Vitality Blast Fixtures released

So the T20 fixtures are out, which makes the season seem that little bit closer, even if the fallen and falling snow gives a reality check that there is a long winter ahead. 

Like many of you, I have added the fixtures to my calendar, but realistically I don't see myself travelling down south for forty overs of cricket. The only one that could have been a possibility is the game at Durham, but in time-honoured fashion it has coincided with already purchased tickets to see blues legend Bonnie Raitt in Glasgow. I doubt that she will have the game on as a backdrop to the stage, so that looks like being one to catch up with after the event. 

My main interest is in the release of the other fixtures, which I understand could be next week. Hopefully some of those dates work for me and a trip to see the county live, but it is always difficult, especially when red ball cricket is confined to the bookends of the season, to make any plans in confidence that the weather will be kind. 

As I have written before, there are few more depressing places than a damp cricket ground, especially when the alternative is returning to a somewhat soulless hotel room. Actually, a wet cricket ground at the seaside is probably the worst thing of all, rendering even the delights of Scarborough a challenge!

I can only hope for things working out and a better performance to watch than I saw at Chesterfield last summer.

Now THAT was a long journey home..  

Book Review: Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin - Masters of their Craft by John Shawcroft

As a young man, I came to know the name of John Shawcroft almost as well as the players that I watched in Derbyshire colours.

He was the author of some of my favourite cricket books and will always be the doyen of Derbyshire cricket writing. His book on the 1936 championship winners is a classic and still in my top ten books of all time, while his club histories give chapter and verse on the club from the time that it started. 

It has been a pleasure to get to know him over the years and his latest work is a worthy addition to the collection, pulling together the careers of two of the county's favourite sons. 

Cliff Gladwin and Les Jackson were twin scourges of county batting line ups in the 1950s. During that decade, Derbyshire probably needed only the addition of one more reliable batter to win a second county championship. They were often able to cobble together sufficient runs to give a strong attack something to work with, but were too often there or thereabouts, rather than leaders of the pack, because there were times they fell apart. Surrey were very strong in that decade, but Derbyshire ran them close and in 1954 might have taken the title, but for bad weather in the run in.

Gladwin was probably just short of true international class, a very good and unerringly accurate medium pace bowler at county level, who could cut down his pace and bowl off cutters when conditions suited. He developed a leg cutter that kept batters guessing and Edwin Smith told me that unlike many swing bowlers, he had an ability to swing it late. Sometimes he would swing it in AND cut it away on pitching, which made him a real handful.

He was a fierce competitor and could be brusque on a pitch, especially if a catch was put down or poor fielding cost him runs against his name. He could relate his analysis at the end of an innings without consulting the scorer and was an ideal, feisty leader of the attack.

Jackson should have played more than two Test matches, twelve years apart. In the intervening period, most county batters would have had him in their top three bowlers and it seems only his accent, perceived dour persona or non-textbook action kept him out. The establishment selectors were happier to select lesser bowlers from the 'right' background, usually the south of England.

It was nonsense and plenty of contemporaries have told me how he was a friendly and approachable team mate, a work horse willing and able to bowl from the start of play until lunch and then resume afterwards. He was more philosophical too, responding to missed chances with a shrug of his shoulders and usually 'bad luck, catch next 'un.' To quote Walter Goodyear, the former county groundsman over many years 'He were a grand fella, Les. One of the very best.'

They missed relatively few matches, tribute to their robust physiques and perhaps late careers (Jackson didn't play until he was 27, while Gladwin was 29 when cricket resumed after the war.) Not until the advent of Harold Rhodes was there an obvious successor and he replaced Gladwin when he retired at the end of 1958. By that time Jackson himself was 37, but between 1958 and 1960 he took a remarkable 443 wickets..

John Shawcroft has done his normal reliable job with this biography, which pulls together the  strands of their careers into one volume. He doesn't fall into the trap of suggesting they would be equally effective today, as modern covered pitches, together with different approaches to batting, would have been a greater challenge. But their control of line and length would have ensured they remained a handful.

They were two of the greatest figures in the county's long history and those who saw them were fortunate indeed. 

If you are looking for an addition to your Christmas wish list, you can't go wrong with this one for a Derbyshire supporter. It is another addition to the excellent Lives in Cricket Series by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, well illustrated and with a very readable font size, much appreciated by yours truly!

Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin: Masters of Their Craft is written by John Shawcroft and published by ACS Publications.

Weekend warmer

There hasn't been a great deal to report from a Derbyshire cricket perspective.

The squad returned to training this week, starting the long haul to full fitness ahead of a very important 2025 season. Several members of the squad were speaking to members regarding renewals, which was good to see, but the acid test will be on improved fortunes in 2025. 

One of the players who will be key to that is Caleb Jewell. The Tasmanian has been struggling for form at the start of the Australian summer, with scores of 10, 32, 18, 5, 3, 61, 5 and 4 so far. Of course, form is a transient thing and those scores do not reflect his career averages, but we will need him firing far better if he is to make any difference to our prospects in 2025. 

A player who I believe is likely to be back in our colours next year, Blair Tickner, is faring better, with seventeen wickets in six innings bowled, so far. He took six wickets in the opening first-class match of the New Zealand summer, the rest coming in fifty-over games. I suspect the genial Kiwi will return in 2025 if his wife's health allows it, but we must wait and see. I am not wholly convinced on the overall standard in New Zealand outside the elite squad, but you can only play what is in front of you.

