The man who put “three too many letters” dies

On the radio tonight, I was surprised to hear of the death of rock musician James Freud. Most famous for writing the 1985 hit singles “Barbados” and “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” for new wave band The Models, Freud had a long career in rock music beginning with his hit “Modern Girl” with backing band The Radio Stars through his Models years to less successful projects like Beatfish with Mental As Anything’s Martin Plaza.

It is, however, for his last notable project that I came to remember James Freud in the long run. When Tony Lockett kicked his 1300^th goal in May of 1999 to beat Gordon Coventry’s record which had stood since the 1930s, Freud with a band called “The Reserves” wrote a song ‘One Tony Lockett’ to pay tribute. ‘One Tony Lockett’ was played on the radio quite widely but spent only one week in the Top 40 at number thirty-nine.

However, being at the time obsessed with the terrible quality of spin bowling in 1980s cricket and how it allowed teams to dominate world cricket with no proven ability to play against spin bowling of a quality such as Ashley Mallett shows must have existed before the advent of artificial fertilisers, limited-overs cricket and curtailed boundaries. The former created resultant lush pitches and outfields that favored more easily mastered pace bowling, and the latter two demanded run-saving for which the enterprising buy-at-all-costs slow spinner was a liability. I thus felt immediately that James Freud had written three too many letters in his song, which should have been titled ‘One Tony Lock’ after the great spinner of the 1950s and 1960s.

There were in 1999 fewer English spinners comparable to Tony Lock than full forwards comparable to Tony Lockett, as shown by how no English spinner in 1998 had taken even 35 first-class wickets – a figure often attained by spinners in three or four games before one-day cricket. Even in 1984, when the supposedly great West Indian sides were at their peak, the standard of spin has declined alarmingly, especially with Underwood – in his last “top-flight” year – banned for touring South Africa. For years I have insisted that if the West Indian sides of the 1980s had had to face spinners of the calibre of Lock and Jim Laker on uncovered pitches, it would have been another sport entirely vis-à-vis that decade’s cricket. I cannot imagine any 1980s team, experienced only on plastic pitches protected from rain, having the skill required to last against spinners of the calibre of Laker and Lock. As Ashley Mallett noted around the time Lock died in 1995, the West Indies failed against much poorer spinners whenever pitches took significant spin.