THE NAME OF THE ROSE (BB08)

Moddershall 1st XI’s narrow failure to win promotion this year – just eight points from second place, following a campaign of 10 wins and numerous winning draws; eight points behind a team who they might have bowled out for 30 in a game ended by inclement weather – got me thinking about the mid-1990s and the club’s previously most recent effort to haul itself from the second tier to the first.

In 1992, only our third season in the North Staffs and South Cheshire League, we were promoted when we perhaps weren’t quite ready for the standard in the top division and were promptly relegated at the first attempt (thus my feeling that, given the age profile of the current team, it may not be all that bad a thing to have missed out this time). In 1994 we signed Jon Addison as pro – arguably the decisive moment in the modern history of the club – and in 1995 we were the best team in what was then Division B, but came third, pipped on the final weekend. In 1996 it was not so much a case of ‘third time lucky’ as ‘third time, just desserts’: with any trace of complacency expunged, we were promoted at a canter. Indeed, on the final afternoon, away at Kidsgrove, we set what was then a league record by scoring 370 for 6 (Addo blitzed 168 and was dismissed in the 35th over). However, our captain for the day, the ex-‘Grove player Dave Wellings, rather charitably declared when we still had nine overs (and some quality batsmen in a shuffled order) to bat. I was at the crease at the time and almost refused to walk off. 450 was there for the taking.

Anyway, the Saturday before that, having all but guaranteed promotion with three games to go, we ventured to Burslem’s brand new Festival Heights ground for the first match of a league double-header (there were fourteen teams per division then). Our opponents were locked in a tussle for the second automatic promotion slot with Newcastle and Hartshill, so were sure to be as fiercely competitive as they always were (needle locked at ‘radge’ on the Aggro Scale). As Addo and I pulled on to the car park, the first thing we noticed, a vision that threw something of a damp towel on our excited chatter, was a six feet, five inch West Indian standing on the square, as unmissable as a wind turbine on a nearby hilltop. “Who the eff is that?!”, we both either thought quietly or said out loud, assuming he was there to play the game and not, y’know, shoot some hoops.

It was an overcast September day, none too warm, and with a fresh breeze blowing across a ground not quite as exposed as Barnfields to the elements, but still not the best protected from an ill wind. And this guy was sure to bowl like an ill wind. Burslem’s regular professional that year was Steven Lowndes, a bustling phantom seamer and gutsy, resourceful, if ultimately limited batsman. Where was he?!?! Not perusing the track, that was certain.

After a length of time, we discovered that the guy’s name was Franklyn Rose, then in the early stages of a career that would bring him 19 Test appearances, 27 in ODIs, and an overall first-class record of 296 wickets at 26.51, with PBs of 7 for 39 and 96 with the willow. He would be subbing for the day. Those of a conspiratorial bent among us suggested that Lowndes had gone to Alton Towers with a broken nail, sprained earlobe, or whatever injury he was deemed to have. Rose was still a few months from his Test debut at this stage, and had been playing the summer for Enfield in the Lancashire League. Today, he would be bringing unexpected menace – beyond the usual, expected menace you got in that neck of the woods – for Burslem.

The precise nature of that menace became a whole lot clearer, and yet a whole lot darker, when we took the customary stroll out to the square – a square I had never before set foot on. This was an era before play-cricket, before The Sentinel were printing scorecards, so I don’t think the season’s scores at Burslem – whether they had been lower than at other grounds – had registered with us, particularly. Who cared? We felt we were the best team in the division and would cope better with any conditions than our opponents. Unless, of course, they brought in beanpole Jamaicans to whack it into a dry and crumbling surface such as this (I ought to go on record here as saying the square is 100 per cent better now than it was back then, and that Burslem is an enjoyable ground to play at). In fact, as we now walked over it, it became apparent that there were large cracks – canyons, crevices, ravines! – where the turf hadn’t bound together. And visible down those cracks was the highly tensile plastic orange mesh that you see on the side of mountains to stop skiers falling to their death. Or around roadworks. Orange mesh! On (well, just under) the square!! Addo and I exchanged a rueful smile at what lay in store (the sort that visiting batsmen often made at Barnfields during the Immy years), a fate that was deferred by a few hours when he called correctly at the toss.

