Day five at Headingley and tour review

As you know, rain failed to deny England on the final day.

England take the series with a 2-0 whitewash, and New Zealand will be wondering where it all went so wrong after scrapping so valiantly in the three Test home series in March.

Credit must go to Alistair Cook and his team, particularly the bowling of Anderson and Broad at Lord’s and Finn and Swann at Headingley. They played to the conditions on both occasions and dominated our batsmen. For the upcoming Ashes series, England, however, may have found their own batting to be as problematic as New Zealand’s outside of Cook, Trott, Root and Bairstow.

It’s hard to hide the disappointment as a New Zealand cricketer or cricket fan after making some real strides since South Africa.

Unlike the South African tour, we fronted up to England with our strongest current team minus Daniel Vettori.

But that’s international cricket. Fortunes change like the weather.

2.

A mystery for me these past post-Test days has been the name, Hiddleston. He’s in the 1937 poem I posted during the Headingley Test.

I hadn’t come across the name before but it’s John Hiddleston. He was a popular and solid bat for Wellington at first class level and once scored a double hundred. He was a North Island and New Zealand rep batsman (before official Test status) after the First World War and during the 1920s.

3.

When I started writing this diary, I told friends I would stop at the end of the first class tour fixtures.

I also mentioned at the outset the fine team of ’49ers led by Walter Hadlee. After their humiliation in the 1946 Basin Test v Australia, Hadlee, Merv Wallace and Co. set about building a team and were determined to put New Zealand cricket back on the map during the 1949 England tour. They succeeded.

For these very reasons, I can’t write off Brendon McCullum and Mike Hesson just yet, nor do I wish to suggest whole scale personnel changes. The team of 2013 has some fine talent still to work with and develop further. We may begin to see this during the ODI series and the Champions Trophy and over the next few years.

Ken Rutherford, another mentioned in the course of this brief tour diary along with Brian Close (who did appear at Headingly with John R Reid), said in his 1995 autobiography that he similarly believed in nurturing all the talent that’s there by showing selection faith in players. Stephen Fleming took a while to get going in the Test arena but was among our most talented batsmen since Martin Crowe’s retirement.

After the 1992 World Cup success, cricket suffered a slump until the late 1990s. There was a rise for a while with Fleming as captain of a good crop of players: Chris Cairns, Dion Nash, Daniel Vettori, Roger Twose, Shane Bond, Nathan Astle, Adam Parore, Craig McMillan, Mark Richardson, Chris Harris etc. England will never forget Astle’s sensational ‘master blaster’ innings of 222. Who’d have predicted Astle’s emergence in the centenary season of 1994?

Rutherford confidently stated during a period of cricket’s declining popularity in 1995 that : ‘…within a decade I believe New Zealand will be among the top four or five nations in the cricket world.’ New Zealand cricket rose again. It may happen too with McCullum’s team. Ken’s son Hamish may well be among our future stars.

The upcoming ODI series, Champions Trophy and Twenty 20 games don’t interest me so much as Test cricket but I will watch them.

This, however, will be my last post on the current England tour.

4.

Perhaps it is fitting to end with an ode to Brendon’s team in review:

MARK PIRIE

To McCullum’s Thirteen*

Thirteen players from New Zealand

Flew off to tour Old England.

Their fortunes have suffered,

But let’s not leave them coffered.

Yes, in review, let me inscribe

Their names with Ferns of the past.

I’ll be this team’s loyal scribe.

Even tho’ cricket’s at half-mast.

*          *          *          *

Fulton, made the runs at home

He didn’t add to his tome;

Still he can rest on laurels

For now, when he arrives home.

Ruds, no not Ken, it’s Hamish now

He secured his spot to end any row.

May he bat on with his willow blade

And make good his run-plough.

Kane did not quite cane the Poms,

But still shows dormant class

As yet untapped. He might surpass

Some records yet, I let him pass.

Rosco again proved his mettle.

He played the best knocks

For that I offer humble tribute.

Rosco with wood guitar clearly rocks.

Guppy has a way to go yet

To be in the bracket of “world class”.

He has the style, can come good yet.

Runs are the key but for me “no pass”.

Brownlie, no Maurice, on this tour.

Mighty was he, but Dean derailed.

