No-Balls and Googlies: A Cricket Companion

By Geoff Tibballs

Cricket is undoubtedly the elegant game, occupying a long-established and distinguished position in the annals of sporting history. Played by gentlemen the world over, the word cricket may derive from the Anglo-Saxon word cricc, meaning a staff or crutch - giving us a game played with a long wooden implement - and the first (reliable) mention dates back to Guildford in the 16th century.
No-Balls and Googlies uncovers the origins of this captivating game, and explores its traditions, records, milestones and memorable moments through a fascinating array of facts and figures, anecdotes and curiosities.
For example, did you know that the Hambledon Club of Hampshire, founded around 1767, is generally perceived as cricket's spiritual home? Or that British and Australian troops conducted their own Desert Ashes series in Iraq in 2005? Or perhaps an England XI's first overseas tour was to the United States?
From the leg glance to leg before, king pair to cover drive, and from the no-ball to the googly, this book is sure to entertain, inform and delight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Release date: Jun 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782430742

Geoff Tibballs

Geoff Tibballs has written many bestselling books, including Senior Jokes (The Ones You Can Remember), Seriously Senior Moments (Or, Have You Bought This Book Before?) and The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life.

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INTRODUCTION

It is more than a game, this cricket, it somehow holds a mirror up to English society.

– SIR NEVILLE CARDUS

Whisper it softly but British sport is on the crest of a wave. Along with our unparalleled success at the London Olympics, a British cyclist won the Tour de France, our golfers are among the best in the world and we even have a Grand Slam-winning tennis player. In fact it’s a good job we can always rely on our respective national football teams to let us down, otherwise we’d be in danger of being cheerful. Then there is the England cricket team, vying, at the time of writing, for the number one spot in the world and, perhaps more importantly to those who bear lifelong grudges, consistently ranked ahead of Australia. We might not yet have found a new Boy’s Own hero in the mould of ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, but the current team gives hope for guarded optimism, although, being England, we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that a one-day defeat to Canada or Vanuatu could be just around the corner.

Although many County Championship games remain attended by the proverbial one man and his dog, cricket in general in this country has enjoyed something of a resurgence of interest over recent years. At Test level, this can be traced back to the unforgettable 2005 series against Australia, when Flintoff was elevated to the status of bleary-eyed national treasure after his exploits with bat and ball helped England regain the Ashes for the first time in eighteen years. England needs a successful cricket team, for it is a quintessentially English game, albeit one that is ill-suited to the weather of a quintessentially English summer. Other nations might not see the point of a game which you can play for five days and still not get a result, but from its very beginnings cricket has appealed to the whole spectrum of English society, attracting the humble blacksmith and the lord of the manor alike. What other pastime could unite Mick Jagger and John Major?

Of course, at grass roots level, cricket’s popularity has never waned. I spent much of my childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s following my father around the club grounds of south-east England. Like many a club player he was an all-rounder, generally batting at around number six – although occasionally promoted to opener if someone’s car had broken down – and bowling economical medium pacers that ‘did a bit’. Nobody, least of all him, I suspect, knew exactly what they did or how they came to do it. I spent most of these Saturday afternoons hoping that he would be out early so that I could gain some much-needed batting practice behind the pavilion or continue my lifelong quest to persuade a leg-break to turn. For despite modelling my bowling action on Australia’s Bobby Simpson, the only time my leg-breaks ever turned was when they came into contact with a wide swing of the opponent’s bat en route to being launched into the car park. At home games I was at least able to put my time to better use by working the scoreboard, a task that involved nothing more technical than hanging large numbered metal plates on to hooks. It was a blissful, stress-free existence, the only pressure coming from a fear of running out of certain numbers. A score of 66-6 with both batsmen on 6 was the stuff of nightmares. Meanwhile my mother would sit in front of the pavilion, knitting for England. On a good day, she could have both sleeves finished by first change. It was a scene repeated among families up and down the land.

To this day, the mere mention of the word ‘cricket’ instantly conjures up an image of lazy summer afternoons, a village green, the reassuring sound of leather on willow, and the gentle ripple of applause. For all the appeal of the modern Twenty20 game with its instant gratification, it is an image that, in such uncertain times, we should strive to preserve.

