Don Clarke as a cricketer

Rugby player Jeff Wilson is a well known recent example of the double international in New Zealand cricket. Some others were Eric Tindill, Martin Donnelly, Curly Page, Charlie Oliver and Brian McKechnie. Wilson, an All Black winger, after hanging up his rugby boots, returned to cricket and was a surprise selection in the 2005 one-day and 20/20 series against Australia. He had previously made a promising start to his international cricket career at age 19 in 1993 (scoring 44 not out off 28 balls against Australia) before opting for rugby.

In 2005, Wilson was again effective in the warm up tsunami relief series against a touring World XI (taking 3-6 in one match) but against the full strength Australian side at Eden Park he was carted for 43 runs off 4 overs in the only Twenty20 match. His last ODI game saw him take 1-68 off 9 overs. His lone wicket was that of Adam Gilchrist.

Another of those who played cricket and rugby is All Black fullback and rugby legend Don Clarke (1933-2002) known as “The Boot” for his goal kicking. Clarke never played international cricket in contrast to the others mentioned above.

When I was reading Richard Boock’s recent Sutcliffe biography, it reminded me again of Clarke’s cricket playing days. There’s a description of Clarke in the book by Graham Dowling: ‘[Clarke] was medium-fast; big and strong. He lumbered in and gave it plenty. His size gave the impression of lumbering, I suppose, but he was a pretty good provincial bowler.’ His First Class span was 1950/51-1962/63. Clarke bowled for Auckland and Northern Districts as a right arm medium-fast bowler. He took 117 wickets at a very good average of 21.14, including four five-fors and one ten wicket haul.

At the end of his playing days, he left New Zealand in the 1970s for South Africa where he set up a tree-felling business. He died from cancer in 2002 at the age of 69.

Recently I came across a poem for Don Clarke. I’ll include it on the “Tingling Catch” archive. The epigram doesn’t specify rugby or cricket but is a nice tribute to the effect his status had on his fellow contemporaries, this time a poet:

F W N WRIGHT

Epitaph for Don Clarke

Mourn for a generation, ours

Its passing and its loss of powers.

Poem © F W N Wright

F W N (Nielsen) Wright or Niel Wright was born in 1933, the same year as Clarke, and wrote the epitaph after Don’s death in 2003. It appeared in his epic poem The Alexandrians. The author’s note at the end of the book states: ‘Don Clarke is my age. He was greatly distressed to find himself dying of cancer, having felt invincible. His heyday as a footballer was 1953-1964, dates that are highly significant I suspect for all his generational coevals (what statisticians so oddly call cohorts), certainly for me. My generation felt loss of powers in being pushed aside by the baby boom generation in the late 1960s and also now by death.’ It’s interesting that in New Zealand our sportsmen are seen as figureheads of their generations, defining people of a period in our culture and history. They represent the past as significant emblems, and their glittering playing careers can mirror the height of their generation's powers, an idea that recurs in some of the cricket poetry in A Tingling Catch when players are discussed and paid a tribute.

Article © Mark Pirie 2011

Sources: The Last Everyday Hero: The Bert Sutcliffe Story by Richard Boock (Longacre, 2010); Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack 2003; ESPN Cricinfo; and The Alexandrians: Day 198 by F W Nielsen Wright (Original Books, 2003).

David McGill's extra cricket limerick

Earlier I posted a cricket limerick by well-known New Zealand writer David McGill. Here's another one I found from David McGill's Rude New Zealand Limericks:

DAVID McGILL

Cricket Limerick

A stroppy fast bowler from Buller
Was advised by his coach to bowl fuller.
   He said, "That's not on,
   It's inviting a ton
From yer king-hit cutter or puller."

© David McGill 1999

(From David McGill's Rude New Zealand Limericks, Grantham House, Wellington, 2000)

Tim Finn’s NZ cricket song Runs in the Family

One cricket song of note that doesn’t appear in A Tingling Catch is Tim Finn and the Record Partnership’s ‘Runs in the Family’.
Cast your minds back to 1995 and the 100th anniversary of the New Zealand Cricket Council. A one-day tournament was played featuring Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa. Given New Zealand’s run of losses at the time, it was termed ‘the birthday bash from hell’. Penned especially for the anniversary and tournament and maybe to give the Black Caps a boost, Tim Finn’s song climbed to No. 9 on the New Zealand single’s chart. Finn appeared on the Holmes show to promote the single’s release, and all looked bright.

