Northamptonshire CCC - My team!

So is it the end for the likes of Northant’s in the 18 team English County Championship? The two divisional system has introduced wage inflation and unless you have a healthy wealthy benefactor, you can’t keep up with those player pay demands and end up with an uncompetitive team as the best players go elsewhere, as is the case with my team. Jack Brooks is the latest to defect to the top league. We remain one of only two of the 19 counties never to win the county championship in our history.

The crazy thing about the ECB encouraging wage inflation through the two leagues is they have to pay for it in the end as all 18 counties are dependent on the annual ECB hand out, up to 80% of the small clubs revenue. Our wealthy backer died two years ago and although we pushed for promotion in the second division of the championship in two of the last four seasons and just missed out by a point or so on those two occasions, we are now slashing back hard on staff and will field only 17 professional players next year. Bearing in mind Chelsea FC have 34 professionals in their football set up, 17 is a worryingly low number for a cricket team to be competitive in three different tournaments. Going into the season with just five seamers is unthinkable, although there is a strong rumor we have lined up a good Aussie fast bowler. In an Ashes year, he can’t be that good though. I hope it’s Brett Lee.

What seems to be happening is the ECB are using the England cricket team to strengthen the top league of the championship by surreptitiously whispering in younger player’s ears that if they want to play for England, they must be playing in the first division, therefore strengthening the top league’s branding potential and sponsors in the process. A proper Premier League can’t be far away now, shutting out the rest, the way domestic rugby does. If you look at the make up of the current England side, it’s mostly from players in the first division or from the big teams the ECB want in that first division; the test ground counties that need filling to bring down the massive debt the 18 counties carry. If you add Somerset, Essex and Sussex to those eight grounds, you have the elite league they secretly desire. That would be the perfect first division for the ECB to draw the England side from and so sod the rest and their handouts, the likes of Northants are merely subsidy bottom feeders. When we do our job and produce England talent, it’s ripped away from us anyway and we get no real credit. This was the main reason we went with bespoke Kolpak players to be competitive.

The Monty Panesar saga sums up the problem for teams like Northamptonshire, who want to be in the top league by retaining those top homegrown players. It was an awkward time for Panesar at the end of his Northants career as the infamous South African Kalpak contingent flooded the team at the club that led me to nickname the Northamptonshire Steelbacks in the local press as the ‘Steelboks’. The cocky ‘Yappies’ clearly unsettled the rather gauche British Indian and he felt somewhat picked upon by them. They used to say horrid things about him in Afrikaans on and off the pitch and not surprisingly his form collapsed, and so he lost his England place and then his central contract. We got him to a good enough standard to play test Cricket, the counties priority remit, and Central Contracts are fine when the player is playing for England, but once they are dropped the club has to pick up the big wages, part of the central contract clubs deal for the player’s domestic services. This meant we couldn’t meet his salary in the final year of his contract and so we had to off-load him fast.

After I emailed the Sussex coach to let him know about our dilemma – I felt it was the right thing for the club to move Monty on so he didn’t bankrupt us – Mark Robinson (the Sussex coach) made his move and signed Monty, but on a much lower wage than we were paying him, meaning a £70,000 shortfall, of which we had to pay Monty up to ensure he left. Panesar ended up donating back ten grand out of that to the club out of guilt for the county who had made him yet broken his heart. This type of problem is happening to other smaller counties and to some extent it happened again for us with our rather excellent swing bowler, Jack Brooks. Jack penned in an escape clause to the three-year deal he signed for Northants last season, meaning he could leave if we didn’t get promoted, which we didn’t, finishing second bottom this season. The paradox was he was the only one who could have got us promoted as he is our stand out player and as he was injured for most of the season, he lost confidence in the set up through frustration and jumped. The smaller teams have become so dependent on their best players that the bigger counties know that all they need do now is buy or unsettle those players during the season, and so destroy any chances of promotion for the minnows. Another example is of Yorkshire snapping up Brooksy with a nice two year deal and a swanky club car and a flat in Leeds already sorted.

Our new chairman, 54-year-old David Smith, an ex-player for Warwickshire and brother of legendary party animal and fellow Warwickshire player Paul Smith, is aware of our precarious cash position and has cut the squad down to the marrow – seven players have moved on and five of those the club’s biggest earners. Backroom staff has also been chain sawed. Only two players have come in so far to replace them, mouthy wicketkeeper Nial O’Brien effectively forced out (to Leicestershire CCC) with a year to go on his deal just to free up cash to sign some young players so as to put a side out next year. Our creaking captain, Andrew Hall, was bizarrely awarded a three-year contract by the departing chairman on Hall’s 37th birthday? I’m investigating that one right now, as I suspect the ex-chairman’s wife’s company’s involvement in the procurement of the club’s new floodlights and stands. Something very fishy there.

Although money is very tight, it’s not all bad at Wantage Road for next season. We have some promising young players coming through and just signed Ben Duckett, who could well be England’s wicketkeeper for many years to come when Prior is finished. All-rounder David Willey, son of test umpire and ex-Northants player Peter Willey, has been the real revelation of 2012 and looking every inch the Ian Botham of Division 2; his blonde mullet, fiery swing bowling and aggressive swashbuckling stroke play the only saving grace for the fans this year. But it looks like he will have to open the bowling in 2013 because, as yet, we have no strike bowler, and as he averaged 35, he is likely to expensive again with the new ball. Northants seamers have been struggling with the new Duke all year, the lifeless and seamless red cherry retiring Chaminda Vaas, our overseas player this season. Chain smoker Chaminda’s off pitch ‘social’ antics seemed to distract him from his job somewhat in 2012.

