body-container-line-1
20.04.2016 Feature Article

Welcome, Oh Willow Bat On Ball

Welcome, Oh Willow Bat On Ball
20.04.2016 LISTEN

The first time I ever took serious notice of the game of cricket was in the summer of 1982, when I was visiting England. A team from Pakistan was touring the country and since Britain had just thrown Argentina out of the Falklands Islands (Malvinas) there was a great deal of hubris around. Unfortunately, this translated into xenophobia in some of the British media and it rubbed on to the Pakistani tourists.

This automatically aroused sympathy in me towards the Pakistanis and when I saw on TV a Pakistani bowler called Mudassar Nazar take quite a few English wickets, I was rather pleased. Tebbitt thinks this sort of thing is disloyal to England, but, in actual fact, it is a perfectly natural reaction to boasting by the English.

I remember that I laughed my head off the first time I saw the bowlers rubbing the ball vigorously against the insides of their trousers, in order to polish it. Their action was quite suggestive and yet they did it without exhibiting the slightest bit of self-consciousness. Apparently, when you polish the ball on one side, whilst leaving the other side rough, the air plays tricks on the ball when it is bowled and this causes the ball to "swing" away from the course the batsman expects it to follow. So he gets bowled. The ball can also do a "reverse swing" as it sails through the air, but this time, it comes into the batsman while he's expecting it to go away from him. Pure magic.

On a previous visit to England, Kwasi Frempong, a classmate of mine from Ghana, who was then settled in England, had tried, unsuccessfully, to interest me in cricket. He kept drooling over the "fast bowlers" from the West Indies. But I was a football enthusiast and didn't want to know anything about bowlers, whether they were fast, slow, or whether they were, indeed, worn on the head. How I now wish I had listened to him. For those were the days when the West Indies team contained the likes of Gary Sobers and Frank Worrell, Larry Gibbs and Wes Hall: players to whom one raises a glass when one now watches their performances on grainy, old videos.

I was still not following cricket much when I came to live in England in 1984. But, in the summer of that year, the West Indies came to town, and, whenever I went to my local pub in Clapham Common for a beer at lunchtime, I'd see the TV showing them playing against England. Most of the men in the pub would discuss how the match was going. It often became a heated argument. Should so-and-so have hit that ball so hard and got caught; wouldn't it have been better for this or that player to take only one run, instead of trying for two, and being run out? As a stranger, none of the debaters paid attention to me and I drank my beer in silence.

Then, one day, a West Indian batsman called Gordon Greenidge made over 200 runs. On another, a West Indian bowler called Malcolm Marshall took seven wickets. In the course of a series of five Test matches, there were fantastic performances from these other West Indians bowlers: Joel Garner, Roger Harper, Michael Holding and Eldon Baptiste. The batters were not to be left behind: Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Larry Gomes and Desmond Haynes took turns to delight the crowds that turned up with drums and horns to hail them at each Test ground. The West Indies won all five Test matches and the word "Blackwash" made its appearance into cricket lexicography for the first time.

And suddenly, in our pub, people began to congratulate me and buy me drinks. "You guys are not playing at all badly, are you?" I would be told. I just smiled sheepishly and sipped my drink. I never let on that I was an African and not a West Indian. Not that it would have made much of a difference to many of them: black is black, as far as many Britons are concerned. Which makes it laughable that blacks in England stupidly divide themselves into West Indians, Africans and Asians. To the average English person, you are either white or black. Period.

So, by 1985, when my son entered a "public school", where cricket is a major sport, I'd begun to take the game seriously. Fortunately, he was good at it and I used to go and watch him play. One day, me, his mum and his two brothers were on hand to see him take four wickets. We were so thrilled that we were literally jumping up and down. Then I heard one of his white mates ask sarcastically: "Is that the Duodu fan club, then?" Apparently, in an English public school, such exhibitions of enthusiasm are frowned upon. In fact, if a player shows too much keenness in any game, his mates dub him a "keeno". Keenos are not welcome.

When I went to work at South magazine, I found that it had a small cricket team, made up of whites and Asians. They were always looking for outsiders to join them to make up the numbers, and I let them know that my son played. They asked me to bring him along to the next match and I did so.

Our captain was a Pakistani artist called Javed, which gave him an aura of authority, for he bore the same name as the prodigious run-scorer Javed Miandad, who was captain of the Pakistan team. We travelled every Saturday to a new cricket ground in or around London, to play matches. We once played against the Times team.

We? Yes, I was asked to turn up in cricket gear in case I was "needed". So I invested in the equipment needed to make me a player, but only went along to pose as "twelfth man". I never expected to be called upon to play.

However, on one unforgettable day, a guy in our team failed to turn up. Our team was batting and being thrashed and, all too quickly, we lost our ninth wicket. Javed turned to me and said: "Pad up, Cameron."

What? I was aghast. I'd never hit a cricket ball with a bat in anger in my entire life. I'd been to a "net" at Lord's once, but hadn't gone again, because the cumulative noise of many balls on many bats sounded like rifle shots to me and made my ears hurt.

I padded up. And earlier than I would have liked, I was called to the crease. I stood there, tall as an ostrich without wings, my hips hanging high and loose in the air. As a left-handed bastman, I felt I looked even more awkward than a "normal" batsman would.

No matter: the bowler began his run-up. As he let the ball fly, I brandished my bat and ... closed my eyes.

I thought the ball was going to hit me in the head and slay me, but rather it hit the bat, "Pah!" I knew it had hit the bat hard because I felt a twitch of pain in my palm.

Then I heard the batsman at the other end shout: "Run! Run!" I opened my eyes. And I ran. Well, if you have seen a camel thrusting out, wearing padded leggings, then you've seen me run. When I got to the other end, I saw that the ball had not yet been caught. My partner again yelled: "Run! Run!" I did so and got safely back to my crease.

We lost the match. But my name entered the cricket scorebook as C Duodu, 2 not out. I am very proud of my one and only entry in a cricket scorebook. That book must exist somewhere and one day will fetch enormous sums of money at an auction, I am sure.

So, as the summer begins and numerous players bring out their "coffins" (bags in which to carry cricket gear), to oil their bats and buy themselves new stuff where necessary, my heart goes out to them. Cricket is easier to watch than to play, though you wouldn't know that if you listened to all the spectators who flock to games under all sorts of weather conditions, eating, drinking, and telling you how good they would be - if only it was them playing and not the "duffers" who had been selected.

body-container-line