No sport has a more fascinating background than cricket. Its long history is rich in colourful characters, many of whose feats are recounted within these pages. The rules themselves are a total mystery to the outsider, it has a language all of its own and there is a statistic to cover any eventuality. A cunning combination of subtlety, elegance and occasional brute force, at its best it is a game which is aesthetically pleasing. Has there ever been a more graceful sight in sport than an immaculately executed cover drive by the likes of Tom Graveney or David Gower? Equally was any sporting contest more compelling than Shane Warne trying to lure an obdurate batsman into an indiscretion? My hope is that this book will whet the appetite of those new to the game and provide nuggets of trivia and information to surprise even cricket’s most dedicated followers. All statistics are correct up to January 2013.

Finally, I would like to thank the team at Michael O’Mara for making this project a true labour of love.

Geoff Tibballs,

Nottingham, 2013

A SIMPLE EXPLANATION OF THE GAME

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men except one have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

SOME EARLY REFERENCES TO CRICKET

ORIGINS OF THE GAME

The word ‘cricket’ derives from the diminutive of the Anglo-Saxon cric, meaning a staff or crutch. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford contains a picture of one monk bowling a ball to another, who is about to strike it with a cric; other monks are ‘in the field’. There are no wickets, but the batsman stands before a hole, and the aim of the game was either to get the ball into the hole or to catch it after it had been struck by the man with the cric.

The court accounts of 1300 refer to a game called ‘creag’ being played in Kent. This game, thought to be a forerunner of cricket, subsequently incurred the wrath of Edward III who banned it, along with such pursuits as football and bowls, because at a time of war with France he wanted the archers of England to practice the bow and arrow without any other sporting distractions. More reliable evidence of the existence of cricket stems from 1598 when, in a dispute over a plot of land, John Derrick of Guildford described how fifty years earlier ‘he and several of his fellows did runne and play there at cricket and other plaies.’ This would indicate that cricket was played in the Guildford area around 1550.

Given the difficulty of seeing a hole in the ground, the following century a single stump was placed at each hole to point out the spot to bowlers and fielders. A tree stump was sometimes used but because on the downs of Sussex and Kent, where the game had its stronghold, there weren’t many trees, a new target had to be found – the ‘wicket-gate’, through which passed flocks of sheep. This gate took the form of a small hurdle, consisting of two uprights known as stumps. The stumps were 12 inches high and set 24 inches apart. On top of them was laid a crosspiece, known to this day in Australian pastures as a bail. This presented a superior target to a tree stump, as there could be no argument when the bail fell to the ground. The earliest bats were like cumbersome hockey sticks and were rounded at the end to deal with the ball bowled literally, as the word suggests, all along the ground. The score was kept by ‘notching’ runs with a knife on a stick, a deeper groove being notched for every tenth run.

I ran for a catch

With the sun in my eyes, sir,

Being sure at a snatch

I ran for a catch;

Now I wear a black patch

And a nose such a size, sir!

I ran for a catch

With the sun in my eyes, sir.

– COULSON KERNAHAN

OLDEST TEST MATCH PLAYERS

CRICKET ON THE SABBATH

In 1622 a presentment (a formal complaint) was made by parish authorities to the church hierarchy regarding two games of cricket played in Boxgrove churchyard, West Sussex, on Sundays 28 April and 5 May. The presentment read:

I present Raphe West, Edward Hartley, Richard Slaughter, William Martin, Richard Martin junior, together with others in their company whose names I have no notice of, for playing at cricket in the churchyard on Sunday, the fifte of May, after sufficient warning given to the contrary, for three speciall reasons: first, for that it is contrary to the 7th article; secondly, for that they use to

Reviews for No-Balls and Googlies

[zarasecker18 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was really good and well written. My husband, who is not a big book reader, read this book and absolutely loved it. He loved it so much that I found him laughing lots, something which is very rare indeed when it comes to books. In my opinion if a book can get my husband to laugh and enjoy reading, even if for a short time, then it's worth the time in reading it. I would highly recommend this book to anybody who likes a laugh interspersed with fun facts.