
The reason I gave up cricket as a teenager was because I went to regional tryouts and a guy from my club, who didn't bowl spin for the club at all, got picked as the regional spinner ahead of me after them watching a single over. This is despite the fact that I had the lowest bowling average for the club and a ton of wickets (I later found out that the only reason I didn't get the bowling award for my club was because I'd bowled just under half the overs of the opening bowler across the season). The two club matches before that I'd literally dismissed both of the opening bats picked at regionals.
It was at that point that I pretty much gave up my cricketing ambitions and went and did other stuff. I didn't play cricket again until I was 23. I worked my butt off to get good again to get ignored by selectors at one club (shoved into the bottom team and not given any overs at all), before switching clubs. I immediately took 11 wickets in 3 innings only to be placed in a C team next to a former first grade quick who topped the wicket tallies every year in the comp. I still managed to take 15 wickets a season at a low average for three seasons before quitting the game again around age 30 when it was clear I was never going to get anywhere with the sport, despite performing with the ball at every opportunity I got.
I'm sure that my story is quite common. And I don't actually know if objectively it was the right thing at each step. But I do know that 14 year old me had a choice - I could play club cricket or I could work on Saturdays and earn $50 a week and buy some stuff instead and the message I got from the regional tryouts that time was that I had no hope of ever being selected.
Cricketers are not created in a vacuum. If I was ever to have gone anywhere, I needed to play when I was 15, 16, 17 and 18 and continue on. And even then I still probably wouldn't have made it. But 14 year old me needed to be pushed for that to happen and my parents never did. All the cricketers who got anywhere at club level were the ones that had parents pushing them and sending down balls in the nets and pulling the political strings behind the scenes to make sure that not only did they get picked, but they got enough overs each week to press their case and got to bat high enough up the order to be seen from a young age. And then they still had to be immensely talented.
One of the kids I played with in C grade had a younger brother batting in first grade. Thing is, this kid was reasonably quick and naturally quite talented with the bat and was probably at third grade standard. But his brother devoted every waking moment to batting. I remember bowling a ton of deliveries in the nets to him at training. I'd say that the older brother had an equal amount of talent but the younger brother honed his more. The older brother I don't think is playing any more while the younger brother is still playing first grade.
There is so much politics in cricket, particularly if you're a spin bowler. Shane Warne said that you pretty much have to be best friends with the captain to go anywhere as a spinner and I genuinely believe him. If you end up in the wrong team under a terrible captain you basically waste an entire season frustrated at watching him throw the ball to every medium pace rubbish merchant in the team before you. And the lower the grade you're in, the less the team needs a spinner (and the less impact a good spinner is going to have). But even if you're not a spin bowler, if you don't have the support networks in place or play the politics correctly you probably aren't going to go anywhere. It's a terrible sport for individual advancement because often performance matters little (I mean even a batsman as good as Maxwell isn't getting picked for the test side due to politics). If you look at the top grade performers you'll almost certainly find a few blokes who have excellent numbers but don't get picked at first class level.
I desperately love cricket but the worst thing about the sport is the selection side of it. Great players go for long stretches as 12th man and waste their talents. Some players get far too much grace while others get little. Personality and connections count for a lot. But at the same time they don't. The best players still manage to break through all of that and play international cricket and set records. It's a beautiful sport.