Northant’s one-day form has been appalling of late, failing to win a Twenty20 game at home for two years. Mid season we lost Coach David Capel, an ex-Northants player, due to terrible results and he was replaced with second team coach David Ripley, another ex-player, both rewarded for service to the club over any real leadership skills. During the end of a terrible Twenty20 season there was a fight in the dressing room between Capel, injured club captain Andrew Hall and overseas star Cameron White; the Aussie swinging at Capel when the coach stepped in to break up the ruck between Hall and White, with kit and helmets flying everywhere!

The saddest sight this summer for me was seeing Jack Brooks and co. in the pub during the England Lions game at Northampton, smashing back the beers. Our star seamer bowled the following morning with two good West Indian wickets already in the top pocket and could have got a ‘five-for’ and impressed the selectors. Instead he chose the late night with fellow players Johnny Bairstow, Jade Dernbach, Liam Dawson and Tom Maynard – he who would be dead three weeks later from booze related nonsense. I didn’t dare tell them to get their head down but it disappointed me that players still booze their careers away.

If drinking doesn’t get them in county cricket then bed hoping does, an infamous incident involving both Northants wicketkeepers and one that ripped the club apart in 2005. Club lothario and keeper number two Russell Warren liked the ladies, especially the first team keeper Tobin Bailey’s fiancée. While Bailey was keeping out in the middle, that meant Russell wasn’t, the number two could jump into bed with the future Mrs Bailey. Russell got caught out when Tobin bruised a finger early on in the days play and returned home to find Warren in his bed. From then on, one half of the dressing room had most of the lads and the other side just Warren and old mucca Graeme Swann, tight mates. The club failed to act and neither keeper wanted to leave and so the season was dire.

Swann, of course, has been a revelation for England and refreshing in the media, always the entertainer. I remember him standing in at the last when the band cancelled for the club do and he did a whole hour’s stand up. He does good impressions and the fans loved it. He is now, of course, a rock-n-roll star, as well as England’s first best spinner ever. So he tells me. Some of the other stories I can’t tell on here. Swanny always had the ability to play for England but preferred to be the big fish in the small pond at Wantage Road. He loves an audience and it’s him who has upstaged and upset Pietersen at England. No Swann playing for England and KP would be half the trouble, a huge clash of ego. But incoming Northants coach Kepler Wessels had heard about his antics and didn’t want him from day one and in the nets, threatened Swann to put him in his place. Kep’s asked Swann that I hear you do impressions. Swann replied that – ‘yes he did and who would you like? Kepler snarled back that if you ever impersonate me son I’ll snap your spine. Needless to say Swann left soon after. He needed to anyway as there was never enough oxygen in the Northants fish tank for the two of them.

The old days

The teams of the 1980s and the early 90s were Northants’ golden days and English players like Larkins, Lamb, Willey, Bailey and Capel made my youth rather halcyon days watching cricket at Northampton. If we needed to chase down 300 off 70 over’s on the final day of the old three day matches then we would get them, and with overs to spare, the prolific first three going through the gears and Capes finishing them off with some towering sixes. I remember a semi-final at Maidstone in the Benson & Hedges where Northants needed to score at 12 an over for 12 overs to win and Lamb scored of every ball to bring us home, the original Twenty20 innings. In the club records, these guys dominate the batting statistics whereas the bowling is dominated by the uncovered wicket guys of the 1940 and 50s.

Top First Class Run Scorers

Dennis Brookes – 28980

Geoff Cook – 20976

John Timms – 20433

Wayne Larkins – 20317

Rob Bailey – 20181

Allan Lamb – 20128

Top Wicket Takers

NobbyClark– 1102w

Vallance Jupp – 1078w

George Thompson – 1078w

George Tribe – 1021w

Albert Thomas – 817w

Brian Crump 807w

Highest Total – 781-7 declared Nottinghamshire Northampton 1995

Lowest Total – 12 GloucestershireBristol1907

Highest individual score

1. Mike Hussey – 331* v Somerset at Tauntonin 2003

2. Mike Hussey – 329* v Essex at Wantage Rdin 2001

3. Mal Loye 331* v Somerset County Ground,Tauntonin 2003

Most runs in a season

1. Dennis Brookes – 2,198 (1952)

2. Norman Oldfield – 2,192 (1949)

3. Mike Hussey – 2,055 (2001)

Curtley Ambrose and Anil Kumble were the best overseas bowlers in my time watching Northant’s and Kumble’s 106 wickets also took us close to the championship, only a telephone call from Lords to tell Middlesex to play for a draw denying us to leave us third. Ambrose would snarl viciously if he conceded a run, never mind a dropped catch! It was the same when we needed Essex to lose to Derbyshire to go up in 2009 and Derbyshire decided to hand the game to Essex in the final session with some rank bowling and likewise declaration of a dead game.

The best overseas bats had to be run machine Mike Hussey and the dashing Mathew Hayden. Hussey had the greatest leave alone shot in the book which seemed to illuminate his chances of getting out, piling up huge scores with his superb concentration. Other big names to grace the Northamptonshire overseas shirt over the years include the great Indian all-rounder Kapil Dev and the dynamic Roger Harper of theWest Indies, who hit almighty sixes. Bishan Bedi graced us with his mystery spin in the 1970s and swinger Sarfaraz Nawaz of Pakistan bed-ied the local ladies as they stroked his magnificent mustache! One modern player we do miss from South Africa is quickie Johan Van der Wath, ripped away from us by the ECB via Kolpak rules, the wild man of the County Ground. He loved his cigarettes and some say the pile of sawdust you get on the run up was in fact fag ash. I swear he kept his tabs in his pocket on the pitch. He wasn’t too keen on bowling long spells but the opening 30 balls of the innings from him nearly always got a wicket. He loved to bat at number 8 and would have been one of the great Twenty20 hitters for the club if we could have kept him, as was young Rikki Wessel’s, also usurped under qualification rules.