The details of the game are, understandably, quite sketchy. We took a couple of early wickets – probably courtesy of John Myatt and Iain Carr – and Mr Rose sauntered out to the crease at No4 or No5 with next to nothing on the board. This can be deduced from the fact that, using a method that by and large involved planting his foot on off stump and swinging violently to the legside, he proceeded to make around 80 from a total of around 115 all out.

As well as being not the most graceful innings (although, strangely, his agriculturalism did not lead to him being sledged all that much, as I recall), it was also far from chanceless. Indeed, he was dropped at mid-wicket by Wellings while still in single figures, one of the easiest catches you’ll ever see, the ball’s slow arc evading his jerking hands altogether and hitting him plush on the stomach before coming to rest somewhere on that geological wonder of a square. Undoubtedly, Welly’s dropped clanger was the result of him (an opening batsman) contemplating this giant figure who would soon be propelling the ball at him quite briskly. He was daydreaming, then he was panicking. It happens.

The bowler, John Myatt, was not best pleased. His mood darkened even further when a pair of vociferous lbw appeals were rejected after he’d hit Rose plush on the foot, one of which looked very adjacent. And so, reprieved, on the big guy swiped and smeared – I recall dropping him myself, out at long off, off Addo, when he had 60-odd – eventually taking them to what was certainly going to be a competitive score – unattainable, we probably felt, although no-one admits these things.

Yours truly had the task of opening. I forget who with. Probably Welly, although I wouldn’t actually make it to a mid-wicket conference. On the way out – a journey akin to the First World War Tommies charging helplessly, haplessly, hopelessly into No Man’s Land – I was given some words of sarcastic encouragement by a former Burslem paceman, Dave ‘Foll’ Follett, then enjoying a stint in first-class cricket with Middlesex. He wasn’t the brightest button in the proverbial box, but he did have a booming voice, a choice vocabulary, and a sharp understanding of the psychology of facing quick bowling. I felt like a dead man walking. The End Is Nigh.

I asked for my guard, taking care not to notice how far back the cordon was stood (and in any case, they would soon be moving up a few yards…). Rose stood at the top of his run, obligatory gold chain visible through dishwater light, perhaps ruminating over a cash incentive to dismiss or maim as many of our team as possible. The sightscreen looked like a matchbox. It wasn’t very often in my playing days that I walked out to bat with the feeling that I didn’t really stand any chance whatsoever, but this day I did (by which I mean I didn’t ... stand a chance). However, like the bull in the corrida, we still had to go through the inevitable ritual death.

He began his run: long, loping strides, a slightly stiff, upright posture, and a lean away to the offside as he hit the crease. The first ball slammed into the pitch just short of a length and bounced two or three times on the way through to the keeper. I did a spot of gardening, half-expecting to find wildlife down those cracks – those ravines. You could get your bat stuck down them.

The second ball was an attempted bouncer that reacted off the wicket in something like the way a slightly stale muffin would respond if hurled violently at a mattress, the red cherry looping slowly over my head and again failing to reach the keeper’s mitts. They say it is a skill of opening batsmen, or ought to be one, to be able read the conditions and adapt your game quickly to them. Well, yes, but you cannot de-program a decade of learning in the time it takes a West Indian paceman to get to the top of his run – which, admittedly, is quite a long time given the general disregard for over-rates (or perhaps, in this instance, the certain knowledge that we’d be lucky to bat much more than 20 overs). It’s a bit like getting into the water with a crocodile someone’s told you has been domesticated and saying to yourself: “oh, lovely cutie-wootie kwokodile just want to have a cuddle” rather than “Oh my f****** God, get me out of here, this is one of nature’s ultimate killing machines”.  

Eventually, Rose barrelled in for the third ball, again slammed uncomplicatedly into the pitch, this time well short of back-of-a-length. Instinctively, I jumped to play a back-foot defence, but the ball scuttled along the ground like ... like a crocodile after a baby piglet (it seemed to go under my feet, almost), and then crashed into the off-stump what can only have been a third of the way up at most. At Moddershall in 1996, the same delivery would have probably had the ‘keeper jumping to take it.

Off I trudged toward the dressing room at deep point, stopping out of morbid curiosity to peer over my shoulder – as you would when passing a car accident – and see how far back the stump had been sent cavorting. Pretty far, to be fair, certainly further than the previous delivery had travelled before its second bounce. As I got to the edge of the pitch, Foll guffawed, then drawled: “fuuuckiiin’ ‘elll”. 

