The curiosity of Mother Cricket

PAUL EDWARDS: The reaction of Lancashire’s players to their victory at Aigburth, the explosion of joy among the spectators and not least the interest shown by sports editors made it one of the best days of my working life

I think it was Steve Rhodes who introduced me to Mother Cricket. We were having a chat about Shantry’s match in 2014 when the former Worcestershire coach mentioned this vague, presiding, tutelary spirit that watched over the game, rewarding those who treated it with respect and punishing those whose approach was casual and presumptuous.

To begin with, I reckoned Rhodes had gone off his chump but then I realised that Mother Cricket might be a useful ally for a coach trying to instil disciplines into young players. I also remembered that I wrote about a sport in which one batsman was wont to tape his bat to the ceiling for good luck while another dedicated his autobiography to his thigh pad.

I then recalled the occasions when sides are chasing down a target and players in a dressing-room insist their colleagues on no account move from their seats if a good partnership is in progress. Fine if you are in a comfortable chair but I’ve heard of players locked in the lavatory for a couple of hours. No one can take them a book or their phone because no one can move. I love this game to bits but there’s little doubt that cricketers are as superstitious as 17th century villagers.

Before long I started to wonder if Mother Cricket guarded the game in a more general sense. In 2016 I covered Somerset’s three-day defeat of Nottinghamshire in the final match of the season at Taunton. The following year the first-class county programme was to be reduced from 16 to 14 games and it seemed at least possible that the Championship would go to a West Country county for the first time since the title of champion county was first generally accepted in 1890.

Everything rested on the fourth day of Middlesex’s game against Yorkshire when, as most readers will know, Somerset’s hopes were dashed by Toby Roland-Jones’ hat-trick and the pennant went to Lord’s. All the same, I thought, just at a point when the County Championship seemed under threat – but when has it not? –  the season had produced a finish to relish.

Three years later it happened once more, and again Taunton provided the theatre. The title had become a battle between Somerset and Essex, who met in the final game of the season at the County Ground. (Some media even labelled it a “showdown”.) In truth it became a very wet match, played on a spin-friendly pitch, but Essex secured the draw they needed in relative comfort.

However, what added considerable piquancy to the occasion was the imminent arrival of The Hundred, a format so far removed from the rhythms of the four-day game as to appear at times a dreamlike version – some still think “nightmare” – of the same sport. But it had been a lovely season, one filled with outground cricket, the World Cup and an Ashes series. It is beautifully recalled in Duncan Hamilton’s book One Long and Beautiful Summer. Once again cricket had responded to the imminent arrival of novelty with a reminder of timeless values.

^{Steve Rhodes, the former Worcestershire coach}

The pandemic jammed the pause button down on everything for a year, of course, but last week I sat in a crowded press-tent at Aigburth and watched Lancashire beat Hampshire by one wicket. Yet again I permitted myself the thought that the County Championship had delivered a wonderful finish just at the time when some people were talking about reducing it, demolishing it or, in the case of one former England cricketer, abolishing the counties altogether.

And let’s not forget that if the game at Liverpool had been tied, Nottinghamshire might have won the pennant. Instead, Warwickshire defeated Somerset on Friday afternoon and pipped Dane Vilas’s team for the title. It had been wonderful stuff and it had been served up at exactly the right time.

Mother Cricket? No, of course, not. Reason and reality must always have their day but I’ve rarely enjoyed anything so much as the four-day game’s apparent knack of replying to a challenge with some of the best matches in its recent history. The reaction of Lancashire’s players to their victory at Aigburth, the explosion of joy among the spectators and not least the interest shown by sports editors made it one of the best days of my working life.

Also, one of the longest, of course, and Tanya Aldred of The Guardian took a wonderful picture of a group of us working by lamplight in the pitch darkness of a Liverpool night. None of us minded a bit. From the home dressing room came a series of songs belted out by Lancashire’s victorious players as they relished the thought that this might be their year. It wasn’t, of course, but Vilas and his players will always remember the bonds they strengthened that evening and it was better to make Warwickshire win the title in the last session of the final day of the Championship season. I suspect Thursday’s joy was worth Friday’s disappointment.

And let no one doubt that Warwickshire deserved to win the title. Likewise both Nottinghamshire and Hampshire would have been worthy county champions. James Vince’s batting on the third evening and Mason Crane’s bowling on the final afternoon helped make the game at Aigburth memorable.

“Jesus, it can be a cruel game sometimes,” said Crane, “We were a couple of inches away from winning the Championship and that's tough to take at the minute. But once the dust settles I would've rather have been in this position than have played in dead rubbers at the end of the season.”

^{Toby Roland-Jones won Middlesex the 2016 County Championship with a hat-trick}

Cruel, yes, but beautiful, too. While Hampshire and Lancashire supporters were endangering their hip replacements and roaring like drunken sailors, their Worcestershire counterparts were applauding Daryl Mitchell off the field at New Road at the end of a 19-year career in which he has brought honour, integrity and distinction to the game, all this in addition to nearly 20,000 runs in all formats for his county.

And I wouldn’t like to end this column without a mention for Tawanda Muyeye. Last May I wrote about Muyeye’s first-class debut at Hove; then last week, in his fourth appearance for Kent he made 89 to help his side achieve the two-wicket victory that saw them win Division Three. It was a modest end to a disappointing season for the county, perhaps, but I’ll bet Muyeye remembers it. And if he went through any particular rituals before that innings, you can bet they will be repeated when he next goes out to bat.

Thankfully such superstitions are not rife among the press pack. So writes the man who utters a meaningless prayer every time he enters any cricket ground and who always touched the memorial plaque to Neville Cardus when he arrived at the Red Rose Suite to cover Lancashire matches from the old press box.