Blair Mulholland, however, later included Tim’s song in his “Worst NZ Songs of All Time” on nzmusic.com in 2004. Here’s the link: http://www.nzmusic.com/node/9029 Blair notes that Finn’s ‘appalling NZ Cricket anthem Runs in the Family … can be number six. It sank even lower than the fortunes of the team in 1995, which was no mean feat really.’ On the second page of comments on Blair's post, one comment by SuperElmo defended the track: ‘Runs In The Family is ok. I remember the video for it.’ I can’t remember the video now myself, but if it had some cricket highlights in it, it was probably okay.

After all the dire predictions and Tim’s efforts, how did the New Zealand team fare in the tournament? The Black Caps surprisingly made the final after beating India and South Africa, largely due to the batting of Mark Greatbatch who had recently returned to the squad, skipper Ken Rutherford and a young Stephen Fleming. Martin Crowe played just one game before picking up an injury. Justin Vaughan, the current CEO of NZ Cricket, was also in the squad. Danny Morrison, Chris Cairns, Chris Pringle, Shane Thomson, Gavin Larsen and Vaughan were the bowling attack.

In the final Shane Warne took 2-21 and Tim May, his spin partner, took 3-19 to reduce the Black Caps to 137-9 at Eden Park. Rutherford made 46 and without Vaughan’s 20 not out, the total could’ve been lower. Captain Mark Taylor, Mark Waugh and David Boon knocked off the runs for Australia in the 32nd over.

Back to Tim Finn’s song, which is worth including on the “Tingling Catch” archive. I made a transcript of it. I admit I’m a fan of some of Finn’s music, particulary the Finn Brother’s album, Everyone is Here (2004), and some Split Enz tracks like ‘Dirty Creature’, ‘I See Red’ and ‘Poor Boy’ as well as Tim’s solo songs like ‘Persuasion’ co-written with English musician Richard Thompson. Tim’s songs for the most part are worth commenting on. The opening stanza of ‘Runs in the Family’ for instance features beach cricket, a Kiwi tradition at holiday baches during summer time:

Runs in the Family

I remember long ago playing

cricket by the sea

My father’s love of grace and skill

still runs in the family

Leather ball and willow bat

the scene of generation’s come

Pay your dues and show respect:

runs in the family

I like Tim’s idea here of a generational tradition in New Zealand, passed down through families, and that’s how some of our best cricketers have been taught. In these opening lines Tim acknowledges his father Richard. Around that time, Joseph Romanos wrote a book called Great New Zealand Cricket Families (1992). In the book Joseph discusses among others: the Hadlee family, the Cairns family, the Crowe family and the Bracewell family - to which you could now add the McCullum family.

Tim’s chorus that follows the opening verse is simple enough, a repeated refrain of ‘Runs in the family’, sung about four times. Overall, I guess it has that anthemic quality, and I can see how SuperElmo thought it was okay to some extent. The single’s not bad in places.

The bit that jarred for me was the attempt to mix in some hip-hop and ragamuffin. Here’s that rap lyric part from the guest performer:

100 years run in the family

watch me now, don’t play Mr Hadlee

Rutherford, Greatbatch, Morrison, Crowe

Coney, Wright, Patel and Jones

broad to the bat is the stylee

wickets and cricket and feeling irie

googly, bouncer, yorker and leg-break

from Eden Park to Kingston, Jamaica

Aotearoa!

What’s odd here is that some of the players named were not in the New Zealand team playing the centenary tournament. Except for ‘Greatbatch, Morrison, Crowe’, the others were no longer in the Black Caps. And the West Indies weren’t at the tournament either, making you wonder why they chose a ragamuffin part for the song. I’m not sure when the song was written in 1994, maybe they thought the Windies were coming and some of these players were still playing, but when it was released, it was those little bits that tended to lessen the impact of the song. Were they using the names of greats like ‘Hadlee’, ‘Coney’ and ‘Wright’ to sell the song? Or were they there to give us a sense of the history of the game. If so, why not Sutcliffe and Reid? The only interesting thing in the rap part was throwing in the word ‘Aotearoa!’ at the end.

