The search for sponsors

The search for sponsorship is a challenge that all clubs face.  Fantasy Bob has mentioned on these pages before how the go ahead Edinburgh cricket club Carlton with which he is associated has delivered a record haul of silverware into the trophy cabinet this year.  A haul of Manchester United proportions.

And just like Manchester United the Carlton shirt which adorns FB's chest is going to be a hot commercial property.  The club has enjoyed many positive relations with sponsors over the years, none more so than with Citylets whose name has decorated the playing kit for the past few seasons. 

However Fantasy Bob's vast commercial network tells him that silverware had caused the intense interest in the City.  The financial press is throbbing with rumours that there are competing interests beating a path to the club's door.  FB's chest is a hot property - a marketing man's dream.   Not quite equivalent to Liz Hurley's chest, but getting near.

Negotiations are at a sensitive stage but here is an artist's impression of the new shirt that FB could be modelling next season.

The Baroque

It is time for Fantasy Bob to consider linkages between the history of cricket and the history of music.

For it was on 6 October 1600 that Jacopo Peri's Euridice received its first performance in Florence, held to mark the beginning of the baroque period in music.  The period lasted roughly 150 years, JS Bach died in 1750,  at which time the first signs of the pre-classical were being heard.  The baroque is characterised by its use of counterpoint, tonality and the through or figured bass.  Its greatest works still dominate concert halls and CD sales to this day. Its harmonic structures underpin most of today's pop songs. The word itself comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl", an unflattering description of the ornate and heavily ornamented music and architecture of this period.

Henry Purcell

Cricket developed as a game in  between these years and can therefore be considered to be a product of the baroque period.  Period batsmen bewigged and frock coated might well have strode to the wicket accompanied by the latest hit from Purcell or Handel, the most celebrated English Baroque composers.   Except they didn't have T20 matches and they didn't have super powered PA systems.

The laws of cricket were first pulled together in 1744, in the late Baroque period.  Purcell had died in 1695, so his cricket works have uncertain reference to a codified set of laws.  This may be confirmed by the fact that his earliest composed anthem is 'Lord who can tell' - obviously to be sung by an umpire struggling without recourse to an agreed set of laws.   But Handel was still churning out the hits and in 1744 composed his oratorio Semele which features the celebrated aria 'Where e'er you walk' - a song to encourage honesty in Baroque batsmen - and their successors. 

The laws were revised in 1774 when LBW was introduced.  This comes as a surprise to FB for the LBW law seems one of the more baroque aspects of cricket.   But in 1774 Mozart was 18 and the classical period was in full flow - Mozart composed his Bassoon concerto and 4 important symphonies 27-30 in that year.  So LBW is not a baroque decoration.

Beethoven as a young cricketer

The MCC was founded in 1787 and Lords Cricket Ground was opened the same year, when Beethoven was 17.   In that year Beethoven went to Vienna for the first time, and may or may not have met Mozart for the only time - historians are divided in their speculations.  It must have been like Viv Richards meeting Brian Lara but in German.  It is not known whether any conversation the two greats may have had made reference to the MCC or Lords Cricket Ground.  Beethoven and Mozart's conversation is similarly unreported.

In 1788 the MCC's first code of laws was published and this remains the basis of today's game.  Mozart's last 3, and greatest, symphonies, 39,40 and 41, date from that year too.

So is cricket a product of the baroque or not?  The MCC could also be described as baroque in much of its approach to things over the years.  But its laws are firmly a product of the classical period.  All this history stuff - it's confusing isn't it?

Show time

The best of Twenty20,
IPL and
World Series Cricket
all under one roof

AND NOW WITH THE ADDED EXCITEMENT - RENAISSANCE PAINTING



Freddie Flintoff,  Adam Gilchrist, Virender Sehwag, Shahid Afridi, Tiziano Vecellio

 EXTREME CHALLENGES PROVIDING THE ULTIMATE SKILL TEST
 

ULTIMATE FIELDER
BAT ATTACK
STAND & DELIVER
OVER & OUT

FULL LENGTH PORTRAITURE

At a venue near you this October - O2, Manchester Arena, the National Gallery

DON'T MISS

TITIANS OF CRICKET

Bacchus bowling to Ariadne in 1520 Test Series 

Sport and politics

Happy Birthday to Basil D'Oliveira.  44 Tests, 2484 runs at 40.06, 47 wickets at 39.55.

1968 might have been a big year for some - it was the year of protest - the year Paris students rebelled, the year of Black Power protests at the Olympics. It was the year Martin Luther King was shot.  Fantasy Bob's main concerns were trying to play Albatross on his guitar and whether he could ever pluck up the courage to ask Gillian Scott out.  (For posterity's sake he failed at both).

