County Cricket Matters Issue 17

Martin Chandler | 9:15am GMT 10 December 2023

Published: 2023
Pages: 38
Author: Chave, Annie (Editor)
Publisher: County Cricket Matters
Rating: 5 stars

It was cold, grey and miserable outside last Tuesday when CCM 17 dropped through my letterbox, and the striking image of a snow covered cricket ground on the cover did not immediately make me forget about the walk to the office I was about to endure. When I did arrive there however, and immediately decided I needed a half hour break, the splendid articles inside CCM 17, with a little help from a steaming mug of coffee, soon warmed me up.

As always the first, and lengthiest, contribution is the Editor’s interview and the subject of that this time round is the CEO of the ECB, Richard Gould. The ECB are, of course, an organisation that few amongst CCM’s readership will be happy with and indeed for many they are an organisation to be vilified.

The reason for this is obvious. CCM readers, by definition, love the county game, and most of us primarily the County Championship. The ECB are responsible for saddling us with The Hundred, and for marginalising the county game as a consequence. Even the most ardent critic of the ECB must however concede that Richard Gould, by virtue of taking up his position as recently as Febbruary of this year, had absolutely nothing to do with The Hundred.

It is an interesting interview. Sadly it seems we are stuck with The Hundred, but do we have a CEO who is sympathetic to the values that CCM holds dear? Gould is certainly a diplomat, and says many of the right things while still toeing the party line. Personally I think I almost detected a subliminal acknowledgment that The Hundred was a mistake, which is something, but on the other hand I did not read anything that gave me any confidence that the ECB values traditional county cricket anything like as much as I do.

Next up are two ‘proper’ journalists. One of them, Mike Selvey, is enjoying a well earned retirement whereas the other, Tanya Aldred, is still in the thick of things. Selvey looks back over how his profession changed between his first days in the press box and his last. Aldred looks at something very different, the impact of climate change on the game. It is a troubling article, well written by a fine journalist.

Moving on CCM 17 has not one, but two book reviews, something which of which I thoroughly approve. One of them is by Garry Clarke and looks at a booklet I reviewed a while ago on the subject of the first match in the first Gillette Cup in 1963. It seems he enjoyed it as much as I did, and then there is a review by the Editor herself, of Middlesex CCC: The Championship Years. That one I haven’t read, but it sounds like I probably should.

Another area of great interest to me is the history of the game, and that is not just because its future is so uncertain. So I much enjoyed three articles on the feats of men who played their cricket long ago. In purely chronological order I will mention first an essay by Chris Frauske. It is actually a wide ranging look at the unique character of Essex CCC, but dwells at considerable length on the remarkable man that was Charles Kortright, in the opinion of many who saw him the fastest bowler to have played the game and, as an amateur of independent means, a man who was not afraid to speak his mind.

Much more in the nature of a traditional pen portrait is Sanjit Misra on the great Kent and England slow left arm bowler of the Edwardian era, Colin ‘Charlie’ Blythe. The career of Northamptonshire batsman and occasional slow bowler Frederick ‘Fanny’ Walden overlapped with Blythe’s, although the bulk of it came after Blythe lost his life in the Battle of Passchendaele. Much less well known Walden was a stoic batsman for a side that was very weak indeed, and his greater successes came on the football pitch where, as a tricky winger with Tottenham Hotspur the 5 feet 2 inches Walden won two England caps. John Taylor tells his story.

One book that I greatly enjoyed recently is Scott Oliver’s Sticky Dogs and Stardust, which concentrated on a subject that the literature of the game visits all too rarely, club cricket and the roles professional players play in it. Oliver’s contribution to CCM might just have been as a taster for his book, but in fact it is nothing of the sort. It is about the game at club level, but its main purpose is to demonstrate that there must be a several more books for Oliver to write on that subject.

Jeremy Lonsdale is the Deputy Editor of CCM, a very good writer and researcher who has authored a number of books, and is also on the committee of the ACS. His contribution to CCM 17 amounts to an explanation of what the ACS seeks to achieve, and what it offers to its members. I have to say I find it difficult to fathom why any regular subscriber to CCM would not want to be a member of the ACS, so I sincerely hope, and indeed expect, that the ACS will see a welcome rise in members in the coming weeks.

Jeremy is best known for his studies of early cricket in Yorkshire, but his first book was a biography of the Hampshire batsman of the Golden Age, Robert Poore, which leads me to Dave Allen, the current Hampshire historian, who provides an interesting look at the challenges historians face. He prefaces his remarks by the very clever observation that when he was a child a football match was played over two 45 minute periods, whereas county cricket consisted solely of 28 three day matches. The changes in the way football is actually played largely boil down the the introduction of substitutes in ever increasing numbers. The way cricket is played has, on the other hand, been turned upside down several times with no sign of the pace of change decelerating.

There are nonetheless some aspects of the game where change is barely perceptible, and Annie writes a delightful piece about one of those, the old fashioned wandering club known as London Theatres Cricket Club. Given her own background in the theatre this was clearly a subject that Annie much enjoyed writing about, and it is reassuring that a club formed back in 1957 by Brian Rix and some fellow actors is something that they would all recognise were they to visit it again today.

And that is all from CCM for another three months, except for The Void’s crossword, which I expect I will still be thinking about on the eve of the new season. I have however got one clue solved already this time, or at least I think I have!