The Reverse Sweep

Tom Maynard RIP: He'll always be 23...

At the start of the season as we selected our County Championship XI to watch in 2012 we suggested that Tom Maynard was a good outside bet for England's squad to defend the World T20 trophy in Sri Lanka in September. Now we will tragically never know.

The circumstances surrounding his death are still shrouded in mystery, but it seems he was hit by a tube train after running away from police who had stopped his car in the early hours of the morning.

23 is no age to die. Like Ben Hollioake before him, we will never know now how good Maynard could have been and whether he could had the successful international career that his father Matthew so richly deserved.

Maynard hit over 1,000 runs in the championship at 40 in his debut year for Surrey last season after moving from Glamorgan to help his new side to promotion. He already had 525 at 40.38 this season including a phenomenally good hundred at New Road that nearly enabled Surrey to win after following on. But it was as a hard hitting ODI or T20 batsman and brilliant fielder that Maynard was likely to first break into the England side.

We heard Stereophonics 'Local Boy in the Photograph' on the radio this morning for the first time in ages. This was a couple of hours before the terrible news surfaced about Maynard, and it is his fellow Welshmen that perhaps have the most poignant words on this desperately sad day:

"He'll always be 23, yet the train runs on and on
And all the friends lay down the flowers
Sit on the banks and drink for hours
Talk of the way they saw him last
Local boy in the photograph
Today
He's gone away"

Rest in peace, young dragon.

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Basil D'Oliveira R.I.P

It's not been a good few weeks for cricket. First Graham Dilley, then Peter Roebuck and now Basil D'Oliveira - like Dilley another favourite son of Worcestershire.

We are too young to have seen D'Oliveira play, but his record speaks for itself. He averaged over 40 with the bat in his 44 Tests - a record all the more impressive given that he didn't make his debut until he was 35. He also scored nearly 20,000 runs and took over 500 wickets in first-class cricket.

But stats only tell half the story with Dolly, who was the catalyst for the sporting ban that was belatedly the fate of South Africa due to its vile Apartheid regime.

The South Africans refused to countenance D'Oliveira - a Cape Coloured by birth - as part of the MCC squad to tour their country in 1968 and this self-inflicted wound led to their eventual banishment from world sport.

Many argue that sport and politics shouldn't mix, but as Scyld Berry thoughtfully argued in the Daily Telegraph yesterday:

"History may well decide that the lives of millions of non-white South Africans would have been made wretched for even longer but for Basil D'Oliveira."

A poignant reminder for present-day South Africa and perhaps an indication of the debt of gratitude that the likes of Hashim Amla and Makhaya Ntini owe the dignified and brave D'Oliveira. 

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The contrarian erudite genius of Peter Roebuck

In death as in life, Peter Roebuck will probably best be remembered for a handful of controversial incidents.

He was a decent enough cricketer to have amassed 17,558 first-class runs at 37 with 33 hundreds and he was perhaps a tad unfortunate not to have played Test cricket - especially given the selection merry-go-round that existed in England in the 1980s.

But Roebuck's playing career was overshadowed by his central role as Somerset captain in the sacking of Viv Richards and Joel Garner and the subsequent acrimonious departure of Ian Botham.

The manner of his death means that there is a risk that the quality of Roebuck's writing will be forgotten in favour of speculation and scandalous rumour.

That would be a second tragedy, as irrespective of the circumstances that prompted him to leap to his death, Roebuck was a fine cricket writer and one of the best of his generation alongside the likes of Michael Atherton and Gideon Haigh.

As well as being an erudite, absorbing and engaging writer, what made Roebuck really stand out was that he wasn't afraid to take the contrary and sometimes controversial view. Even if one didn't always agree with him, his opinion was always strongly argued and endearingly composed.

In what is a fairly banal world, Roebuck's provocative views were like a breath of fresh air. Whether it was his incisive, illuminating and heartfelt observations on Zimbabwe or calling for the Ricky Ponting's head in 2008, Roebuck didn't do fence-sitting, which made his pieces all the more compulsive reading.

