Runs in a losing cause or personal failure in victory? Our clubbies choose

Michael Bracewell's superb century in a losing cause for New Zealand against India this week got The Cricketer writers talking: would you rather make big runs and lose, or fail as an individual and win as a team?

Most club batsmen have been there at one time or another: your side has capitulated to a miserable defeat but you've played a blinder.

As you walk off at the close, it's hard to supress that smile. And you can't wait to find a quiet corner to figure out just how much that knock has improved your season's average.

Michael Bracewell's superb century in a losing cause for New Zealand against India this week got The Cricketer writers talking: would you rather make big runs and lose, or fail as an individual and win as a team?

HUW TURBERVILL

Oh goodness. That's a dilemma, isn't it? If I confess to preferring to bat well and losing, than failing and winning, my teammates at Beddington Cricket Club would be appalled, wouldn't they? It's just not the sort of thing that you admit to… unless you are a 50-year-old has-been (never-been?) like myself, perhaps. 

OK, one thing is for certain… it's not much fun embarking on a wretched run of form. If your side win eight in a row, but you make, say, 64 runs in that time, you are not going to be happy, are you?

I could definitely take failing and winning if the match is crucial, ensures that we stay in the promotion race, keeps us up, and so on, that's fine.

I recall making 89 for Deben Valley CC in a league match against Tuddenham in Suffolk once, way more than the next man, but we lost by 12 runs, and I was blamed afterwards. It seems perverse, but I guess that you can understand the logic: I should have gone on to win us the match in their eyes.

I recall another match, for Suffolk colts, where the arrogant, smug top five failed, and I went and top-scored at No.6 with 40-odd, and although we lost, I was delighted to see their resentful faces as they mustered the strength to clap me off. It was dog-eat-dog in youth cricket in those days, let me tell you.

I used to play in a recreational side and we never won, so really the only challenge was making sure that you did well yourself.

It's also good to be an allrounder – something I have been all my life until I have found in recent seasons that my trundle has become redundant, however much whinging is put in on the subject.

Fail with the bat, but win and take four wickets? Yeah, that's fine with me!

^{Our writers are divided on whether they'd prefer runs in a loss or failure in a win [Getty Images]}

JAMES COYNE

For me, a distinctly average 2nd and 3rd XI cricketer who fails more often than he succeeds, they are different feelings of relief.

Win or lose, if you're an average batsman and you've made runs, you feel pride, and the confidence to go and buy a jug for your teammates. There's also something about your mates coming up to you and saying you were the shining light in a rubbish performance that, let's be honest, does make you feel good.

If your team has won, but you've not pulled your weight, it's still relief, tinged with the fear that if you carry on like that you won't be worth a place in the team.

So I've probably just answered the question…

It'lll be interesting to wonder whether the advent of promotion and relegation in club cricket has altered people's opinions on this subject.

I will say one thing: sheer weight of runs doesn't really bother me.

Nothing beats a 63 not out in 2005 – dropped a couple of times, so it was a bit lucky – in a successful chase of 160, when we were reduced to 80-something for 8.

I got my team over the line with 35 not out last season in similar circumstances, though in all honesty neglected to take full responsibility by exposing the No.11, who did a great job to stay there.

Both knocks certainly felt better than 111 not out five seasons ago, which won an august cricket website’s Player of the Week award – not this website, by the way – even though a bloke on the other side had already scored 278 not out and we had no chance of winning the game.

I'm still very grateful: the certificate is hung on my office wall.

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SAM MORSHEAD

I imagine many of my colleagues are going to spend far too long pondering over what their teammates would think of their respective answers. I'll do no such thing: give me the runs, any day.

At my level of club cricket - Wiltshire League Division Three - the pain of defeat is little more than a mild sprain and can be quickly and conveniently healed by the third or fourth sip of the second pint in the bar post-match. There are no livelihoods riding on the results, no worlds can be made or ruined.

So yes, give me the runs. But equally, give my teammates the runs and let me celebrate their successes. There are few more spirit-lifting sights in the lower regions of the club game than watching a friend make 50 or take a wicket for the first time, and seeing that wide grin stitching itself to their faces.

This collective of personal milestones, and the stories behind them, create the character of club cricket. They are the tales we all remember. 

That's why I can never forget being caught one-handed at square leg, having absolutely middled a pull on 97 many years ago, but do not have a clue how that game played out. That's why I can clearly remember Pete Matthews hitting a half-century for the first time, aged 26, at Lechlade, but not have a clue what happened next. And it's why I can say without a second thought: give me those runs.

^{Would you go for the runs or the win? [Getty Images]}

NICK FRIEND

Ah, the age-old question. A debate as old as who does the worst tea in the league. I've often flown the flag for runs in a losing cause – particularly of the unbeaten variety – but I'd like to think that has mostly at least been in jest.

I'm a bad loser and, on the few occasions in my life when a teammate has been caught using a post-defeat team-talk to calculate his average after treating himself to some calculated red ink, I don't recall being massively chuffed. Indeed, if you're dividing sod all by sod all, mate, then leave the maths to me.

But, you see, I'm also a cynical club cricketer, for whom there aren't enough weeks in the year to be picky about the minutiae of runs plural. There are too many nonsense weekends, where you clip a half-volley to the only bloke within acres of the legside or walk for an lbw under the misapprehension of having been given out or tire of the chat from some wicketkeeper who you absolutely despise or fall victim to an umpire with evening plans to feign dismay even on the days when it hasn't gone tits-up for you on a personal level. Is succeeding not, on some level, why we attempt to play the game?

So, to an extent, spare me the notion that you're not even a little bit secretly chuffed with your 89 not out (112) as you're applauded off the field as the resolute face of an otherwise dismal defeat, if nothing else aware that you've done enough to keep your place for next Saturday.

My apologies to Barnes, victims of all two of my league hundreds, both of which came when batting first in wins. In that sense, I've never been faced with the acid test. But I know that my public-facing exterior would convey the appropriate devastation, covering the hint of smugness beneath.

ELIZABETH BOTCHERBY

As someone with a career high score of 19 not out (for the record I batted as high as No.3 on several occasions…) and experience of playing on a team with a knack for losing, both scenarios are nestled deep in the realms of fantasy.

The rare wins we had (and subsequent celebrations) are, therefore, treasured memories.

Team glory over individual success: I no longer cry myself to sleep over my batting inadequacies and it's no fun celebrating on your own.  

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