Monday musings

Not much happening on the county cricket front right now, though the news that Derbyshire's players are reporting back for pre-season fitness tests is encouraging, at the same time as being indicative of improved levels of professionalism.

In the past, pre-season started at the beginning of March, while those who were taking it seriously started to work off the Christmas turkey in late February. There have been more than a few players over the years who would have struggled to complete the rigorous fitness tests of the modern era, the only bleep tests they would have been likely to pass being the language ones. Mind you, a lot of those bowlers were fit enough to bowl over a thousand overs in a season without missing too much cricket....

It is, however, no longer enough to be able to hit the cover off a ball, or bowl accurate, probing fast medium. Players like Fred Rumsey, Cliff Gladwin and Bill Bestwick were outstanding bowlers, but none would have been deemed slimline. Nor was there any expectation that they would throw themselves around, of course. Their job was to take wickets and a broad back, big backside and sturdy physique were more conducive to that than the more flimsy frame of an Alan Ward, whose long back never seemed right for the long term mechanics of fast bowling..

My Dad has watched Derbyshire cricket from just after the Second World War and even now has no recollection of seeing Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin dive around in the field. If the ball passed them, there was little requirement for them to chase it hard to the boundary; no expectation that they would dive full length to stop a four. Their captains were more concerned in their being fit to bowl the next ten over spell, while the players realised that the all-important appearance money was not worth risking a dislocated shoulder for..

It was the same for batsmen. Arnold Hamer was as far removed from the physique of the modern batsmen, but he could bat. Stan Worthington was another, looking far removed from an athlete, but an outstanding batsman who scored regular centuries, while still being fit enough to take six hundred career wickets.

The game has changed. "Fit for cricket" as it was being some considerable way removed from physically fit. Players of very modest fitness levels can play and enjoy cricket to an advanced age, but first-class cricketers over forty are likely to go the way of the dinosaurs. Not because their techniques aren't up to it, but their legs simply cannot take them around a ground quickly enough. At 37, Azhar Mahmood remains a talismanic cricketer for Auckland, but they have to hide him in the field, just as Sussex had to with Murray Goodwin and Glamorgan with Robert Croft. Pre-war it was not unusual to see players nearing fifty in county sides, sometimes over it, something that speaks volumes about the respective fitness levels, then and now.

You can't argue with the talent, but it needs a player of exceptional ability to circumvent the fitness requirements and with the ever-increasing reliance on the selection of under-26s for income, I don't think we will see over-forties too often in the future.

Not even if they start in November, like the current lads...