I guess that’s why I left it out of A Tingling Catch, though I do like Tim’s opening stanza and the beach cricket idea acknowledging his father very much.

Article © Mark Pirie 2011

Sources: Runs in the Family by Tim Finn and the Record Partnership (cassette single, Epic, 1995); Tim Finn, A Timeline (2009): A Solo, And Sometimes Solitary, Man by Graham Reid, Elsewhere website, 2009; Great New Zealand Cricket Families by Joseph Romanos (Random House, Auckland, 1992); Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia; ESPN Cricinfo Archive; and Worst NZ Songs of All Time by Blair Mulholland, nzmusic.com, 2004.

Theatre review - Jonny Brugh's The Second Test

I went along to The Second Test, Jonny Brugh’s excellent one-man play the week before Christmas. Madeleine Marie Slavick, who also went, emailed me her own review of the play. I’ll include it here as part of the “Tingling Catch” blog archive of cricket-related material:

MADELEINE MARIE SLAVICK

The One Man Test

Review of Jonny Brugh’s ‘The Second Test’, Circa Theatre, Wellington, 7-23 December 2010

‘Courage is always original’ said Wittgenstein, and Jonny Brugh is originality, wit and versatility in The Second Test, a one-man show in which he performs as about fifteen individuals: Cricketer Bob Blair, 19-year-old Nerissa Love and her grandmother, several members of the 1953/54 New Zealand Cricket team on a ship and on the Johannesburg grounds, the then Prime Minister Sidney Holland; and over in apartheid-run South Africa, Brugh becomes an Afrikaans broadcaster, a racist assistant, and the fiercely fast and unsportsmanlike bowler Neil Adcock.

‘What are you doing here’ is asked throughout, sometimes with ‘hell’. Why play cricket, why do you love me, why wake me up in the middle of the night, why can he get away with almost ripping off my ear, why do we need to shake his hand in the rain, why do I need to bat a six to prove that I love you and why are you dead?

On the stage: a four-foot-high mock radio, a wooden chair, hat, bat, lectern, and Brugh, increasingly sweaty through the eighty minutes of the drama, especially under his right arm.

I love the peripheries of sound. In the way the Ellis Park audience, still full of goodwill on that Boxing Day, is heard, then not heard. The way Brugh creates a strong male ‘hah’ laugh that is not a laugh but an affirmation and a bit of bravado. Brugh also sounds a camera click, the rolling down of a wet car window, the kiss, and the cricket bat pecking its centre placement in the crease.

The details make us laugh. Red balls landing in open sea. ‘Whose blood is that?’ a young player asks, at bat. ‘And whose is that?’ The team is given six pairs of socks – among other cricket basics – before that pre-Christmas journey, six weeks across sea. In Melbourne, two weeks into the ride, Blair and Love (well, Brugh and Brugh) talk on the telephone about their wedding and snorkling. An hour or so before the Wellington-Auckland train, Love listens to the first test on the radio, courtesy of telegraph technology, waiting, all of her waiting, for her six.

The image, seen, unseen. There is footage of Table Mountain, the remains of the train at Tangiwai, the famous white cotton around Bert Sutcliffe’s head, the inside of which is soothed by a few glasses of necessary whiskey. What is not projected on the Circa screen is Blair travelling to the pitch through the tunnel, also famous.

Sometimes only the body can speak. When Blair hears the news of Love’s death, he wants to be in Petone, where the Blair and Love families live, but Petone is six sea-weeks away. Stuck, distraught, he then needs solace, and several hours of tea. When courage can come, his body wants to be ‘useful’, so he walks unannounced through that tunnel and into Ellis Park, where he and Sutcliffe can cry, unashamed. As New Zealand teammates in the pavilion, though unable to meet each other’s eye. As many in the South African and international audience. The love in this test goes beyond the Blair-Love to the whole glory of sport, which urges us to be our most courageous and most vulnerable, our most spontaneous and most original.

As a release, at the end of the evening, we see the New Zealand team lighter, together, in one pool, swimming. Maybe all of us ready, for other kinds of tests.

