Alan Ross: Australia 55

"For some while, indeed, Favell kept his eyes averted from anything pitched outside the off stump with the modest concentration of a cleric about to encounter a street-walker. But, like Oscar Wilde's famous character, he found the only thing he could not resist was temptation."

Part travelogue, part natural history guide, part anthropological survey, part cricket journal, Alan Ross' Australia 55 is as close to a 'complete' cricket book as I've ever encountered. Here we have not only the tale of England's remarkable Ashes victory, the first since the Bodyline tour of 1932-33; we also have a picture of Australia as it stood more than fifty years ago, and a fascinating account of the dynamic part cricket played within the nation and culture.

Alan Ross (1922-2001)

For Ross, cricket is made up of continuing layers of meaning and context, at the centre of which lies the contest of bat and ball. There's no way to 'summarise' the book, so packed is it with anecdotes and analysis - all of which are, eventually, essential to Ross' depiction of this remarkable tour. And so the chapter-long description of his time spent on the Great Barrier Reef, with not a word about cricket in it, doesn't feel out of place or an unnecessary indulgence: this was how touring worked.

And, frankly, Ross' limpid prose is such a delight to read, that you'd have to be a real scrooge to begrudge him his flights of fancy. Here is a man with the sort of panache which we dream about in the 21st century. As a schoolboy he was caned by his headmaster, who had discovered about his unauthorised trip to Wimbledon the previous day when a picture of Ross, cigarette drooping from his mouth, appeared in the morning newspaper.

As a journalist, poet and editor he clearly knew how to hold an audience in the palm of his hand, and his remarkable turn of phrase and witticisms very often serve to elucidate rather than obstruct:

"Wardle opened up with a six to long-on but then, like a man threatened with the dangers of alcoholic indulgence, refused further enticements. In place of an orgy with an accompaniment of Wagner, the large, sun-blacked and sun-hatted crowds under the palms were treated, metaphorically, to buns and tea and chamber music. The Australian score was slowly, very slowly, overhauled". 

[And the wonderful addition of the precautionary "metaphorically", as if we could fall Alice-like into Ross' own dream world, only heightens the power of the imagery.]

My favourite, though, is this utterly incisive assessment of the Australian lower-middle order. Ross is too-clever-by-half; but he's also absolutely right:

"Archer, Benaud, Davidson, Lindwall and Johnson are bowlers primarily, all-rounders second, batsmen third".

By taking the wider view, Ross allows us a richer understanding of the dynamics at play on the field - which are, on this tour, fascinating. England travel to Australia on the back of over 20 years of hapless encounters with the old foe. Fresh in the memory were Bradman's 'Invicibles', whilst England seemed a team full of over-the-hill greats (Edrich, Compton, Bedser, Hutton) and green youths (Cowdrey, May, Tyson, Statham).

The worst fears are confirmed when England lose the first Test by an innings, their batting lacking backbone and their bowling any guile or venom. Tyson takes 1 for 160 off 29 overs; Lindwall 6 for 77 off 31 - a facile comparison (and one Ross would never have made) but an illustrative one.

But there are silver linings. Bill Edrich, much-maligned before the tour and at the age of 38, makes 88 in the second innings. Colin Cowdrey, making his debut, makes a stylish 40 in the first. And, most importantly, Hutton doesn't panic. Ross, as ever, puts it eloquently: "Hutton is not by nature explicit: he inhabits a world of hints, allusions, smiles and obscure ironies."

In describing the captain's attitude on the field, he might well be summarising his selectorial policy: loyal, long-termist, unsensational, unreactionary. He sticks with Edrich: against strong Australian bowling, better to have a battle-hardened warrior - particularly when the young, fearless Peter May is going to knock Lindwall off his length at the other end. He drops Bedser: now is the time for fiery pace rather than over-the-hill, tired bowling. After a brief experiment with Trevor Bailey as his opening partner, he brings Edrich up the order.

Len Hutton, England captain

These kinds of selectorial gambits can seem impenetrable to those of us encountering the series for the first time 50 years on. But Ross, taking the longer view, provides us with the context that gives rich meaning to these nuances. An unrelated but fine example is his account of the end of the first test. Johnson, the victorious captain, leads his team from the field to a cold reception from the home crowd. The reason, Ross explains, is that the last time played at Brisbane, he had been part of team in which no Queenlanders were present. The ensuing fracas resulted in a period of exile from Test cricket; this was his first match back. In order to understand the present, we must delve into the past. But not just to understand this incident per se: this anecdote reverberates around the book, symptomatic of the pressures that the national side was under. Can you imagine an England side being turned against at Lord's because there were no Middlesex players in its ranks?

