I had written the attached chapter for my final (honest!) book due out to “celebrate” my 50th next year and raise a few more quid for junior cricket. After last Saturday it seemed a good time to preview it with the following foreword.
Saturday, September 8th, 2012: BVCC – 197 all out, Rawdon – 198-9…2 balls to spare.
Six hours, toe to toe fighting for the ascendancy on another Saturday afternoon of league cricket and it all came down to a final over, last pair at the crease and Rawdon back from the dead after being a hundred short with only two wickets left. The winning runs were greeted with almost hysteria from the winners, players and spectators alike, matched only by the vacant silence of the losers. Like a hammer blow to the guts the winning runs signified nothing was to be gained from so long under a rare burning sun. How fine the margin between joy and desolation; if it really was all about winning there would be no game at all as learning to lose is part of life.
Learning to Lose
“Success consists in going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Sir Winston Churchill
It may seem nostalgic and almost akin to looking through rose tinted glasses at days of yesteryear but I firmly believe that the demise of competitive sport and the almost simultaneous surge in the Nanny State have much to answer for many of the ills of today’s society. Politicians from all sides of the fence are culpable; as much as I would like to launch an assault on Liberal Lefties for almost extinguishing competition in favour of rewarding all who simply turn up, the Nasty Tories have been every bit as guilty in selling off sporting fields at record levels, destroying much of what most of my generation grew up knowing as a sporting youth. Opportunities available to all, regardless of class or background, have been squeezed in recent decades.
In a world that has rarely been as competitive since the days of fleeing from dinosaurs and having to bribe Eve with no more than an apple, how is telling kids that they all deserve a medal and that they are all winners fair on them? Some you win, some you lose, so goes the old adage and never a truer word spoken. You cannot play any sport without the knowledge that you will lose a few along the way; far better then to get used to it and find a way to accept defeat with grace and, equally, to show grace in victory as well.
Overall, I think it is fair to say that today’s kids are cosseted in a manner that is wholly counter productive be this in relation to sport or life in general; the lines between right and wrong appear to have been smudged out over time. Sport mirrors life in so many ways; asking that you simply do your very best but to accept that even this may not be good enough on some days. To imply that everybody deserves a medal and are all “winners” is, in my humble opinion, utter rubbish. If you have never experienced the pain of losing how on Earth can you really appreciate what it takes to win?
Haighy’s (Brian Haigh – President of BVCC) son Phil recounted a tale from many years ago of a junior match where Villas had played out a hard fought game against Bingley Congs in the cup competition. As remains the case today, the game was officiated by umpires from both sides; neutral umpires remains a pipedream and, as a result, skulduggery is alive and well. With the game going to the final ball and Villas needing an unlikely five just to tie, Phil was at the wicket rarely having scored five in total in his life. Unbelievably, with his father in the score box watching on in disbelief, Villas ran a five due to a mad overthrow from panic breaking out in the opposition ranks.
Pandemonium broke out as the scorebooks were then checked only to find out that Villas had actually won. The opposition umpire having congratulated the lads on running a five then claimed they had only run four and young Phil erupted at this blatant cheating. Haighy, in direct contrast to his reputation at the Villas as a peacemaker, promptly booted his wailing son up the backside, shoved him in the car and declared the game a tie to avoid a mass brawl as he was unlikely to kick anybody’s head in wearing his trademark M&S slippers. In the modern age, he would have had a fleet of police cars round at his house accompanied by a raft of European Human Rights lawyers and be up on a charge of child abuse. By the way we got stuffed in the replay.
Officiating as I do to this very day in junior cricket games it still saddens me to see coaches blatantly cheating in order to “win” the game. It may be a stone dead LBW decision ignored because the opposition star player is the likely victim or, in a tight game, all of a sudden the opposing umpire’s arms start flapping like an eagle giving wide after wide and piling up extra penalty runs for his side. There exists a largely unwritten rule in lower age junior cricket; with the agreement of the coaches, we tend to avoid giving LBWs as given the paucity of school sport, the chances are that a kid will only pick a bat up once at week at best. Firing them out without the benefit of Hawkeye can be rough justice.
Very occasionally it backfires as many years ago against a very good Harden junior side my opening bowler absolutely nailed the opposition star batter stone dead in front, not once, but twice in successive balls. He then went on to smash us to all parts giving his team momentum and confidence and leaving my lot thinking I was blind or had taken a “bung”. Sometimes though you just have to make an exception and years later we were playing a side with an obnoxious little git opening the batting; cocky beyond belief he had a strut of a millionaire. So when a ball that Hawkeye may have shown to be missing the proverbial “another set” rapped him on the pads and my bowler shyly appealed, my finger went up quicker than the Space Shuttle. Dubious decision…you bet…Shakoor Rana eat your heart out! No matter as we got stuffed again.
