Sir J F Neville Cardus (1888-1975) was the one cricket writer whom the former NZ Test Captain and Patron of The Willows, Mr Walter Hadlee instructed his eldest son Barry to read when a boy. One of the outstanding Cardus books is titled Cricket and was published by Longmans, Green and Co in 1931 and so deemed a mandatory text for Barry (and, I guess, the other Hadlee sons).
What would Cardus have made of the gargantuan feat which unfolded at Westpac Stadium, Wellington on Saturday 21 March, 2015? On that momentous day the Black Caps played the West Indies in the quarterfinals of the 2015 World Cup.
The build-up and hype for the game was intense. Could NZ extend their winning streak in the tournament? How would the erratic but double CWC winners, the West Indies, perform? Champion ex-players (from both camps) got in on the act. Pre-match talk was acute. In The Press we read how Master Blaster, Sir Viv Richards was “bemused” by the form of the West Indians in their round-robin games, which he judged to be “hot one minute and ice cold the next”.
Hadn’t I read a similar such utterance before, written by Neville Cardus? 85 years ago he precisely pin-pointed the very same erratic quality about their play and I quote from Cricket:
“At one moment these players are eager, confident, and quite masterful; then as circumstances go against them you can see them losing heart. Routine has not yet given them a cloak to cover emotions which live on the surface. At Lord’s in 1928, when one of them missed a slip catch he cast down his head most woefully, and the whole body of him wilted. Even when, almost next ball, an English wicket fell, the poor West Indian was not consoled. As the English batsman left the wicket this forlorn fieldsman sat down on the grass alone, like a naughty boy in a corner. He voluntarily put himself in disgrace.
When the West Indians are winning they will turn Lord’s into a village green. Every man is on his toes, appeals for leg-before-wicket are many and enthusiastic, the whole field move onwards to the wicket as the bowler begins his run. Excitement can be felt in flashes, here, there and everywhere. Constantine in the slips leaps and pounces like a primitive animal. The West Indians, in truth, are jazz cricketers. That is to say, they give us a vivid sense of that improvisatory and far from formal energy which is the essence of jazz.”
Back to the 2015 CWC. Come Saturday, the match belonged to one player, Martin Guptill. His record-breaking innings of 237* off 163 balls stunned the cricket world. What would Neville Cardus have made of such a dominant display? After all, again it was Cardus who wrote that the game needed to be “played by men free to be themselves”. No one could have been more free (and accurate) than Guptill in caning 11 sixes and 24 fours this day. Nor Grant Elliott and his match-winning six at Eden Park several days later to propel us into the CWC finals.
Cardus witnessed many match-winning innings in his time. One which “stays with the imagination like an heroic deed” was that played by GL Jessop in August 1902 for England v Australia at The Oval, London. On that day, England needed 244 for victory but lost five quick wickets for 44 runs on a difficult pitch. Let us pick up on events as they unfolded and were brilliantly documented by Cardus:
“All was lost when the Australian bowlers had broken England’s backbone – all was lost, that is, so long as the game remained in a rational world, governed by the logic of cause and effect. No known science of batsmanship could possibly have solved the problems of great bowling on a vicious turf. For so long, indeed, as the match was allowed to take place in a rational world, England’s doom was inevitable. Some of the most celebrated batsmen had in vain tried by skill and knowledge and judgment to break the chain of necessity that was weighing England down. Jessop came to the wicket, his chin sticking out aggressively. He promptly took the match out of reach of reason and science; he played it into that world of melodrama where anything can happen and where virtue is always triumphant. In an hour and a quarter he scored 104 and won the victory.”
Cardus then went on to give the following description of Jessop’s batting, which when read today, sounds a carbon-copy of Elliott’s and Guptill’s never forgotten feats:
“Cricket has never been more marvellously touched by genius. His hits were rapid. He possessed not only the hitter’s full-lengthed body-drives, but also authentic batsman’s short-lengthed strokes, the cut and the hook. No slogger could have survived the deadly science of Australia’s bowling on this day. The innings was a case of technique controlled by imagination.
With all his swiftness of eye and foot, his supple energy, his responsive technique, Jessop could not have won England one of the most famous of all cricket victories, had not he thought that it could all be done, and willed the deed faithfully.”
Wasn’t that Elliott and Guptill to a tee?
Finally, after the dramatic semi-finals and “winner-take-all” final at the MCG, it was Australia who emerged as the worthy 2015 CWC champions. Again our featured scribe had it predestined. Back in 1931 Cardus hailed some of the reasons for the dominance of the “green baggy” brigade in world cricket. He wrote:
“It is not hard to account for Australia’s genius at cricket; the climate there, and the beautiful pitches, are all in favour of close technical study and practice... Yet, with all these considerations taken into account we must needs continue to stand in mingled perplexity and admiration at the thought that Australia, with a population that could be put into London, has year after year been able to produce cricketers good enough to challenge all comers.”
This is superb journalism. No wonder it struck a chord with Mr Hadlee, son Barry and does so to this day with cricket lovers everywhere.