The Collapse

Wickman has tried to write this post before. May even have. There have been plenty of prompts down the years from England... and from Wick sides. What causes a collapse? Why, when you know you are in the middle of one, are you suddenly powerless to do anything about it? Is it top bowling? Is it collective feebleness of mind? Does the fielding side exert such pressure that you disintegrate? Wickman searches for answers…

So what’s a collapse? We are speaking here not of three quick wickets in the middle of an innings. We are talking of a side that gets completely and utterly humiliated – from either the top of the innings losing four quick wickets and not recovering, or going from seemingly impregnable strength and losing six for 40… a collapse must have an element of humiliation in it for it to count.

It also needs to be quick. A side failing to score at more than 2 an over for 30 overs but preserving wickets is not collapsing. It’s playing hard cricket. No. Speed of fall of wickets is highly relevant. It’s also got to happen after a period of stability. When the oppo have batted like Gods and your bowlers have pronounced the track suitable for landing 747s on and then the cream of our batting is removed hastily, each bat returning bemused and searching for answers, that’s a collapse all right. If your openers have got to 50 with few alarms and those on the side lines are rolling up the shirt sleeves for a bit of tanning, lighting a leisurely gasper and then all of a sudden 7 wickets fall in six overs, that’s a collapse.

At club level the collapse is something that is easily explainable. Club cricketers can go for weeks at a time with few useful nets, a couple of poor innings in between, work, drinking, women… and then all of sudden you are out in the middle with a decent bowler, a bit of pressure… it’s hard to dig in and find the necessary reserves when you need them. The batsman is faced with the certain knowledge that last month’s cover drive is today’s nick off to slip, last week’s safe nurdle to fine leg a leading edge to cover.

Club cricket has its defined statuses. In most xis we know our colleagues. If the chief run-getter of the side is dismissed cheaply, or by pace or by the wickedly turning ball it can send a negative vibe around the dressing room quicker than a noxious curry-caused evacuation in the one cracked loo. Throw in the quick wickets of the mercurial number four and the muscular number five who only comes off once in six innings and all of a sudden the lower middle are gnawing their bat handles, reviewing their last ten innings looking for comfort and no one is talking to anyone else.

No one is coached in this at club level. There’s no sage to offer advice about simplifying technique, or visualising the oppo bowler broken in the bar afterwards. Batsmen have two modes. Block for your life or smash your way out of it when something different is called for.

Out in the middle of course it is bedlam. The same oppo that half an hour ago were anxiously eyeing the scoreboard at 50-0 and contemplating a larruping are now jumping around like fat little nursery children just before lunch on pizza and chips day.

The sheer, unadulterated relief of knowing they aren’t going to get caned and the bowlers they suspected were weak of heart, infirm of limb and had the brain power of potted shrimp now bestride the game like giants sends them into delirium and lends them special powers. The slips become as erudite as Stephen Fry. Cover turns into Billy Connolly. Mid off appears like a ravening wolf in the fold. Even fine leg, AJ like, is sledging. A bat can middle it for four and for all the world the fielding side will give the impression he played and missed.

But it’s back on the sidelines that the damage is done. Speed of padding up causes consternation. Boxes will not fit. Pisses cannot be had. No time for a Gauloise and a flirt with someone’s sister. Someone has gone for fags and comes back - and seeing the scoreboard runs around the boundary knowing he is next in adding to the feeling that the batting side is incompetent, village. The batsmen out are solitary. They mutter darkly of a ball that kept low, a rotten umpire, a shooter, uncommon lift, a bicyclist behind the arm. The batsmen next in are trying to focus while quietly condemning those that have gone before.

Friendly supporters arrive and look up hopefully at the box before shaking their heads mournfully. Some offer scorn. Others look at the condemned men and shake their heads theatrically. Others still bemoan the lack of entertainment to come. Vitriol is stored up in those facing the long walk to the middle.

And then out there? What is it that goes through the mind? Innocuous bowling seems seldom to hit the middle of the bat. Anything that does come out of the middle screams straight to a fielder. The fielders themselves are moved to feats of derring do. An obvious run is spurned. The pressure to get away from the bowling mounts. The mouth is dry. The bat handle feels fat. Tension wracks the arms and wrists.

What’s in the mind is everything. It’s impossible to focus. The most innocuous sledge cuts deep. Fielders exhorting the bowler cannot be blocked out. Every calculation is racing through the mind. The score. The number of wickets. The fact that you are on three and the overwhelming knowledge that you need 50 minimum to dig the game out. That your colleagues are even now criticising you for being too timid, too attacking, too fat, too mentally frail… The bowler turns and runs in and for the life of you, you can’t focus on the ball, just the man. You are already selecting shots. Back over his head? Block it? Push for a single… no back over his head! The feet… just… won’t… move… and you connect with fresh air. The howls of anguish. The heads in hands on the sidelines. The catcalls… and so it starts again. 

The Ball that Changed a Test

So that was a bit of a shocker then, the first Test.

Not only was Wickman confident that England would rediscover form with the bat, Wickman also believed that our bowlers would have too much for a fragile Australian batting line up.

There’s absolutely no doubt in Wickman’s mind that Ryan Harris is an excellent Test bowler in the mould of Terry Alderman and in more recent times Stuart Clarke. Nathan Lyon is a decent offie. But Johnson, despite showing some one day form was hardly the threat he once was... he bowls to the left, he bowls to the right, that Mithchell Johnson, he bowls a load of shite.

The first day and most of the second morning were to plan. The Aussies were dismissed without much fight except from the redoubtable Brad Haddin. Johnson looked agricultural but more than justified his selection as a bowling all rounder. But we blew away the tail and then Carbs and Cheffy settled down to bat through to lunch.

On Twitter there was a carnival atmosphere. Scribes, bloggers, fans and Wickman’s milieu were all pronouncing that the pitch was a road. All the indications pointed towards parity for England by the end of the day with perhaps five wickets down. Johnson came on and hurled the ball down but was about as likely to take a wicket as Wickman’s dobbers. To say that Brad Haddin did well to get a glove on some of it was an understatement.

As with so many things in cricket it was something innocuous that kicked things off. Harris bowled one across a static Cook who slightly hung his bat out. Australia were in business when only a moment earlier they were beginning to look desperate.

A with hindsight scrambled Trotty came to the wicket. None of those watching could have seen any indication that the man was in turmoil… although the fact he was almost slogging in a warm-up game might have indicated… no. We didn’t know. Johnson then bowled the ball that set Trott up, set Johnson up and set the game up.

Who knows if he meant it? He was spraying it like a club bowler trying too hard up until that point but right on cue he lasered one in at Trotty’s heart. It was close to unplayable. Brutish. Lifting. A heavy ball amongst heavy balls. Trotty couldn’t get out of the way and at the same time wasn’t in line. It looked ugly. It was destabilising. It was pure Bodyline. There. Wickman's said it. Invoked the worst of all Ashes words.

From that moment on there was only one strategy. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Eventually Trotty succumbed and feathered a ball that was a foot outside the leg stump to a jubilant Haddin. Johnson had taken a wicket with a superb ball. That that ball had come perhaps two or three overs earlier than the rank half tracker that actually claimed the wicket did not matter.

The rest was misery.