Roebuck was a splendid contrarian and a maverick genius with the pen  - the world of cricket writing is much worse for his departure.

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Cricket Heroes: Graham Dilley R.I.P

 

You know that you are getting old when your childhood heroes start to die and that’s exactly how we felt at The Reverse Sweep yesterday when we heard the deeply sad news that former England, Kent and Worcestershire great Graham Dilley had passed away at the age of just 52.

Dilley starred in perhaps the most famous Test match of them all at Headingley in 1981 when his 117 run partnership with Ian Botham started the most improbable of comebacks. We will remember that innings – where Dilley was as much the aggressor as Botham - with fondness until we are grey and old.

If that wasn’t enough then Dilley also caught a difficult skier off Bob Willis the next day to dismiss Rodney Marsh and help confirm Australia’s humiliation.

However, it was Dilley’s classical elegant bowling action that we remember most from our childhood – in many senses his elegant run-up and leap was the bowling equivalent of David Gower’s batting.

But for injury, Dilley could well have staked a claim to be one of England’s best fast bowlers since the War, but in the end had to be content with 138 Test wickets from his 41 Tests at an average of 29.78 – still a decent enough return.

His bad luck with injuries extended to his win bonuses for England, which he only enjoyed twice in his 41 Tests (making his overall figures even more impressive) – the aforementioned Headingley Test of 1981 and Brisbane 1986, where his first-innings five for 68 went a long way to propelling Australia to defeat.

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If you like this, follow us on Twitter @thereversesweep

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi - a Tiger with vision R.I.P

 
Whilst reading the obituaries of former Indian skipper Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, a number of things struck us about the man they called ‘Tiger’.

The most notable of these of course was the fact that his 46 Test career and 2,793 runs at a respectable average of 35 was achieved with just one eye. That is pretty amazing given how fundamental it is for a batsman to be able to see a cricket ball. Given that amongst other achievements prior to his injury, Tiger had beaten Douglas Jardine’s runs record at Winchester, it is highly likely that but for his impaired vision he would have been in the top echelon of Indian batsmen ever.

Like his fellow Wykehamist Jardine, Pataudi was an outstanding captain who led India in 40 of his 46 Tests and pioneered their usage of a three (and sometimes four) pronged spin attack, which for a short time in the early 1970s made them the top Test side in the world. Given that they had been one of the whipping boys of international cricket prior to Tiger’s ascent to the captaincy, it can be said that Indian cricket today owes a lot to the vision of Pataudi.

Finally, we also recognised that he was the only member of the BCCI’s governing council to admit culpability in the furore leading up to the sacking of Lalit Modi and the bloody aftermath that followed judging that the Board had: "failed in its role to monitor the IPL's administration and be more questioning of decisions taken."  This was a mantra he continued to preach until he died.

Tough, brave, visionary and incorruptible.

Sounds like a bloody good bloke to us.

Of all the losses suffered by Indian cricket this summer, the death of Tiger is unquestionably the worst.

Where next?

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If you like this, follow us on Twitter @thereversesweep

Sir Alec Bedser R.I.P

I am sorry to see that Sir Alec Bedser died last night at the age of 91.

He was one of England's greatest ever bowlers. 1,924 first-class wickets at 20.41 including 236 for England in 51 Tests proves that undeniable fact.

If it hadn't been for World War II, Bedser would have played even more tests. He had to wait until 1946 when he was 28 to make his test match bow.

But he didn't look back after that. And he also troubled Bradman, getting him out twice for a duck and six times in total.

As usual with cricketers from a previous era, Bedser was a lot tougher than the players of today. Given Ricky Ponting's incandescence with England's bowlers continuously leaving the field he would surely admire Bedser who once reminisced that "In my entire Test career I left the field only once. It was at Adelaide and the temperature was around a hundred. I went out but came back and bowled."

They don't make them like Alec Bedser anymore; more's the pity. Rest in peace, Alec and make sure that you get Bradman out regularly in the England and Australia tests played out in Heaven.