I'm quietly getting on with things yesterday afternoon when I get a text message from Nick. He and Francis are at Lord's, and they want to know why 'you have turned your back on the country which gave you sanctuary'; why I should support Australia at cricket and not England. This is a question to which I thought all friends of normblog would by now know the answer. My cricketing allegiances were formed when I was a boy growing up in Rhodesia (as was). I identified, as a 'colonial', with all the colonial teams against the mother country. It's as simple as that. My primary identification was with South Africa, which at that time incorporated Rhodesia for international cricketing purposes. Then, when South Africa went out of world cricket in the late 1960s, I transferred my support to Australia and that has stuck. But, in any case, I've been supporting Australia against England since 1954-5 (when England won, it should be said, as they did again in 1956 - so this is an identification forged not in triumph, but in adversity.)
However, to get to the main business of this post, there was a brief period during which I supported England at cricket - against the West Indies. Why? I had got tired of the total dominance of the Windies during Viv Richards' tenure as captain, and wanted to see things evened up a bit. For the good of the game, and all that. Here is what happened when I went to Old Trafford on the fourth morning of the fourth Test between England and the Windies in 1995. England were 2-1 down in the series, but they had a good lead on first innings. Still, there was Brian Lara not out 59 overnight, Richie Richardson with him, and the deficit much reduced. So the singing of the fat lady was some way off, as also what song she would finally get to sing.
In no time at all, Dominic Cork had pretty well settled things, with a hat-trick to dispose of Richardson, Junior Murray and Carl Hooper. Anyone who drifted in late that morning missed the drama. You can see from this what my support of the England cricket team would be worth:
Trailing by 221, West Indies had pulled back to 159 for 3 by the fourth morning. With the enigmatic Hooper, pushed down the order after chipping a finger, the only specialist bat to come, their fate depended heavily on their most gifted batsman, Lara, and their most experienced, Richardson. When Richardson stroked the third ball of the morning confidently to long leg for a single and Lara steered the fourth - a no-ball - comfortably past gully for another, the West Indians appeared ready for the fight. But in one of the most stunning starts to a day's play in any Test match, Cork knocked them flat; the once unbeatable world champions dropped from 161 for three to 161 for six in three balls.
Bowling from the Stretford End, Cork picked off Richardson, Murray and Hooper to become only the eighth England bowler to do the hat-trick... Richardson was bowled, the ball bouncing off his pads, on to the bat and then on to the stumps as he attempted to pull his bat away; Murray was leg before, going inside and playing across the line of the ball; and Hooper was also lbw, beaten for pace and struck on the pad as he attempted to play forward. - Wisden 1996
Sunday belonged to Cork, then Lara, and finally Russell and England. Cork took the first England Test hat-trick for 38 years in the first over of the day. Contest over - the West Indies were 60 runs adrift with four wickets left. - David Norrie, Athers
West Indies cricket subsequently went into free fall, to the point where I began to regret the part I had had in that. Not only a cricket memory, therefore, but also a moral tale. You don't mess with the fundamentals just on account of a passing irritation.
Dominic Cork, incidentally, was born on WotN's and my fourth wedding anniversary. But that is another dimension of the matter altogether.
[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]