Addo passed me on the way out, sporting the same sort of resigned grin as I wore, the difference being that my ordeal was over. The collective mood might have been considerably more perturbed had we not been playing Haslington the following day and Kidsgrove a week later with only a few points required (assuming, that is, we failed to chase down these runs).

Addo was soon out, and then another man, and another – a procession reminiscent of England’s 46 all out in Trinidad a couple of years earlier. It was carnage. Yet bestriding the disarray was Iain Carr, who played one of the gutsiest, not to mention most highly skilled innings that it was my privilege to watch as a Moddershall player. Batting about four feet down the pitch (at least) and getting a large stride in, he grafted his way to 30 out of our 52 all out, cudgelling a couple of defiant, almost miraculous straight-driven fours off Rose, who finished with 6 for 20, figures that did not flatter him. Burslem had been lucky to make 50; we were lucky to get 30.

As it turned out, our opponents would narrowly fail to secure promotion. As for Rose, despite not seeing him in the bar after the game – yes, he was the longest in the shower – a couple of our stragglers told us that, with the blood no longer pumping through his limbs (by which I think they meant his adrenaline had worn off), it was apparent that he was limping badly. It turned out that he was unable to play his Lancashire League club’s game the following day with a very badly bruised toe, a pyrrhic victory that Mauler enjoyed greatly. Too greatly.

That gloomy day at Festival Heights wasn’t the last we’d see of Mr Rose. The following March he would debut for West Indies on his home ground, Sabina Park in Kingston. Any thoughts that this was a token homer to appease the crowd – and there is a history of boycotting matches in the Caribbean, as for instance when a Bridgetown crowd responded to the controversial omission of local bowler Anderson Cummins with the banner, ‘No Cummins, No Goings’ – were rebuffed by a man-of-the-match performance in a bat-dominated draw, the first five of his 6 for 100 being Laxman, Dravid, Tendulkar, Azharuddin and Ganguly. Steady effort, that. Slightly shades Oliver, Addison, Hawkins, Myatt, Stones, et al…  

He ended up taking 53 wickets at 30.88 in his 19 Tests, the most memorable of which – not from his perspective, mind – came at Lord’s in 2000, a crazy game in which, with England conceding a first-innings lead of 133, Caddick (5 for 16) then skittled Windies for 54, before Dominic Cork bundled England over the line for a famous two-wicket victory, in large part due to Rose bowling with his ego and continually slapping it in halfway down. I don't believe there was any orange mesh visible below the Lord’s turf...

Rose was a fiery fellow, and no mistake. Reputed to have pulled a knife on Brian Lara on the plane en route to the ill-fated South African tour of 1998-99, in 2002 the guy who stood cradling the new ball on that minefield at Burslem was convicted of assaulting a Canadian woman in Ocho Rios. And earlier this summer his name was brought up during a conversation I had with with someone from New Zealand. He told me that Rose had been beaten up by youths trying to steal his car and was now living destitute out in Auckland having apparently lost all his money gambling.

It seems that those hair-rock titans Poison were right all along: every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn. And for this current group of Moddershall players, next season could well be the dawn of a great era.   

Previous columns for Moddershall CC's newsletter, 'Barnfields Buzz':

BB01: The Grass Isn’t Always Greener… | On club loyalty

BB02: The King and I | Early forays in the press box and meeting IVA Richards 

BB03: Chris Lewis: Still out in the Cold | The coldest cricket match I ever played 

BB04: Sam Kelsall: Role Model | How a 15-year-old's standards inspired a team to the title

BB05: Astle la vista, Baby | Surrealism and hypocrisy with a NZ star

BB06: The Geometry of Captaincy (A Hunch) | Waxing philosophical about setting the field 

BB07: A Brief History of Moddershall in the Staffs Cup | A look back at our four finals

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODDERSHALL IN THE STAFFS CUP FINAL (BB07)

They say you learn more from defeat than victory. Probably true in the long run, but in the short term defeat stings. Moddershall’s agonising two-run loss in the Staffordshire Cup final to Knypersley was not a ‘moral victory’, but neither was it a blow to crush the spirit and derail the significant individual and collective progress that’s been made by the side this year. There are, as they say, positives aplenty.

