The Summer Field

125 save someone who is nervous’, so Jardine - a man of compassion for the weak!? - wrote in 1934. * Reviewing the 1955 season in Leicestershire’s 1956 yearbook – the county having risen drastically from 16 th to sixth - Charles Palmer revealed a more democratic captaincy. Capped players met before the season ‘to fill our close fielding positions with young agile men with good eye and safe hand’. The team met to study other sides, and the players’ own contributions, ‘including that of the Captain!’. Cricket mirrored society; after two world wars, workers were not as trusting that those in authority knew best or meant well. While the authorities, in county clubs as in Britain generally, clung to political and economic power, they did allow cultural freedoms, which suited those in power. Sportsmen, like everyone else, could admit they had feelings. Even as cricketers in the 21 st century admit to tiredness, depression or homosexuality, a taboo remained: a captain could not admit to failings or doubts, at least while captain. ‘I didn’t want to show weakness,’ said Luke Sutton of his Derbyshire captaincy, even though he was unusually honest about his inner life as a cricketer. If a captain felt low, who could a player look to? Only a fresh captain. A captain in the 21 st century was as alone as ever, still the middle man who had to respect other people and property. He was ‘old Sir Arthur Hazelrigg’, captain of the wandering club I Zingari, who called out, ‘There’s no hurry, there’s no hurry’ when Lieutenant-Colonel N.M.Hughes-Hallett ‘hit almost my first ball on to the pavilion very near the clock,’ when playing Leicestershire Gentlemen at Loughborough in 1935. A captain had to put on a front, in the workplace and to the world, like the rest of us, for the sake of keeping a job. We have to say that we care, when we do not; to keep lower ranks in line, we disapprove when they do wrongs that we did when we were in their shoes — or still do, even; and when our employers do something stupid or wrong, we keep quiet, as if they’re clever and right. Above all, when at work we would rather do something else, or simply rest. Yet even if the captain did a good job of managing himself, for the sake, not of a quiet life, but the morale of his fellow players, some would always find fault. As Andy Flower wrote while the respected England coach, among tributes to the equally respected Warwickshire captain Jim Troughton in his benefit year of 2013: ‘If he [a captain] tries too hard to “act” the part, the lack of authenticity will be seized upon by the cynics and kept as ammunition to use at a vulnerable time.’ And international professional cricket was a small world, with long memories; Flower coached Troughton as the captain of Warwickshire’s Under 14s. * Andy Flower was right, both to call for an authentic captain (else players might see through him) and to deplore cynicism. Good captaincy was like glue, the trust between leader and led, the shared purpose, the gladness to do something unselfish for the sake of something bigger than yourself, besides the rewards, in money and emotions. A disciplined team was a ‘joy’, Jardine summed up in The Field , ‘that runs like a machine Captaincy and Command