But 1968 also taught him things about sport and politics and brought the cynical nastiness of apartheid home to him.  D'Oliveira was the epicentre.  Now Fantasy Bob and apartheid didn't get on from their very first meeting.  Not that there was all that much that FB, as an apprentice juvenile delinquent in the NE of Scotland could do about the obscenities of the regime other than refrain enthusiastically from eating S African oranges.  But sport and politics were forcibly mixed by the Vorster regime attempting to dictate the composition of touring parties to S Africa by saying explicitly that it would be unacceptable to them for D'Oliveira to be selected for the MCC tour in 1968-69.  FB remembers sharing the affection and support for D'Oliveira since his arrival on the Test scene in 1966, at the late age of 35, his positive batting and medium pace swing bowling.   Bowling of a bygone age. 
FB was vaguely aware of the toing and froing at the highest levels of politics, the role of former PM Sir Alec Douglas Home as go between between the MCC and Vorster.  He remembers the suggestions of attempts to buy Dolly off.  He remembers the squeals from the MCC that sport and politics can't mix and the tour must go ahead, despite the actions of Vorster's government. 

He is sure he would have watched part of D'Oliveira's innings of 158 at the Oval when umpire Charlie Elliot is said to have muttered to him as he brought up his 100 'Now you've put the cat among the pigeons.'  He remembers the smell of things not quite right; of the establishment saying one thing but seeming to do another; of Dolly being left out of the tour party and then brought in when Cartwright was forced out through injury.  He remembers the tour being cancelled.  6 months later the MCC invited the S Africans to tour England in 1970, a tour which in its turn was cancelled as the squeeze against apartheid tightened.

Above all he remembers Dolly.  Dolly is 80 today.  FB understands that he now suffers from Parkinson's Disease and has high care needs.  All the more reason for cricketers to take a moment to remember him, his achievements on the field, his quiet dignity when faced with political forces determined to destroy him or exploit him. The rest is history.
Happy Birthday.

Sticks and running

Sticks - which end is right?

It may be that Fantasy Bob has got the wrong end of the stick here.  That in itself is not an usual event.  In his defence however, he will say that many sticks have 2 ends identical in all respects so getting the right end can be a challenge.  Few have identifying marks such as a sign saying 'Right end - specially designed for holding' or 'Wrong end - in no circumstances to be touched.'    Sticks do not tend to be helpful by nature.  Why the Health and Safety Executive have not addressed this everyday danger verges on a national scandal.  Risk is all around. So, as he says, FB may well have the wrong end.

He sees that running is now banned in cricket.  By fiat of the ICC, themselves on occasion a fine body of wrong-end-of-the-stick-grabbers.  FB can only applaud this ban since he gave up running in cricket many years ago and is glad to note that once again his example is being held up to others.  Usually it is held up as an example to ridicule.  But this time it seems different.

At least FB did at one time run.- it was one of the skills of the game that he had mastered at an early age.   Indeed it was the only skill that he ever came close to mastering.  Running in the field, running between the wickets, running in to bowl, running to the toilet there seemed so many opportunities to show off his skills and team mates got tired of his endless showing off in the running department.  On occasion, in the deep and distant past, FB was selected for additional running in the course of a game ie he was instructed to run for an injured team mate.   He always approached this honour with a sense of adventure. 

And in lower league cricket the presence of runners adds to the wonder and enjoyment of the game for all involved.  With just one runner involved amusement is always possible - all 3 batting calls  Yes No Wait - are all heard simultaneously in a manner similar to a Greek chorus in ancient drama telling Oedipus that maybe that women he is about to jump into bed with has a past he should investigate first.

When shall we three meet again
- never, we've been outlawed

But when both batters have collapsed in exhaustion with crippled hamstrings, tendonitis, dislocated kneecaps, and shin splints so that 2 runners have to be engaged the fun can truly begin.  When there are just 2 batsmen the probability of them  ending up at the same end is rare - historians reckon it is less than 1%.  But with 4 personnel involved the probability of all 4 finding themselves at the same end with the same look of exasperation increases to 100%.  FB thinks that the ICC are correct to stop running in international cricket - after all professional sports people should be able to last a 20 over match without suffering cramp but the have not gone far enough in lower league cricket.  In lower league cricket runners should be made compulsory.

FB suggests that this would be wholly consistent with the recent legislative change in the UK which means that the default retirement age has been fully abolished.  New legislation stops employers from compulsorily retiring players once they reach the age of 65. The charity Age UK welcomed the legislation but said age discrimination was still prevalent - older batsmen are still encouraged to take quick singles.   This is unacceptable - FB's proposal to make runners compulsory would address this shocking position.