The rest of the series, as they say, is history. In the second test Australia require 223 to win in the last innings on a placid pitch. Tyson takes 6 for 85 and England never look back. Although, of course, that isn't quite true: England go into the penultimate days of the second, third and fourth tests very much under the cosh. But Hutton has built a team with enough character to take any game by the scruff of the neck from almost any position (a trick well worth learning, and one Andrew Strauss' current squad seem also to have mastered). The England side in 1955 suffered a familiar dilemma: the experienced expect the youth to shine through, whilst the youth think they can have their head because the experienced will always be able to step in and save the day. What Hutton does so successfully is to harness the potential of his youngsters, giving them simultaneous free rein and responsibility. It's on this tour that a generation dies (Bill Edrich, for one, never plays test cricket again); but a new crop of cricketers is born, their greatness forged in the heat of this Ashes series.

Some cricket books succeed in that they capture a little of the past, reminding us of and preserving cricket gone by. Australia 55 goes beyond being an account of this remarkable series; it recreates it in both a technicolor brilliance and a deep richness - a real treat for those of us not lucky enough to live through it.

Living without Bach

For Lent, myself and a friend (who blogs here) challenged ourselves to give up listening to one composer each - and we each chose for the other who the composer would be. We didn't pull our punches, and - knowing each others' listening habits, went straight for the jugular. I chose Wagner for he; he chose Bach for me. Here are my reflections on forty days in a Bach-less wilderness...

Choosing a composer for my friend to forsake for forty days and forty nights, whilst he did the same for me, was a bizarre experience. Would it have any real effect to not listen to a composer for a short period of time – surely it would have more impact to reverse the whole challenge and to listen to only one? And is it best to deprive oneself of a composer because of the volume of their work, or for the brilliance of one essential piece? Well, onwards we ploughed with the experiment (for it was as much an experiment as a bona fide test), and the upshot is that he has spent over a month parched of Wagner whilst I have been cast into a Bach-less wilderness.


Bach had become, perhaps too much, a fabric of my daily life. Slumping onto a train after a day’s hard slog, I would automatically turn to him: the Cello Suites (Pierre Fournier if jubilant, Jaap ter Linden‘s much-neglected account if in need of succour); the cantatas (John Eliot Gardiner or Philippe Herreweghe); Rachel Podger‘s solo partitas and sonatas if in need of a smiling companion; Brandenburg 6 or the Orchestral Suites (Reinhard Goebel for vigour, Richard Egarr and the AAM for plaintive melancholy). There’s always some sort of Bach to live life through – not surprising for a man who wrote music to frame the year, week by week.

But perhaps this also says something for the business of listening too. Sometimes we don’t engage in listening in order to be entertained, amused or occupied per se – or even, dare I say it, to be interested. Instead, there is something deeply important about allowing music to exist in our minds without it taking over, to allow it to complement rather than replace our thoughts. And this is why Bach is so difficult to give up – because his music isn’t necessarily an escape from life (although it can be), but a means to live. I remember the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, an acutely insightful thinker on music and art, saying something to the effect that the Cello Suites were thoughts working themselves through over time. He pointed to something very fundamental about Bach’s music here: it has its own thoughts, but interacts with rather than displaces the thoughts of the listener, providing a framework in which they can be placed, worked through, improved.

But I was determined not to curl up and forsake all human emotions for the duration of Lent, however appropriately ascetic that might seem. Instead, there have been opportunities –  some of them admittedly undertaken under duress, but none the worse for that – to listen elsewhere, and to listen repeatedly and deeply. I work for a period-instrument orchestra, and as such am programmed to suffer convulsions and visions of the apocalypse at the sound of anything penned after Napoleon breathed his last.  My friend and fellow abstainer, I suspect, thought that I might have taken this golden opportunity to broaden out into Lizst, Wagner and further forward. As it was, I discovered Monteverdi.

I have known the Vespers for some while through Rinaldo Alessandrini‘s superlative recording (full of imperfections but superlative nonetheless). Now I have turned to his madrigals, in a recording again with Alessandrini. The extraordinary vibrancy of the music leaps forth at every turn, the unceasing range of colours never-ending; no two works are the same. So, for one, I would like to use this guest post to champion Monteverdi. But it’s been an exercise in variety, too. There have been chances to listen extensively to Murray Perahia‘s early recordings of the Mozart concertos with the ECO, Itzhak Perlman‘s interesting Beethoven with Carlo Maria Giulini, Krystian Zimerman playing Liszt and – pushing into the dangerous extremities of the twentieth century – Mstislav Rostropovich playing Britten.

