How my established views on English cricket developed, 1995-2019

In my previous post I noted how reading 1980s and 1990s Wisdens, most especially the Notes by the Editor in the 1985 Wisden, during the 1990s provided me with a clearly defined worldview that has both cultivated a deep attachment to old county cricket and continued to shape my perception of the history of the game.

Reading older Wisdens, alongside further reading of 1990s Wisdens, certainly did alter my views somewhat, if never deeply.

‘Back to Grass Roots’ by David Green in the 2001 Wisden demonstrated that covered pitches were/are sufficiently rigged against the spin bowler that it is by no means certain that older spinners would have done any better than the exceedingly poor records of English spinners of the late 1990s. Green’s solitary concession was that he hinted that if spinners were able to use flighty trajectories – forbidden because of abundant limited-overs cricket – they might have been less unsuccessful. Later, reading from The Times in the State Library of Victoria, the Baillieu Library at Melbourne University and the Mathieson Library at Monash University would frequently show that pitches I had assumed favourable to batting because Wisden said nothing about them were actually highly favourable to the spin, and also pace, bowlers who obtained large numbers of wickets thereon.

As I collected 1950s and 1960s Wisdens during the 2000s, I made a more critical discovery: how declines in spin bowling were as pronounced and consistent in the years before one-day cricket became dominant as afterwards, and not something began by one-day cricket. 1960s Wisdens under Woodcock’s predecessor Norman Preston were equally alarmed at the declining number of spin bowlers as 1980s and 1990s issues. Most revealing is how Preston demonstrated that short-sighted changes aimed to make cricket more attractive – most especially the standard 75-yard (68.58-metre) boundary introduced in 1957 – actually made the game more defensive. This is because, as Bob Wyatt predicted before their introduction, they provided equal incentive for bowlers to bowl defensively as for batsmen to attack. Even then, cricket history showed attacking bowling as the prerequisite for attracting the requisite crowds for first-class cricket to pay its way. Preston also said that the lush green outfields which writers like Mike Selvey were so critical of in 1980s and 1990s Wisdens were well established by 1963. Dennis Compton in his 1968 ‘Batsmen Must Hit the Ball Again’ showed that the negative bowling so deplored by Woodcock in the 1980s was already dominant in the 1960s. This made it clear to me that English cricket administrators inadvertently accelerated declining attendances through hasty changes that encouraged crowd-repelling short-of-a-length medium pace bowlers and did not encourage crowd-attracting attacking spinners. These historical facts were omitted not only from Wisdens under the editorship of John Woodcock, Graeme Wright and Matthew Engel, but also from Wisden-published cricket histories which I read during the 1990s. In fact, the assumption of Vic Marks’ The Wisden Illustrated History of Cricket, which was as critical as the 1985 Wisden Notes by the Editor in cementing my views on old county cricket, was that negative bowling as a trend only began after one-day cricket started. So early as the 1956 and 1957 Wisdens – when English bowling was at its strongest during the twentieth century – there was concern about negative bowling with packed leg-side fields and bowling far outside leg stump. It became clear to me that English administrators were making mistakes even before one-day cricket was introduced. It was also clear to me that:

1. short-of-a-length medium pace became dominant in part because it was the easiest form of bowling to master
2. spin bowling declined because it was the most difficult form of bowling to master
3. social changes after the war, especially reduced leisure time and increased taxes, made it much more difficult for young Englishmen, Australians and New Zealanders to acquire the time needed to learn to bowl attacking spin really well

My next significant read was Derek Birley’s A Social History of English Cricket, in the middle 2010s at Latrobe Library and at the Baillieu. A Social History of English Cricket demonstrated that apart from the years immediately following the two World Wars county cricket’s financial position was always precarious. For instance the Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire county clubs would have almost certainly folded had first-class cricket continued into the 1915 season, rather than being halted by World War One. One can hint from the 1915 Wisden which I had read as my final 1894 to 1991 peacetime acquisitionthat several other clubs – particularly Worcestershire, Derbyshire and Somerset – would also have folded in the next few seasons. However, this failed to alter my perception radically, because:

1. the relative financial prosperity of county cricket after World War I and World War II agrees well with the theory that fast bowlers repel crowds and spin bowlers attract them, as fast bowling was unusually weak in both postwar periods
2. the financial decline of county cricket during the first half of the 1910s occurred during a period when England was stronger in fast and fast-medium bowling than at any point subsequently until the 1950s
3. county clubs had previously departed from first-class cricket
• Cambridgeshire in the late 1860s and 1870s
• Hampshire, Somerset and Derbyshire in the 1880s