Or is FB firmly grabbing yet another stick at the unlabelled wrong end?

Practice Makes Imperfect

There may only be fewer than 80 or so days left until Christmas, but that means that there are only 130 until the start of winter nets and practice for the new season.  Fantasy Bob's pulse is quickening already at the mere thought.


Work underway to make Carlton's
 practice area fit for FB's needs 

 Like all elite athletes, Fantasy Bob's approach to practice is meticulous.  He never practices without a purpose, normally to get it over with as soon as possible.  He will seek to consolidate skills and work on areas of weakness.  Over the years he has managed to hone these weaknesses from minor blemishes into tragic faults. His imperfections are perfect. This makes him an essential teaching aid for any coach in the vicinity hoping to hone enthusiastic junior players into quality cricketers.  'Just watch that old goat and you'll see what not to do,' is the motivational phrase that rings in FB's ears throughout the season.  It steels his resolve.

But it is not only at cricket that FB recognises the importance of regular and structured practice.  This week FB is faced with that major threat to his dignity which is the corporate golf outing.  Having played golf this year only twice, he thought a little practice would be appropriate.  Things were going not too badly at the practice range with the balls going more or less in the direction that they were intended to - not exactly, for that would be too much to ask for, but more or less is pretty satisfactory, more or less.



If you see a head like the one above,
FB cannot be far away

 Of course with a golf club in hand that small feeling of a job well done and of being in the groove should be distrusted.  FB is old enough - but not wise enough - to recognise its deceiving flattery.  He should know to resist it.  To put it behind him.  For it can only lead to ignominy - just as the invasion of Poland lead inexorably to the foundation of the National Health Service.  It may not have been Hitler's intended consequence but the causal chain is inexorable.  So FB's mild feeling of satisfaction at having hit a few balls in a reasonably straight line was a balloon waiting to be popped and so it happened as the head of his 5 iron detached itself from the shaft and went sailing down the range - further it must be acknowledged than the ball that it had struck.  A first for FB - he has had the whole club detach itself from him before but never just the head.  The astonished gazes of fellow sufferers on the range had to be met with a nonchalant stance which suggested that the head was behaving just as FB has meant it to.  And before you cast aspersions on FB's inferior equipment, the damaged club is a mere 2 year old of TaylorMade's latest range.  There is nothing more pointless than a headless shaft.  FB hopes that a repair can be effected before the outing on Friday.

However, to return to batting practice - it is a pain having to get someone to bowl at you and some net bowlers have as much chance of pitching it on a line and length as they have of going to the moon.  Less in fact. Look at this link which shows how to take that difficulty out of the equation.

Crimes Against Cricket

Fantasy Bob supposes that few of his readers will have heard of Ms Maria Chiappini.  Is she the latest singing sensation? - they will think.  Has she wowed La Scala with her Tosca?   Is she the darling of the Met with her sparkling Susanna?

But Ms Chiappini's claim to fame is higher and in another direction.  For Ms C is the first person in British judicial history to be arrested for crimes against cricket.

Bearstead Green and house

Ms C resides in a large house beside Bearstead Village Green, home of Bearstead CC and where cricket has been played since 1749.  She has remonstrated with the club over a number of years about balls being struck into her property.  Now it appears to FB there are a number of steps she might have taken faced with this inconvenience - first might have been to recognise the possibility of this eventuality when she bought the property in question.  But a more positive move might have been to assist the club by offering to support a bowling coach so that its bowlers were less frequently smashed into her garden.  But for whatever reason she has not chosen either of these routes but seems intent on stoppping the playing of cricket on the green.

After a season of festering resentment she finally snapped in August and chose to interrupt the match in progress.  So vehement was her interruption that she was arrested by a couple of policemen who happened to be players.  She was subsequently fined for crimes against cricket in the form of public disorder and verbal abuse.  She has lodged an appeal.

As part of the procssing, a DNA sample was taken and intensive investigation will be carried out to determine whether the cricket hating gene can be identified.   It is suspected that this gene has long affected the behaviour of various minorities in the population including BBC TV programmers, Scottish MSPs, summer football campaigners and various other deviant sects.  If the gene can be identified the possibility of suitable screening and treatment can be developed. 

Crime against cricket is a relatively new offence on the statute book for which the Government should be applauded.   It is certainly more useful a law than most that are dreamt up these days.   FB has yet to establish whether the law also applies in Scotland - he suspects that a major new prison building programme has to be completed before it can be introduced.