The Summer Field

195 yearbook, wrote that most of his team ‘preferred to put their faith in the more traditional tranquiliser of a couple of drinks’, instead of the sleeping pills offered, the night before the Benson and Hedges Cup final in 1979 (Essex won). Grumbles about the young, like a supposed ‘golden age’ that youths cannot match, say as much about the grumbler as those grumbled about. Bob Willis in Surrey’s 1985 yearbook admitted he was ‘as self- indulgent as anyone in my early days in county cricket’. He complained: Far too many young players feel it is enough to turn in competent, uninspiring performances without really thinking through how they can raise their game. Too often they change the subject when cricket is discussed in the bar after a day’s play; too often their knowledge of the game before the last decade is extremely scanty. In fairness to youth, Willis in his publications while a player – and like David Gower, to name one other England man of the 1970s – showed he had a drink regularly. Willis then, as since, was a voice for professionalism, an enemy of laziness, boredom and bad habits, which in fairness gym- going may be a young man’s effort to avoid. Willis complained that county clubs ‘seem to wash their hands of young players from September to March’. Luke Sutton in 2013 recalled that when he began as a professional, at Somerset in 1997, he reported on March 15 to play from the end of April. By the 2010s, barring snow, counties were playing friendlies by mid- March, in England or overseas. Sutton noted that at the end of the season – in late September – players now had three or four weeks off, then began preparing again in November. As clubs were paying good money to pros’, and coaches, they wanted their money’s worth. * What was the point in comparing generations? Sir Len Hutton asked in 1983. An answer might be that we identify with one generation – usually our own. In July 1924, Herbert Sutcliffe stuck up for his generation against critics saying batsmen were not nearly as good as those of 30 years before. Cricket, like everything, tended to improve, Sutcliffe replied. Bowling improved, and the batsman had to counter it. George Hirst swerved the ball either way; batsmen padded up. Even the veteran Wilfred Rhodes had taken up what Sutcliffe called ‘the two-eyed position’ to bat, to see the ball better. If such batting were wrong, or ugly, blame the bowler, Sutcliffe said. Was the shortening of pro’ matches done to please customers, hiding the truth that cricketers had, physically and mentally, reached a plateau? Hidden because pro’ players dressed and played the game so differently? No-one would ever score more than 50,000 first-class runs as W.G.Grace, Hobbs, Sutcliffe and others did; or take as many first-class wickets as Wilfred Rhodes. A 21 st century English batsman need only play regularly in Tests for six or seven years, like Andrew Strauss, to score more Test runs than any of them. It suits everyone – spectators, broadcasters and the players – that simply by playing so many more Tests, men can set new records – for Test cricket. Going by number of Test runs and wickets, Andrew Flintoff was a much better all-rounder than George Hirst, and To The Present and Beyond