Can he lift his play, not become dour;

His bat speed, I lament, failed.

Brendon’s the skipper, as such

He needs to do much more

Than he did this tour and much

Admiration depends on his score.

Watling had the gloves at Lord’s.

He impressed in warm-up matches

But in cricket’s home of Lords

Injury meant he played in snatches.

Southee’s really come good, a hero

At Lord’s, a 10-wicket haul,

His batting’s now handy, no zero

To his name, he’s the heart and the soul.

Boult arrived on the world stage,

5 wickets at Headingly; his name

was made on this tour. With the cage

around the batting, he was not tame.

Doug a cricketer with distinctive tats,

Nice to see him back and playing well.

I won’t bore you with feeble stats.

His name he didn’t disgrace: Bracewell.

Martin was competent without flair;

His batting was missed on this tour;

It’d be hard to see a place and compare

To Vettori if his spin turns sour.

Wagner is still coming on strong.

With his passion, others could learn.

He makes strides and toils on,

While batsmen crash and burn.

*          *          *          *

There you have it, lots of work to do.

McCullum’s building a team and intends

To deliver. And we may yet have a team

To be proud of. Can they tighten the ends?

Poem © Mark Pirie 2013

*Tom Latham and Mark Gillespie also toured but didn’t play in the tests.

Article © Mark Pirie 2013

Day four at Headingley

Day four played out much as I thought it would.

A century to England captain Alistair Cook, the England record holder for most Test centuries, and a big run chase for New Zealand of 468. Did Cook bat for too long? Possibly.

It’s all down to the weather now with New Zealand’s batsmen trying hard but fairing little better than in the first innings finishing 158-6 with skipper McCullum and Tim Southee at the crease.

Hamish Rutherford again looks a real find for New Zealand with a well-made 42 and Ross Taylor with 70 showed his consistency at Test level. A couple of late wickets in the darkening conditions, however, handed the day to England.

2.

At times like these, there’s a well-known song by Neil Finn’s Crowded House that goes “Wherever you go / Always take the weather with you…’

Right now there’s a blustery southerly wind where I am in Wellington and rain, and around the country snow has been falling in some areas. The Finns are cricket fans. I can but wish New Zealand’s team could take our weather with them to Leeds.

If it’s any use, here’s a short rain dance:

MARK PIRIE

A cricket fan’s prayer when odds are low

Rain! rain! oh please arrive today.

Keep the covers on; stay all day!

Poem © Mark Pirie 2013

Day three at Headingley

After staying up till midnight to follow the first session of day three, I was beginning to enjoy New Zealand’s batting again. I thought too soon as England’s Steven Finn struck twice removing both openers, Peter Fulton and Hamish Rutherford, just before lunch. A good start of 55-0 quickly became
62-2.

In the morning, checking the score, I found another mediocre New Zealand batting display, with the opening wheels of the innings well and truly fallen off: 174 all out.

Reviews by commentators of the day’s play were fairly scathing of New Zealand’s batting. Two stanzas from Michael O’Leary’s witty ‘Ballad of Reading Oval’ (a rewrite of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’) came to mind in the case of Hamish Rutherford, Peter Fulton, Martin Guptill and Dean Brownlie:

Some play careless strokes when they are young

And some when they are old

Some leave such a gap twixt bat and pad

That the ball, like an arrow of gold

Straight to its target blindly goes

Leaving the batsman out in the cold

Some hit too little, some too long

Some wait for an extra or a bye

Some leave the field almost in tears

And some without a sigh

For each man pulls the stumps on himself

Yet none can answer why

Guptill, a very good bat, always looks the part and stylish, and he did look the part again, showing his front foot defensive technique as he leaned forward to defend the ball from Swann. Just one problem: he left ‘such a gap twixt bat and pad’. Oh well.

But you know something definitely isn’t right when Trent Boult’s tail-end slogging is the main highlight of New Zealand’s batting in news footage from a Test. His three sixes off Graeme Swann were clearly T20 shots rather than Test level cricket. Good on him, however, for helping avoid the follow on, which Cook didn't enforce.

2.

I can’t see New Zealand squaring the series from here. England’s well placed to set a big run chase, and Boult is now injured.

