When I was young I showed an aptitude for games. After a lot of hard practice I played tennis best, but I was also for my age a fair centre-half in football, I was a good swimmer, I could hold my own among the athletes especially in middle-distance running, and I played reasonably good games of table tennis and badminton. I also had the makings of an excellent googly bowler, except that to supplement the googly I never could get the hang of how to bowl a leg-break which somewhat reduced the effectiveness of my attack.
But the one thing in sport that I never could begin to fathom was how to bat. I was a complete rabbit with the bat. No 11 was too high in the order for me. My highest score in about 40 innings at junior school level was 7, including a snicked boundary. In particular, I could not conceive how anyone ever played fast bowling. I have never understood why this should have been so. I had a pretty good eye and reasonable reflexes and I don’t think I was more frightened than the next man as the bowler thundered in. Yet the fact remains that I simply could not get near making any contact at all with the ball as it whistled down and past or into me or my stumps. It has always been the greatest mystery to me in the whole of sport how anyone makes any runs at all, much less a century, off a man like Hall or Griffith, Lillee or Thompson, Holding or Roberts, Ambrose or Walsh, Brett Lee or Steyn.
Because I was once such a rabbit of a batsman I was fascinated by a recent discussion as to who had been the worst batsman in the history of English county cricket.
Jim Griffiths of Northamptonshire was a prime candidate. He played 123 innings, top score 16, lifetime average 3.22. He had his supporters. But finally it was generally agreed that Kevin Jarvis of Kent was the champion of bad batting. For over 10 years he gave valiant service as Kent’s No 11. He played nearly 200 innings, his top score was 19, and he averaged over his lifetime just over 3. The thing about Jarvis was that he took his batting seriously. He didn’t slog. He tried to stay there. He practised his batting at the nets. He experimented with new techniques. At the start of one season he decided to try wearing spectacles. Unfortunately their assistance was not reflected in his scores. His season started with 0 not out, 6,5,2,0,0,0,0 not out, 0,0 not out, 0 not out, 6,0, and 4. This string of scores consolidated his title as the worst batsman in England and perhaps the world. He abandoned the spectacles.
I wonder if we have any challengers in West Indies cricket. I remember when I was a boy in Trinidad we used to delight in that excellent slow bowler Cyril Pouchet’s glorious ineptitude as a batsman. His portly figure was always applauded all the way to and then, after a glorious heave or two immediately back from the wicket.
I am sure he would have been a serious contender for the title held by Jarvis of Kent. But I am not up to date with tail-end statistics these days.
It is customary now to say that teams should not have tail-enders and that everyone should hold his own with the bat. What a pity this would be if it comes true. Part of the fun of the game has always been the wild swings and desperate defensive antics of tail-enders. Have we lost that glory too in the modern craze for professional perfection? I hope and pray it is not so. Have we no rabbits left in the world-wide hutch? Who is our West Indian champion of bad batting? Please can Professor McGowan do some research for us and come up with the answer?