Losing in sport can take many varying forms depending on the sport concerned. For instance, whilst the pain of losing is actually bad enough, I would imagine the physical pain from being smashed to a pulp in a boxing ring or on a rugby field is additional agony to the mental pain. Likewise, some defeats can inflict mental and psychological pain alone, especially if you have to face the same side later in the same season they have just drubbed you. Few look forward to the possibility of being humiliated twice although the glorious unpredictability of sport often throws up outcomes you could barely dream of in the return fixture.
In football you can limit the damage, generally because the game is a defined time span, by booting it out of touch as far as humanly possible at every available opportunity – “have it!” – or simply by taking an eternity to slow down any re-start having collected the ball from the back of your net again. Sometimes when you really are down and out adversity spawns resistance hitherto not seen. One Sunday morning we were 9-1 down and getting a brutal murdering with some twenty minutes to go when it suddenly dawned on us as a unit how bad 10-1 and beyond would look in tomorrow’s paper. Consequently, for the remainder of the game we played better than we had all season and even snuck a consolation goal; still 9-2 hardly looked a good reason to go buy the local rag.
The same effect is seen in cricket when, often batting second and with the game well lost, somebody without any previous evidence of batting ability can stride to the wicket and smash it to all parts. Using the technique patented by the hopeless tail-ender – hit one, miss five – this is commonly known in cricket as “teeing off” and generally is great fun as long as you are not on the end of it. When you see a hopeless and genuine Number 11 come in and start to smash it to all parts, some intentionally, most in blind hope, the joy is tempered by the reality that this is their day and you just happen to be unlucky to be on the end of it, powerless to change the destiny of the game.
Learning to lose does not always mean the overall contest either as sport often comprises battles within the main contest be they two opposing and unyielding front rows in rugby or the battle between centre forward and centre half back in those days when the forward actually stood up long enough without appearing as if he had been shot. In cricket it is the dual between batter and bowler and two of the best I have ever seen at the very top level, given my years of watching cricket on television courtesy of a flexible work-life balance with Barclays Bank, involved in both cases the legendary South African fast bowler Allan Donald. In both instances the opponents were England batters, both high class players but in entirely different modes.
Mike Atherton, then England captain, was trying to steerEnglandhome to a tricky total of just over 200 to win a crucial test match. Typically for an England supporter this would be no cake walk against a highly competitive South African bowling attack led by Donald, one of the fastest bowlers in the world at the time. England had already lost a couple of wickets and the next passage of play would be match defining. Donald steamed in furiously and Atherton so clearly gloved a ball to the wicketkeeper Mark Boucher that I almost expected him to walk – it was so clearly “out”.
And yet, almost to the amazement of the whole watching ground and television audience, the umpire’s finger remained down – this was pre the modern day referral system – and he must have been the only person in the ground that thought Atherton had not gloved it. Donald was incandescent and, after finally being persuaded to go back to his mark, he bowled one of the quickest, most frightening and exhilarating (unless you were Atherton) bowling spells I ever saw. Both men gave nothing away and the contest could have gone either way; had Atherton succumbed there was no doubt that Donald would have fired South Africato a vital win. As it was, Atherton, with some good fortune and a refusal to “walk” prevailed on the day and took Englandto a win. He had won the key of the series and Donald had to accept defeat, although so obviously as a wronged man, which he did with supreme grace.
Another Donald confrontation was with my favourite England batter of the time, the pugnacious, highly competitive left hander Graham Thorpe. Donald had decided to “bounce” Thorpe believing the diminutive, albeit classy,England player had a weakness against the short ball designed to break ribs and skulls. Thorpe had other ideas and decided on a policy of taking on Donald by hooking and pulling him to all parts. The faster Donald bowled the more outrageous Thorpe’s counter-attacking with boundaries dispatched to all parts.
As furious as it was, it was clear that both men loved the adrenaline fuelled contest even if, with some balls flying past Thorpe’s nose and chin at 90mph plus, it was a curious form of enjoyment. Both of these mini-contests were shaded by the batter but Donald showed how sport teaches you to understand that wining is not possible each time you step on the field no matter how well you play. Some days even giving it your all is simply not enough. Some days as well, things can go so blatantly against you it can be hard to retain the belief above all, that the game must be respected and your time will come again.
So if you are going to play sport then get used to the fact very early on that you are going to lose, sometimes in a fashion so humiliating you wonder what the point of turning up the following week is. And yet therein lies the glorious unpredictability of sport that mirrors life because nothing is ever that clear cut. How sweet to be driving away from a game you so clearly started as underdogs having taken the spoils of victory against all expectations; there are, I believe, few better feelings in life. And if I have ever appeared slightly over excited by the odd win the let me take you back to the 14 year old version, proud skipper of our Under 14 team and with the records for season 1977 showing played 15, lost 15. Learn to lose? At that age I had passed my Masters!
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