The time cricket festival is done, but the lessons will live on

 

The St David’s Fasken Time Cricket Festival ended on Sunday and it was a run fest.

There were no fewer that 18 centuries scored in the four days, over 50 half centuries, and literally thousands of runs in total.

The conditions played a big part in that. The wickets were flat and lifeless, having seen no natural moisture since April, the outfields were dry and threadbare. So, the bowlers got no help, and any shot beating the infield went to the boundary.

The two-day “time” format must, however, get credit too. There’s so much limited overs cricket played these days that it would have been a welcome change for the quality batsmen to get themselves in and select their strokes without the pressure of having to get on with it.

The idea of giving schoolboys the opportunity to play longer format cricket comes from Dave Nosworthy, director of cricket at St David’s, and he is unwavering in his belief that real cricket lessons are learnt far more effectively in longer games.

I think there was enough evidence on show over the weekend to show that is true. Sure, the second round of games all ended in draws, which could be seen as a reflection on the captaincy. At lunch on the final day all the games were poised for sporting declarations and exciting run chases. And there were one or two teams that were prepared to take a risk, but in the end, I guess, four days of toiling under an unseasonably hot Joburg sun, in their 1^st games of the season, took its toll and no-one had the energy left to produce fireworks at the end of it.

But, as I heard said from many quarters over the four days, the event was about learning more than results and there were lessons learnt in that final session too. I came across an example of that while snapping away at one of the games. I got into a conversation with two parents who told me that when the team were complaining about the size of the target set for them and the number of overs they were given, the coach told them that it was of their own doing. If they wanted to make a game of it, he said, they should have bowled the opponents out earlier, and not dropped so many catches.

That’s a lesson you don’t learn in T20 cricket – and the schools their sons are at are the national champions in that format of cricket.

The wizened cricket professional, or the teacher equivalent of him, plays a vital role in ensuring that those lessons are learned. There were a number of those sorts of men at St David’s over the weekend. Men who have been around for years and who probably taught the bright-eyed youngsters who are coaching the teams now how to play. I saw, for example Mike Bechet at the Jeppe games, Adi Norris was there with St John’s, Jeff Levin at St David’s, Wim Jansen at St Stithians and the Noordheuwel pair, Werner Jacobs and Morne Heunis. And Nos, of course, was talking to all the players and all the coaches, all the time.

Cricket is the greatest educational game and it’s having those sorts of educators around that makes it so.

 

Appreciating your opponents is part of the great game

 

Someone told me that as we get older, the time we have spent watching cricket is subtracted from our age. He’d read it somewhere, he said. You can imagine one of the great philosopher reporters of the game, Neville Cardus or John Arlott, perhaps, or even our own Charles Fortune, saying that.

I’ve tried, but I can’t find the reference. I think it could be true though, and I was reminded of  it when I spotted Harry Shapiro at the side of the field at the St David’s Fasken Time Cricket Festival on Friday. He’s 82 now, he told me, and still coaching and running clinics for coaches. I remember doing the Cricket SA level 1 coaching qualification in my first year of teaching some time during the last century and the bit about teaching spin bowling was handled by Harry.

It was good to see him. When I asked him how he’s doing, his response was to criticise the field placings in the game he was watching, “that’s a T20 field, not a two-day one,” he said. That’s the response you’d expect from someone who has spent a lifetime in and around the game.

Few games have more customs, quirks and traditions than cricket has. A unique one is to show appreciation for what your opponents do. Applauding milestones reached is an example, as is a batsman acknowledging when he has been beaten by a really good ball, and fielders going across to congratulate a batsman when he leaves the field after a good knock.

You see less of that on TV now in these times of cricket on steroids, but there was enough of it on show over the first two days of this festival to show that it’s still being taught at the sorts of schools that are playing here.

And to reinforce that lesson, the organisers have introduced a great custom. “Man of the match” awards don’t really belong in a festival, but one of cricket’s peculiarities is that it’s a team game made up of individual performances, and those individuals should be recognised and encouraged.

So, the thinking was, why not let the players of the opposing team decide who the standout player in the other team was? The Fasken Purple Cap is the result. At the end of each day’s play the captain presents a cap, to be worn the next day, to the player who has impressed his team the most.

You can tell by the body language at those hand-overs that it’s something the players are really enjoying.

It’s been two long days at the cricket already, and there are still two to come. But at least I can subtract them from my age as I get ever older.

 

It's about sitting together in the shade, as much as anything else

 

The idea of playing two-day cricket matches is something new to the 180-odd boys who are at St David’s Marist for the Fasken Time cricket festival. I overheard two of the coaches, both ex-players, discussing how these players won’t get to experience it again, unless they get to the semi-pro level of the game.

Cricket is unique among team games because in no other one do you get to sit around with your team mates for such extended periods, watching the action. This two-day format has increased that time period, it’s a longer opportunity to bond, and speak the trash that cricketers do.

And education, in the end, is all about setting up situations in which young people can learn lessons. The best educators are there, guiding the conversation – lightly – but letting their charges learn for themselves.

That’s cricket, isn’t it? I walked around the grounds at St David’s on Thursday – and you don’t realise how big the Inanda campus is until you tramp from one end of it to the other – and saw at every field the batting teams sitting together in a shady place, ribbing each other, shouting encouragement at the batsmen out there and generally soaking up the socalisation lessons that the game teaches. And sitting with them, slightly to the side, were the coaches, smiling to themselves, butting in from time to time, and quietly teaching life lessons in a unique way.

That’s why it’s worthwhile going to the trouble and expense of setting up an event like this one. As much as learning the cricketing skills and strategy that the longer game teaches, the boys spend hours together learning from each other, and from the men who are with them who, remember, believe it’s important to give up so much of their time to coach them.

The St David’s headmaster, Mike Thiel, at the festival opening breakfast on Thursday, bemoaned the fact that football has appropriated the name “the beautiful game”, he suggested that cricket should call itself “the great game”. He’s not far wrong.