I said after the Lord’s Test that our batsmen need to find the ‘necessary mettle’ and today’s play highlights that comment. In good batting conditions, they needed to make much more of their first innings in a must-win match.

It’s difficult to say how poor our current 2013 batting is. I can remember sitting through a number of batting disasters at Basin Tests in recent years.

Another poem came to mind again, written ahead of the 1937 England tour:

Cricket Ballade

(Written after witnessing some “highlights” recently on the Basin.)

Glumly I sit by the Basin rail.

  The play’s so poor I’ve a mind to quit;

A feeble stroke and a flying bail,

  Or else it’s caught off a woozy hit!

And as the batsmen process, I grit

  My teeth in despair, and groan: Oh dear,

This isn’t the cricket we “uster git”!

  Where are the players of yesteryear?

Where are the men whose bat, like a flail,

  Beflogged the ball, till it well nigh split?,

Who seldom knew what it was to fail

  To lift on the score a tidy bit!

Who scorned to potter and poke, or sit

  On the splice, if the wicket was somewhat queer.

Hiddleston, Dempster, McGirr, to wit!

  Where are the players of yesteryear?

The prospect’s gloomy. No stars prevail.

  Dull is the cricketing sky, unlit!

The bowling’s weak and the batting “tail,”

  And that’s about all there is to it.

Send forth these crudies with fern and kit!

  Absurd! The Pommies would grin and jeer.

Scarce one of ’em’s worth a “thrippenny bit.”

  Oh, where are the players of yesteryear?

Percy, the fans to your care commit

  Their woeful case. If you’d raise a cheer,

Prevail on the gods—can you smooge a bit?—

  To give back the players of yesteryear.

C.V.L.

(From Postscripts, The Evening Post, 6 February 1937)

Percy, in the poem, is Percy Flage [aka C A Marris, editor of the “Postscripts” column]. I’m unable to uncover who the author ‘C.V.L.’ is.

It’s a very pertinent poem (after Villon’s French ballades) outlining a New Zealand cricket fan’s past frustrations. Of course, the bowling for New Zealand (unlike in this poem) has been the strong point on this current tour. Trent Boult’s five-for was a standout today.

Yet despite the poem’s protest, it’s never as simple as just wishing for a Bert Sutcliffe, Martin Donnelly, Stewie Dempster, Herb McGirr, Glenn Turner or Martin Crowe to materialise again.

I believe we have the nucleus of a good batting line-up in the young Hamish Rutherford, Ross Taylor, Kane Williamson, Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill. They do need to show more application at international level than they are currently doing but they do have the talent and class when you see their better shots, such as Rutherford’s cover drive in the first session.

Not much hope left for this Second Test. We can wish for rain. 1-0 is always better than 2-0 on a tour of England. A bit like the 1958 Test series, which New Zealand lost 4-0 with one match drawn. 4-0 was a lot better then than a 5-0 whitewash.

Article © Mark Pirie 2013

Day two at Headingley: A Joe Root poem

Play finally got under way in the Second Test at Headingley. Vettori didn't make the New Zealand XI.

England made three hundred odd for the loss of seven wickets from 94 overs, so it will be hard for New Zealand to win from here and square the series.

Still, from a cricket watcher’s point-of-view, Joe Root making his maiden Test century was the highlight and I've composed a Joe Root ‘concrete poem’ below.

When I first started writing at 18, I came across North American poet John Hollander’s concrete poem from the late ’60s. It was included in the 1970s US school anthology The Lyric Potential given to me as a child in San Francisco. (An article about it appeared on my website.) Hollander’s poem ‘Under a Beach Umbrella’ was in the shape of a beach umbrella, a fun idea that appealed to me as a young student.

I wrote a few in my book, No Joke (2001): one in the shape of an electric rock guitar and the other in the shape of a jazz trumpet.

Of course, concrete poetry dates back centuries: George Herbert’s 17th century ‘Easter Wings’ for example and even Dylan Thomas’s 20th century sequence ‘Vision and Prayer’ before the concrete poetry movement was in full swing in the 1950s and '60s. In New Zealand, the contemporary poet Michele Leggott (among others like Alan Wells) has made use of concrete poems composing a sequence, ‘Tigers’, in the form of globes.

