Lots of you will have done this job so you will well understand much of what follows.
11- THE JOY OF CAPTAINCY
One of the advantages of being Captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.
James T Kirk
Even though I’ve captained football teams, this only involved tossing a coin and deciding whether to play play uphill or downhill. Tactics and rousing speeches were lost on a bunch of lads still sobering up and missing a boot.
Cricket is much different and in club cricket there are often more challenges off the field than on it. The captain should never aspire to be a tactical genius; far better to keep the tea ladies sweet.
In recent years, despite a game that is struggling, league administrators seem obsessed with gimmickry, trying to replicate the professional game run and administered by paid professionals at club level, where volunteers are stretched like never before.
Now we have online scoring for an audience barely in three figures requiring a home office suite in the scorebox; there are many more. The children have taken over the toy shop.
Diplomacy
If you engage an overseas player then, as captain, whether you like it or not, you are responsible for the next five months of his life. Our very first Australian import at the Villas coincided with one of my spells as captain. It was my first experience of child care.
Our club secretary had scoured the internet all winter for our import and I was genuinely excited driving to Manchester Airport to collect the guy that was going to bat and bowl us to heady success.
There were several officials from other league clubs; as each strapping, athletic, sun-kissed antipodean strolled through customs, I eagerly awaited sight of ours. A mop-headed, weedy kid came through looking lost and I it would be a long summer.
Blake the Fake proved to be barely worth a place in the second team and as skipper/chauffeur, I had the pleasure of his sulks all season long. He was lucky to be getting a game and even brought across an agoraphobic, burger-addicted girlfriend who seemingly had come to England solely to eat and watch television.
That season was a long one, my opening bowler also often turning up with ten minutes to the start of play clutching a McDonald’s Happy Meal in a desperate effort to sober up.
Mr Telephone
When our skipper resigned at the end of 1989, after what remains a record seven straight seasons in charge, the bookies hardly had me as their favourite. When my Dad rang to tell me they had picked me for the forthcoming season I thought he was pissed.
Back in the off-season of 1989-90, I do not think I made one phone call attempting to butter up somebody to come and play for us. And, although we had a decent season, one was enough for me at that point in my life as I was 27 going on 17.
The prospect of another summer listening to the old farts’ endless views on how the game was played was not getting my juices going. Everybody has a view and most “should’ve played for England”.
My second term – from 1999-2001 – coincided with the need for better players with the introduction into a new league where, bizarrely, they paid players to play. So, the role began to involve the odd phone call over the winter.
I hated these calls simply because there remain so many idiots offering ordinary, journeymen amateur cricketers little envelopes of cash – we don’t. As a result many think they are far better than they are.
Meltdown
Generally the majority of lads in any team are great but you only need one to upset the whole afternoon. I have seen some monumental sulks over the years, albeit bowlers are the main culprits.
As a batter the principal reason for sulking is your dismissal. However, apart from (a) staring at the umpire believing him or her to be blind which, if this were the case, is obviously pointless or (b) abusing the bowler, which again, is futile as he has just got you out or (c) throwing your bat, pads and any other gear you can rip off as you walk back to the shed there is not much you can do.
You can try smashing the dressing room door to pieces with your bat which is expensive.
One guy well remembered at the Villas for his spectacular meltdowns was our opening bowler Rick “Slats” Slater. One day he was copping it at Horsforth CC at the hands of their opener, who smashed us for a massive ton.
It was not long before Slats was waving the white flag, blaming everybody regardless of the fact that he was bowling a pile of rubbish and being smacked all over.
he launched into a furious attack on our combined efforts in the field – presumably because we had failed to find the ball time and time again – only to sulk off down to the boundary.
They often say the ball “follows you” on days like these. Sure enough, after berating our efforts, the next ball that came to him inevitably dribbled through his legs for four. The only thing we could do was piss ourselves.
First On The Teamsheet
You risk losing the odd player if they cannot toe the line but as a skipper you cannot afford to lose a tea lady. In better days we used to operate a rota where, not unreasonably, each player’s wife / girlfriend /aunty / grandma / surrogate mother was expected to do one tea a year.
You would have thought this would be no problem at all save for the fact that you are relying on the female of the species to act rationally; frankly, there is more chance of me appearing on Question Time. We now sub-contract this out, a sad sign of the times.
There was one grim summer when we had more selection issues with the tea rota than the teams, causing me more mental torture than the batting order. Although I have had wives ring me to ask why their husbands were not batting higher.
It is a job that is very stimulating and enjoyable, but it is not for the faint-hearted and you are never going to be everybody’s mate in the dressing room. Everybody thinks they can do it better it is just that they don’t want to.
The great worry is that the ever-increasing off-field responsibilities foisted on us will surely mean we will be unlikely to see the length of tenure shown by those in past years.
The more gimmicks administrators become seduced by the fewer who understand them nor wish to tolerate.
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