THE GOOGLY: HOORAY FOR DECLARATION BOWLING

FOLLOW HUW TURBERVILL @HUWZAT

Just as we thought the dust had settled on that extraordinary climax to the County Championship, there is a bitter postscript. Durham relegated, Hampshire to stay up… it all rather detracts from that freaky Friday at Lord’s, doesn’t it?

It seems harsh on Durham. The carrot was dangled, a bright future, Test cricket for that conveyor belt of North-East talent… but they overstretched themselves, and have now paid a price.

It is going to be a long way back. I especially feel sorry for Paul Collingwood. He may have one final season left in him, and it will be in Division Two, starting the campaign on minus 48 points.

But before I venture irreversibly down a Chester-le-Street cul-de-sac, I better tee up what I wanted to talk about this week: declaration bowling. Thanks to Sky Sports’ welcome about-turn, we – and no doubt many other offices up and down the land – had the Championship finale at Lord’s on the telly. It was riveting stuff.

What was particularly fascinating, I found, was the cricket agnostics’ reaction to the sight of declaration bowling, though.

Growing up on it as I did in the 1980s, and three-day Championship cricket, I was shocked to see the reaction. To their untrained eyes it seemed to appear to be unsporting, unacceptable… cheating even: the cricketing equivalent of West Germany beating Austria ‘only’ 1-0 at the 1982 World Cup, thus ensuring safe passage for both teams to the next round.

“How can the Yorkshire bowlers get away with this?” was one of the comments in the office. I struggled to say anything more enlightening than, “that’s just what happens in cricket sometimes” (although in my defence, it was the day we sent the magazine to the printers).

Initially Middlesex’s ‘offer’ to Yorkshire of scoring 240 in 40 overs looked generous. I had thought 230 in 30 would have been about right. How wrong I, and many others, were. And how right James Franklin, the home skipper, was.

It soon became apparent that without one-day field restrictions, and against a backdrop of unbelievable pressure, it was too great an ask for Yorkshire.

Especially against a rampant Toby Roland-Jones, who must surely win a deserved Test cap soon.

I wonder how long Franklin must have fretted before he realised his judgment had been spot on.

If he had gifted the Tykes a third title triumph in a row, it may have joined the ranks of the most infamous benevolent declarations in history.

Like Garry Sobers’ in the third Test in Trinidad in 1968. He left England to score 215 in 165 minutes, and Geoff Boycott’s unbeaten 80 helped see them home. Ever the man for a run-chase!

There was also stand-in skipper Adam Gilchrist’s generosity at Headingley in 2001. He asked England to score 315 on the last day of the fourth Test, and Mark Butcher (173 not out) said, “thank you very much”.

And two years before that was perhaps the most famous, or infamous, declaration of all: when Hansie Cronje set England 249 to win at Centurion. Although there was rather more to that one than met the eye, of course.

None of those involved declaration bowling, however.

As the ECB pointed out, however, nothing the two teams did broke the rules.

Joke bowling, declaration bowling, call it what you will, may seem anomalous, but without it we wouldn’t have had that thrilling finish.

And although Somerset fans are likely to disagree, that would have been a crying shame.