The Summer Field

190 the winning county, Lancashire, regularly bowled two slow men, David Hughes and Jack Simmons. Why then so many fast bowlers – or rather, men with long run-ups? Because the pitches suited faster bowlers and fewer overs in the day suited captains and fielders; that is, most players at most times. Instead of five bowlers, including two spinners, which served England well enough until the 1990s, the West Indies in the 1980s beat everyone with four fast bowlers, ‘to the point of boredom’, complained Sir Len Hutton, on watching them at Lord’s in June 1988. It was one more thing England could copy. * The championship kept changing, in the name of raising playing standards, whether in different ways of awarding bonus points, or four-day matches (from 1993) and two divisions instead of one (from 2000). Lengthening the matches by a third was cricket’s equivalent of a student showing off with a thick book under his arm; the longer a team batted, the cleverer they must be. Instead it was, as John Woodcock wrote, after the 1965 Gillette Cup final: ‘Cricketers tend to adjust their outlook according to the time at their disposal’. As counties still mixed with each other in one- day competitions, the first division of the championship did not feel that much better than the second, as it did in football. Luke Sutton, who moved from the second division (at Derbyshire) to the first (Lancashire) and back again, reckoned ‘there is a difference’; except from his recollections, in 2013, the difference seemed off the field as much as on. As a rule, the Test-hosting, metropolitan clubs stayed in the first division, the provincial shires in the second. The buildings, the players and the club’s part in a big-city (or in the case of London and perhaps Manchester, world-city) sporting tribe put Lancashire in the first rank and Derbyshire in the second, whichever division they happened to play in. A story of Sutton’s spelt out the difference – and his rank in both divisions. Sutton’s first year at Lancashire in 2006 coincided with Andrew Flintoff’s benefit. Sutton was invited to Old Trafford football ground for a dinner: ‘It was like the who’s who of sport.’ Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs of Manchester United FC, and the then England captain Michael Vaughan were asked to stand and be introduced. The same year was Derbyshire bowler Kevin Dean’s benefit; and Sutton went to a similar event, at the club pavilion at Derby; there, Sutton was asked to stand and be introduced. He summed up by linking the cultural and the economic: ‘Derbyshire have a family-oriented, closer feel. Big clubs are big machines.’ * A century or more had not much altered the basic difference between the metropolitan and provincial pro’ clubs, except that the gradual loosening of local ties made it more likely that second division talent would move to the first division, for better pay or with an eye to even better pay as a contracted England man. Changes in the length of matches – and cricket was far more elastic than football or rugby – affected pro’ players’ outlook from city and shire alike. Sutton, an established player before T20 began in 2003, recalled the pressures of the 20-over match, which could change so quickly, and you (the captain) could not slow the game to manage it. A new division arose, between the ‘purist’ of Sutton’s age, and a new Modern Changes