Review © Madeleine Marie Slavick

Madeleine Marie Slavick, an author based in Wellington, attended the 14 December 2010 performance of The Second Test. A teenage athlete of basketball and baseball/softball, she came to the game of cricket through Mark Pirie’s book, A Tingling Catch, which collects poetry and song from about 150 years of the game http://tinglingcatch.blogspot.com/2010/11/madeleine-marie-slavick-tingling-day.html.
Sources: ‘What Are You Doing Out Here’ (2010) by Norman Harris, and conversations with David Mealing, curator of the New Zealand Cricket Museum. This article is forthcoming in the Museum newsletter.

Jonny Brugh's The Second Test, Circa Theatre,
7-23 December 2010

Don Neely in the New Years Honours list

In the New Years Honours list announced yesterday, I was pleased to see Don Neely's name. Don received the MNZM for services to cricket.
I'd like to congratulate Don on his latest achievement. Don had previously received an MBE.
In 2010, Don published an amazing cricket book, The First 50 Tests, to commemorate the first 50 Tests played at the Basin Reserve, Wellington. Financed largely by fund-raising, Don printed six thousand copies which were given away mostly to school cricket teams in Wellington and some around the country and to ticket holders at the Basin Test against Australia last March. Tim Jones reported being in a long queue at the Basin when he waited to pick up his copy.
The book is another of Don's extraordinary achievements for cricket in New Zealand. The Scoreboard at the Basin is named after him.
Don is a former Wellington captain and national selector and was the previous President of New Zealand Cricket.
In 1986, Don published his definitive history of New Zealand Test cricket, Men in White, co-authored with Richard King and statistician Francis Payne.
With his wife, Paddianne Neely, he co-authored, The Summer Game: An Illustrated History of New Zealand Cricket. His other work includes 100 Summers, a history of Wellington cricket, and editing the DB Cricket Annual series.
My own cricket anthology, A Tingling Catch, wouldn't have been possible without Don's involvement, including his foreword contribution and help with launching the book at the Basin Reserve Long Room last October.
Thanks Don for all you do for New Zealand cricket.

See my related blog post from last year 'A Tingling Catch launched at the Basin'

A Tingling Catch contributor Harvey McQueen dies

My friend, the well-known poet/educationalist/anthologist Harvey McQueen, a contributor and adviser to A Tingling Catch and a HeadworX author, sadly passed away on 25 December 2010. I’d like to offer my condolences to his partner Anne Else as well as his family and friends.
I attended a small private service for him at the Main Chapel, Karori Crematorium on Friday 31 December 2010. A public memorial service was held on Friday 28 January 2011 at Old St Paul's, Mulgrave Street, Wellington. Ian Wedde, myself, Vincent O'Sullivan and Roger Robinson spoke on Harvey's literary career at the service.
In lieu of flowers, you are invited to make a donation to the Harvey McQueen Memorial Fund, to foster children's appreciation of New Zealand's birds through Zealandia. Donations may be posted to Zealandia, PO Box 9267, Marion Square, Wellington 6141.

Harvey wrote a blog "Stoat Spring" and was an active member of the New Zealand literary blog community. All who’ve followed his blog over the past few years will feel the loss of his presence. Harvey was also the co-editor with Ian Wedde of The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, the memoirs The Ninth Floor and This Piece of Earth, and seven poetry collections, including Goya Rules (HeadworX, 2010). I interviewed and featured Harvey in my poetry journal, broadsheet, issue no. 5, May 2010.

I’d like to post Harvey’s poem from A Tingling Catch in memory of him.

HARVEY McQUEEN

From Akaroa DHS  

i First Day

In winning their war, all my adults counselled certitude
though perilous the outcome from those massive field guns
until strung up to view was a mistress & her Mussolini.

My stepfather, who’d slogged from Cairo to Trieste,
swore fluent & rolled his own as only a soldier could & should
& his wife, my mother,
anxiously signed me up for the third form.

Being small –

thirty-five the roll –
‘your son won’t come to any harm’
& ‘Sticky’ Arnold strolled out to the clustered strangers
suggesting they leave untouched this uncounted one.

Despite my plea(s)
they gave me the neglect of a horse trough dribble
the other new boys received a headfirst dunking
in front of the admiring girls.

Inside – at a test, unthinking, I got them all right.
Someone said ‘skite’
& for revenge
at lunchtime caught & bowled me spin first ball
whereupon I went out to field cicadas on the boundary.