A battling (though not blemish-free) performance in the field was followed by a couple of errors in the run-chase, but the overwhelming feeling – after a rousing partnership between Bagnall and Moores had set up an intriguing endgame, then Moores and Irfan had batted with great composure to take Modd to the brink – was bittersweet rather than bitter. Several cricketers of distinction who were watching on – including at least two former county captains – were mightily impressed by a young team who are in a great environment to learn the game, and at a delightful cricket ground that still looks like a picture postcard.

There are a million ways to slice and dice a close match, but the fag-paper margins in a game like that are epitomised by their two crucial direct hits in the field, the second to seal the deal. No matter, a team that, on paper, is not far off the best in the Premier League, were given a right royal scare by a hugely inexperienced side.

Sunday’s defeat leaves Modd’s record in Staffs Cup finals at played 4 lost 3. However, the tea leaf readers might look back at the previous finals and see some patterns, some positive omens amidst the chaos of events…

The first Staffs Cup final Moddershall reached came in 1996 – when, coincidentally, we were also a second-tier side – playing away at Porthill Park on a balmy late summer afternoon. It was Jon Addison’s third year as pro and, at the third time of asking, after two third-place finishes (following our relegated-at-the-first-attempt season in 1993), we had more or less secured promotion to Division 1. Finally. So, we went into the game with the main target nailed (in fact, on the last day of the season, we scored a then league record 370 for 6, and had it not been for our honorary skipper, Dave Wellings, taking pity on his former team, Kidsgrove, we may well have added another 70 or 80 in the last nine overs) which no doubt relaxed us a wee bit.

The details of the game are a bit of a blur now – and I appear to have mislaid a folder of cuttings from the Sentinel – but I remember the home team batted first on a dry pitch with the small, fast outfield making it difficult to keep the run-rate in check. Even so, we had a strong and varied attack and, despite 80-odd from their Indian pro SukhvinderSingh, did well to keep their score manageable going into the final few overs. However, a blitz from Neil Ellsmore took them past 270 – and a run-a-ball back then was a much more daunting target than it is today. Still, if you’re going to knock them off anywhere, it’ll be at Porthill…

I’m not sure we particularly discussed how to go about the chase at tea – how the runs / wickets / overs remaining equations might work – but we got to around 100 for 1 after 25 overs, with Wellings and Addison [pictured] both in and well set. Perhaps today, in a post-T20 world with bigger, pingier bats, that might have been deemed a strong position, but with ‘Suki’ Singh ragging it there was a distinct tetchiness in our dressing room about when the acceleration was going to come. We felt we had some firepower in the shed, but, after consulting several rocket scientists, we also felt that one of the pair out there needed to tee off, the other to bat through. As it was, they both got out at the same time and John Myatt, myself and Drew Heard (father of Floppy) threw the kitchen sink at it, scoring between 35 and 50 each, at a good lick, entertaining the crowd in the process, but falling around 30 short with three overs left. Still, we had a decent consolation prize: we not only won promotion, but immediately won Division 1 the following year, the first team ever to do that. In that defeat at Porthill were the seeds of a powerhouse team.

It took us another seven years to return to the Staffs Cup final, however (although we did pick up a couple of Premier League titles and a Talbot Cup by then), when we faced Himley, who had beaten us in a tight semi-final the previous year. Could their return to Barnfields in 2003 bring us revenge?

We won the toss and fielded, and just as with the Porthill final seemed to have things under control with five overs to go in the first innings. Himley were 200 for 9 and we had a West Indian Test bowler to finish things off, but Adam Sanford got things badly wrong and somehow we found ourselves chasing 245, which was around 25 over par when we might have chased 20 under.

The momentum shift continued afterward when, in the face of a tidy attack that featured former Worcestershire bowlers Stuart Lampitt and Stuart Wedge, as well as the miserly ex-Staffs seamer Tim Heap, we subsided to 40 for 4, including our best two batsmen, Carr and Cornford. From there on, it seemed a case of playinf for respectability. I made 73 – enough for man of the match, it turned out – yet just as we had got ourselves back to a 25% chance to win at 150-odd for 5, I tickled Lampitt to the keeper while trying to keep the strike. The game was up.