I have watched a bit of international cricket but the surfeit of games renders a lot of it dull, as mismatched sides engage in what is little more than range-hitting on batter-friendly pitches. A lot of the big names are rested from lesser series to avoid burnout. 

I watched what was effectively second teams from India and South Africa play yesterday and the Indians won with ease. Their strength in depth is far greater and this was reflected in an innings of 283-1 in which there were TWENTY-THREE sixes. I don't get an awful lot from matches where the bat dominates and you might as well just have a bowling machine and a guy with a tape measure to work out who hits the biggest six.

I'm sure I sat through seasons of Derbyshire cricket when there were probably fewer sixes (not maximums..) hit, but they were special events and worthy of note. When twenty per cent of deliveries in a game disappear into the distance, I find it oddly dull and repetitive. I switched off before the end of the first innings, somewhat in the manner of Groucho Marx when asked how he found television.

'Very educational,' he said. 'I went into another room and read a book...

I will be back tomorrow with a review of that book.

Meantime, have a great weekend!

Recognition for Derbyshire duo and new book for supporters to enjoy!

It has been fairly quiet week this week on the cricket front. 

The only news of any important was that both Wayne Madsen and Zak Chappell will accompany Mickey Arthur to Guyana for the Global Super League, where the Derbyshire Head of Cricket will coach the Rangpur Riders.

The Global Super League will see teams from all over the world going head-to-head for a fortnight, with Hampshire (England), Victoria (Australia), Lahore Qalandars (Pakistan), Guyana Amazon Warriors (West Indies) and Rangpur Riders (Bangladesh) all taking part.

The competition begins on Tuesday 26 November, with the final to be played on Saturday 7 December.

The only other news from me was receiving John Shawcroft's new book on Cliff Gladwin and Les Jackson , part of the Association of Cricket Statisticians Lives in Cricket Series. I am currently working through it and thoroughly enjoying every page. I hope to do a full review before the end of the coming week, when I will also give details of how to buy a copy. 

In the meantime, here is a clip of Les Jackson bowling for England against Australia in 1961. He was forty at the time, so well past his fastest, but still bowled very respectably.

https://youtu.be/eMXCt3cOUOw?si=alpnOXxV4K4MUC1z

What surprises me is that I had always understood his action to be unconventional and described in some quarters as 'awkward' and 'non-textbook'.

Quite honestly, I don't see anything wrong with it. Slightly round arm perhaps, but he would only need to point to his career averages to defend his method.

I hope that you enjoy it, together with the undemonstrative manner in which wickets are celebrated!

Book Review: One Hell Of A Life: Brian Close - Daring, Defiant and Daft by Stephen Chalke

I think Brian Close was probably the first cricketer that I could recognise. 

The bald head, strong jaw and sometimes intense look under those bushy eyebrows certainly registered with me as a child. My earliest recollection of cricket was in 1966, watching an extraordinary comeback from a Close-led England against the West Indies at The Oval, a game won against the odds.

Fast forward eleven months to July of 1967 and he was skippering Yorkshire against Derbyshire at Chesterfield, the first day of cricket that I saw in the flesh. It was the final day and Derbyshire spent the afternoon battling to save a draw, something I would see many times in the years since. Earlier Close had made 60 before being despatched by Harold Rhodes, but had to leave the field after receiving a fierce blow fielding at short leg. 

'Split 'is shin open,' said Fred Trueman to my Dad, who was clearly surprised that a man, apparently hewn from the coal face that he worked, could be so wounded. 

Stephen Chalke's latest book notes numerous episodes in a career which spanned four decades that might have made a lesser man consider alternative employment. But Brian Close kept coming back for more.

He was a very good player and an outstanding captain, even if prone to distraction. He was undeniably one of the great characters of the game and few have generated more stories, some of them apocryphal, but likely based on a modicum of truth.

His England career was one of stops and starts, begining in 1949, when he was too young and ending in 1976, when he was too old, at 45 and recalled to face the mighty West Indies pace attack. Yet he did as well as anyone, his battle against Michael Holding in fading light at Old Trafford the stuff of legend. He captained his country seven times, winning six matches and drawing one, besides leading Yorkshire to six trophies in eight seasons.

He was his own man, which cost him dearly with the amateurs who ran the game and distrusted a northern man with his own strong opinions. Thus he wasn't trusted to captain the side overseas and it was very much England's loss. 

He was unconventional in his approach to batting, fielding, captaincy and life. Being his passenger in a car seems to have been fraught with danger, as he opened vacuum flasks and studied racing form on a newspaper spread across the steering wheel, little aware of the dangers on the road ahead. Several accidents on the road were indicative of his approach to life itself, which had more than its share of setbacks.

He was a heavy gambler, which cost the family dearly and an equally heavy smoker, which ultimately cost him his life. Very much his own person, in the words of his daughter, who said 'He wasn't a good Dad, but he was mine.'

Stephen Chalke's book is an honest appraisal of a Marmite man who, for all of his faults, comes out of this book well. There are plenty of funny stories and a few that will leave the reader wincing. It is a warts and all tale, drawn from conversations that the author had with many of his contemporaries and teammates. 

It isn't a biography as such, the author instead presenting the life and career through the tales of those who knew the subject best. But it is all the more readable for that and Stephen Chalke maintains his status as one of the genuinely great cricket writers with this, his twenty-sixth book.

For all of the competition outstanding competition from the others, this may well be his best yet. 

Add it to your Christmas list and you will not be disappointed.

Like me, you will get to the end and want to start all over again.

One Hell Of A Life: Brian Close - Daring, Defiant and Daft is written by Stephen Chalke and published by Fairfield Books