The idea to make a new concrete cricket poem came to me after following young English batsman Joe Root’s great start to the season: several first class hundreds (including one double hundred) plus his 71 in the Lord’s Test last weekend, and now his maiden century at Headingly this weekend. Congratulations, Joe.

Here is my Joe Root poem in the shape of his bat.

MARK PIRIE

Joe Root’s bat

(a concrete poem)

 J
 O
 E

 R

 O

 O

 T

J  O  E

R O  O

T  B  A

T  T   I

N G   I

S  A  H  

O O  T 

I   F  Y 

O  U A 

R  E  J  

O  E R 

O  O T 

Poem © Mark Pirie 2013

If you work out the e. e. cummings-like riddle of the words: it reads like an epigram: “Joe Root, Joe Root, batting’s a hoot, if you’re Joe Root…”

Kevin Pietersen was my favourite batsman of the current crop but Joe Root is definitely a batsman to watch.

Article © Mark Pirie 2013

At Headingley: A Freddie Trueman poem

A few days have transpired since the Lord’s Test. It was a setback like some of New Zealand’s Tests in the ’40s and ’50s but I’m now looking forward to the Second and final Test of the England series.

News from Leeds, Yorkshire (Freddie Trueman country), indicates it’s probable they’ll include Daniel Vettori and Martin Guptill in place of Bruce Martin and B J Watling who have ended their tours with injuries. McCullum will take up the wicket-keeping duties.

It would be great to see Vettori back in action for New Zealand. I hope he is there come match day. (They could play four seamers instead.) His experience would certainly calm the nerves of some of the younger players, just like having an old cricket great visit you in the dressing room.

Speaking of cricket legends like Vettori and Trueman, my last blog post mentioned the cricket writer John Arlott, also a poet and well-known broadcaster. I picked up some recordings of his broadcasts on cassette tape recently. Arlott was one of the greats of cricket writing.

I was lucky enough to pick up a selection of his writings at a Book Fair last year along with a copy of his biography of Freddie Trueman titled Fred.

When Trueman died in 2006, I wrote the following poem for him, recalling his visit to Wellington College where he spoke to us in a packed assembly hall.

I’ll share it with you on the eve of the Test at Headingley. Trueman formed a lethal bowling partnership with Brian Statham.

He ended his career with 307 wickets at an average of 21.57 from 67 Tests.

MARK PIRIE

‘Fiery’ Fred

Freddie Trueman (1931-2006)

“…someone described him as a young bull and there was in his approach that majestic rhythm that emerges as a surprise in the Spanish fighting bull.” – John Arlott, Fred

Once the service

and the tributes are over,

and the dust settles as it must

History is what is left,

and History always looks

to change the strike.

Once, when on a visit

to Wellington, I met you

from a distance.

“Please welcome Freddie Trueman.”

The applause broke out

in our college assembly hall.

Different, I suppose, to

the unheeded noise as each

new wicket was snared.

That day, after assembly

and school had finished,

I went home and found my book,

looking for your action to follow.

In my room, I tried in vain

to arc my arm like the photo

as if I was a kid mimicking you

in the stands at Headingley

or The Oval. And now that you’re gone

records remain: the first 

to 300 Test wickets, devastating in

the home series against the Windies.

Those 300 wickets appear a long-broken

record now, especially in this

age of 700s, but I figure, even so,

you’d still be looking to include

yourself in any historical XI,

ruefully turning the strike over yet again.

Poem © Mark Pirie 2008

The book I mention with the photo of Trueman’s bowling action was Peter Arnold’s The Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Cricket, Golden Press, Auckland, 1987. The book was my chief bedtime reading at the age of 13 along with the 1987 Shell New Zealand Cricket Almanack.

Trueman’s ‘devastating’ series with the West Indies in 1957 (referred to here) shows his bowling figures as 22 wickets in five tests at the average of 20.68 in Peter Arnold’s book, still just as handy like the cricket almanack despite online archives. Surprisingly his best Test figures came in his first series with India where he took 8-31 at Old Trafford, Manchester.  

Good luck to New Zealand for the Second Test. Square the series and make us proud!

‘Fiery’ Fred first published in Mark Pirie’s Slips: Cricket poems (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, Paekakariki, 2008).

Article © Mark Pirie 2013