I have little doubt that this Bach diet will have had good effects, both in forcing me to look elsewhere for my quotidian listening and in recalibrating my responses to Johann Sebastian. I expect to feel relieved and satisfied – but also a little more alive to the music – as I settle down to the St. Matthew Passion on Easter Sunday (completely the wrong day on which to be listening to it, of course). Forty days without a well-loved composer is an exercise I would thoroughly recommend, but I’d rather not be Bach-less for so long anytime soon.

Ponting's paradox

PONTING'S LEGACY WILL BE TAINTED BY HIS PART IN THE RECENT DECLINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN SIDE

Ricky Ponting’s absence from the final Ashes test at the SCG this week has fuelled speculation about the future of his test career. But as much as this debate is short-term (will he be in the team come August?), Ponting’s own thoughts — as well as those of commentators the world over — must inevitably be turning to how he will remembered after a decade, and further into the future. Consideration of his legacy will play a big part in Ponting’s decisions over the coming weeks and months.

Ponting’s reputation is already a paradoxical one. Alongside his contemporaries — the Waughs, Border, Healey; Warne, McGrath, Hayden, Gillespie — he has given some of the greatest individual and collective performances in the history of the game. He has played in 150 Tests, and won 99 of them. Alongside this has been the overwhelming success of his captaincy — until lately. In the last few years he has overseen the slide of the Australian team from permanently unbeatable to constantly vulnerable; and he’s the second-ever captain to lose three Ashes series. It’s these kind of facts — particularly coming at the end of a career — that linger in the collective memory.

And a significant part of Ponting’s legacy won’t be the runs he’s scored, or the tests he’s won, but rather the state of the Australian test team he leaves behind. His predecessor Steve Waugh inherited a good side and bequeathed Ponting a better one. But the side Ponting hands over to his successor won’t be a shadow of any Australian team in the last fifteen years.

Partly this isn’t Ponting’s fault. Australia’s dominance from the late 1980s through to the mid 2000s was built on foundations laid after Australia’s sporting failures in the 1980s, not just in cricket. A generation of exceptional athletes was produced by a well-tuned system; but these players so dominated the Test side that, on their retirement, no players had been blooded sufficiently in the international arena. In the first test of the 2005 Ashes, the Aussies boasted 741 combined caps to England’s 337. This tells of experience and quality; it also means that no one else got a look in. It’s all very well being able to give test debuts to players who have already scored thousands of first-class runs, but the development of individual cricketers and of the team itself is impeded if novices don’t play alongside the greatest test players at the peak of their careers. How invaluable would it have been for Steven Smith to have played with Warne? For Khawaja to have played alongside Ponting for a while, rather than simply being told to fill his shoes? India’s growing pains at the moment are partly due to the fact that they are, rightly, mixing players at the peak of the career with those just starting out; and much of England’s current success comes from the fact that players have spent their formative years in test cricket rather than cutting their teeth in first class cricket and then making the transition (Alastair Cook is a topical example).

But Ponting hasn’t helped matters. The strength of his leadership has traditionally been based on his batting performances; he has never been a man manager of the quality of Brearley, or a tactician like Lloyd. So Ponting’s batting failures, particularly in the Ashes, have taken away the foundation on which his authority was based. He’s also been unable to be an example to younger batsmen; and unable to dig a struggling team out of difficulties with strong performances — as Shivnarine Chanderaul did for the Windies so often throughout the early 2000s.  Lacking his usual dominance with the bat, Ponting has tried to make his mark in other ways: crazy field placements, or remonstrating with the umpires. It’s been the ugly scene of Greek tragedy, a great man at odds with circumstances, helpless to control forces which he previously mastered.

The beginning of Ponting’s glittering test career coincided with the last rites of a spectacular West Indian cricketing empire, and so he’s well placed to realise what a holy grail it is to continue a great cricketing dynasty. This is clearly at the forefront of his mind: to the press at least he has based his case for staying in the team not so much on his batting but on his role as a mentor — “for the betterment of Australian cricket”, as he puts it. "I probably haven't got much of a case at the moment," he said. "I've got a lot of knowledge on the game... There is no doubt that the experiences I have in the game will hold me in good stead. I feel I am well equipped to bring on some young guys and we have got a few of them in the side now."

But it’s too late for Ponting to become a mentor; he can’t be that without being on top of his game as a batsman. And perhaps the greatest argument for keeping him in the test side is a negative one, with Clarke's lack of form casting doubt on his current suitability for the leadership. Ian Chappell is sadly right: there is no place for Ponting in the new-look Australian team. This is bad for Ponting, but also for Australian cricket more generally. Too late has Ponting — and Australian cricket — realised that he needs to think of his legacy. And the greatest tragedy of it all is that this will obscure one of the finest of Test careers.