Poem © Harvey McQueen

Harvey McQueen
(HeadworX publicity photo)

See my blog post from October last year, ‘Harvey McQueen’s These I Have Loved’, on Harvey’s last poetry anthology, These I Have Loved: My Favourite New Zealand Poems, published by Steele Roberts.



These I Have Loved:
My Favourite New Zealand Poems
edited by Harvey McQueen
(Steele Roberts, 2010)

Summer Reads: Shane Bond: Looking Back

Review by Mark Pirie of Shane Bond: Looking Back with Dylan Cleaver, Hodder Moa, 2010, RRP $44.99. Foreword by Sir Richard Hadlee.

I remember Shane Bond’s absence during the 2003/04 season. On Saturday’s, my club teammates were often wondering when Shane Bond would return to the Black Caps. Someone said, “He’ll never be back, it’s a seriously bad injury. He’s the best bowler we’ve had since Richard Hadlee, but, sadly, I think we may have seen the last of him.”

He did come back briefly but broke down again on the 2004 tour to England. Back then, I started thinking we’d never see him again at international level. When Shane Bond did return and then see out his playing career at 35 in the 2009/10 season, I was impressed.

For Shane to make a comeback like that after a serious injury (as well as being ruled out of international play for two seasons because of a barely known ICC technicality) there must’ve been something exceptional driving him. I bought a copy of his book at Christmas time, thinking I’d get a better insight into Shane through his own words.

As expected, Shane’s autobiography written with leading sports journalist Dylan Cleaver is a straight-talking affair with plenty to get off his chest about the ICL debacle, and his list of injuries. You get the sense Shane wants to put matters right with the New Zealand public after his misrepresentation at times in the New Zealand sports media and on talkback radio.

Like his bowling, Shane doesn’t hold back, and does set things straight. He doesn’t bowl many beamers either and hits the seam often enough to make it interesting for the reader. There’s also a whole chapter devoted to critiquing the Leading Teams concept of player review and discussion. Contrast this with the recently released biography of Sutcliffe’s playing days in the 1950s/60s and you realise the dilemmas of the modern game – much more team analysis. These days, a lot more money and revenue are at stake. This all leads as Shane points out to occasionally rash selection choices, early player retirements and the harsh axing of players.

The best bits for me, however, are not about player contracts and team management tactics or disputes. Shane gets his words whizzing round like his best balls when he talks about his playing days: there are the overseas tours as well as his Test debut against Australia and the VB One-Day series of 2001/02. That was a great season of cricket. This was the series when Shane cleaned out Adam Gilchrist with his trademark in-swinging yorker.

I was at the MCG then when New Zealand was top of the VB series table. Unfortunately, the day I was there they lost to Australia after a blinder from Michael Bevan. Bevan became a New Zealand nemesis who helped defeat them again at the 2003 World Cup in South Africa after Bond had taken 6-23 off 10 overs to rip out their top and middle orders. There’s nothing here, however, about Shane scoring his only First Class century for Canterbury vs ND, 2004/05 season. Maybe the circumstances around that century weren’t interesting enough to report.

The chapter about Shane’s back puts his injuries in perspective and his frustrations while sidelined from the game. You get brief interjections in each chapter with players and teammates of Shane adding their bit in little snippets like a documentary film. There’s comments from Stephen Fleming, Dan Vettori, Craig McMillan, Geoff Allott, Adam Gilchrist, Heath Mills, Martin Snedden as well as Shane’s manager Leanne McGoldrick and his own family.

Looking Back, however, is painful to read at times. There’s almost too much information given and unnecessary management decisions seem to have been made concerning Bond’s injuries and international availability. You can’t help feeling for Shane. The writing’s not flash to read but has important things to say. Still, there’s plenty here to admire, some good match photos, and it’s those wicket taking deliveries from his playing days rather than the politics that will live with you.

Shane’s overall bowling stats are very impressive. Sir Richard Hadlee provides a nice foreword, and that says a lot about Shane’s standing as one of New Zealand’s premier fast bowlers.

Review © Mark Pirie 2011

Shane Bond: Looking Back
with Dylan Cleaver
(Hodder Moa, 2010)