(Here’s how the rest of the day panned out: I had somehow gone since breakfast without eating, something I didn’t rectify in the evening, and several beers later I found myself at the Butcher’s Arms in Forsbrook, where I fainted on the car park and was transported to Longton nick, sans mobile. There, I managed to throw up on my clothes – already removed so that they could dress me in a presumably suicide-proof jumpsuit made of industrial-strength j-cloth material – and, awakening groggily the following morning, I was greeted by the duty officer, former Modd teammate, Dave Stones. With almost no money – the proud parent £20 had been spent on ‘recycled’ booze – no phone numbers, unwearable clothes, and no inclination to get on public transport looking like a giant baby, I had little option to ring the folks and get a lift. Not my finest hour…) 

Anyway, after the loss to Himley it was gratifying to see them bumped out at the semi-final stage in 2004 by Hem Heath, who thus became our opponents for a third tilt at the Staffs Cup. It was their first year at Trentham Lakes and the wicket was far from flat. On this occasion, I won the toss and we batted first. It was hard going. Darren ‘Doc’ Carr and Hawk were nipped out fairly early, before Iain Carr and I slowly laid a platform against some searching seam bowling on an uneven pitch. I felt that 180 would be a good target – and indeed owed a fair bit to reading some of Kim Barnett’s columns about the strategies of the brilliant Gloucestershire side of 1999-2002, for whom he’d opened the batting – but we managed to get up past 200 thanks to a magnificent, brutal, match-swinging knock of 45 by Myatt.

At tea, as we readied ourselves to finish the job, the HH chairman, without knocking, strolled blithely into our dressing room with some guests whom he was keen to show the club’s swanky new facilities. This brought a sharp snap of admonishment from myself – “Excuse me, what on earth do you think you’re doing?! We’re in the middle of a game. Get out!” – and perhaps gave us a little more focus. Still, some felt 200 was under par and a job clearly had to be done.

Truth is, we bowled magnificently, Iain Carr and Shaun Brian setting the tone after an iffy first set of six. Nonetheless, HH were 50 for 1 at around the 17-over mark, with their pro and Brian Sims (both of whom made hundreds against Himley) still at the crease. I had been keeping our trump card, Imran Tahir, back, even bowling Martin Weston before him, much to the consternation of the GET-THE-BLOODY-PRO-ON merchants. On he came. Sims was lbw to a flipper. I snuck in at silly point, telling the No4 how much pressure he was under. A perfectly pitched googly; an attempt to drive it into my shinbone; bowled through the gate for 0. 50 for 3. Jakey Hawkins took a phenomenal legside stumping to see off Ako, wickets were whittled away, and Darren bowled tidily at the end to bag a 4-fer and a frankly fortunate MoM award that ought to have gone to ‘Mauler’ Myatt.

The abiding memory I have of that day is the enjoyment of the last few overs, knowing he result was even beyond a miracle, bowling out the remaining deliveries to conclude proceedings before we had the cup in our hands. I looked around our team. We shared smiles of satisfaction, relief, excitement. The season had started very shakily – we were joint favourites for the league yet the first team skipper had resigned four games in, beating a mutiny by hours, and left the club entirely – and I felt our transformation and growth as a side merited some silverware, especially as we’d already lost in the Talbot Cup final to Audley. This was vindication. The following year, we really ought to have won another league title.

It isn’t an easy thing to win a cup final. I’m not entirely sure it gets any easier with time (I mean, you can, I suppose, be mentally scarred by continually losing finals). There are no mysterious patterns, tea-leaf readers, no hidden fate or destiny, only a series of moments, with multiple causes, that roll into and affect one another, sometimes logically, sometimes haphazardly. Such is the story of a game. And in cricket matches, cricket seasons, cricket careers, those moments, by hook or by crook, have to be seized. Throwing down the stumps, for instance. 

One games. 660 deliveries. Carpe Diem.

Previous columns for Moddershall CC's newsletter, 'Barnfields Buzz':

BB01: The Grass Isn’t Always Greener… | On club loyalty

BB02: The King and I | Early forays in the press box and meeting IVA Richards 

BB03: Chris Lewis: Still out in the Cold | The coldest cricket match I ever played 

BB04: Sam Kelsall: Role Model | How a 15-year-old's standards inspired a team to the title
BB05: Astle la vista, Baby | Surrealism and hypocrisy with a NZ star
BBo6: The Geometry of Captaincy (A Hunch) | Waxing philosophical about setting the field