Bracey's byes

It is almost certainly a sign of age and approaching senility, but this is the season when I fell back in love with cricket. I was always interested, attached, involved, but interest has now again become obsession. Again because I was obsessed as a teenager. So obsessed that I used to watch the card on TV that said “Rain delay. Umpires will inspect at 4pm.” They – it was the BBC in those days – didn’t then feel the need to fill every break for bad weather with replays or analysis or Jim Laker prattling on. Jim Laker never prattled. In fact, he hardly ever spoke. He just grunted occasionally.

I am pleased to be back in love, because this is the 50th anniversary of my active cricket watching. My first filled-in scorecard dates from August 1971, when I saw all three days of a rather monochrome draw between Glamorgan and Middlesex in Cardiff. Roy Fredericks made a hundred, Peter Parfitt a half-century in each innings, Majid Khan nought and 14. I never saw Majid make runs for Glamorgan. He was usually out for an elegant seven when I was there. The following season, he made a glorious 191 at Taunton one Saturday. I missed that and went on Monday instead, when Tom Cartwright made 55 for Somerset in about four hours.

I put the rekindling of my love for cricket entirely down to the livestreams that allow fans to follow all the county games in real time. I have spent many hours this season watching my beloved Glamorgan and dipping into other games. I’m almost reluctant to say how marvellous the livestreams are, because it surely won’t be long before some bright spark at the ECB realises they can either be “monetised”, or livened up by pop music and appearances by contestants from Love Island. At the moment they are free, very basic – the cameras still generally miss catches in the outfield – and you can sync the pictures with the BBC’s local radio commentary, offered by affable middle-aged men who love the game, adore their county sides, but are principally concerned with what their free lunch might consist of and whether there will be roadworks on the motorway on the way home.

It’s ironic that my love for the game has returned at just the moment when cricket and the traditional county structure are threatened as never before. Don’t worry, this is not going to be another diatribe directed at The Hundred. Enough has been said about that absurd experiment, which is attempting to resuscitate the patient by killing him (or indeed her). Franchises (as we are not supposed to call the specious new city-based teams) and fully professional counties cannot in the long run co-exist. We will eventually have to make a choice. I’ve already chosen: for 50 years I’ve been a Glamorgan man. For me, Welsh Fire has already turned to ashes. But let’s wait and see more generally: cricket or baseball; Glamorgan or Welsh Fire? Let the best format win.

My theme here is more parochial, and concerns an epic – and strangely under-reported – event that occurred in the recent championship match between Gloucestershire and Hampshire at Cheltenham. The Gloucestershire captain and wicketkeeper, James Bracey, who has had an unhappy few weeks, conceded 48 byes in Hampshire’s first innings of 486 for seven declared. There were 33 other extras, too, making a grand total of 81 – second top scorer after Nick Gubbins, who made 137 not out.

Now, with all due respect to Gubbins’ maiden hundred for his new county, it is Bracey’s byes that were the real sensation in this match. But where were the headlines, the front-page stories? It equalled the county championship record for the highest number of byes in an innings – Anthony Catt also conceded 48, for Kent against Northamptonshire, in 1955. Catt, who had the misfortune to be Kent keeper between the Godfrey Evans and Alan Knott eras, was apparently suffering from sunburn.

Pedants might point to the 49 byes conceded by Gloucestershire against Middlesex at Lord’s in 1888, but this was two years before the championship was officially constituted. Cambridge University conceded 57 byes against Yorkshire in 1884, and there have been three other instances when more than 48 byes have been conceded in a first-class innings, but to equal the county championship record and stand joint sixth in the all-time list is a considerable achievement.

The total number of extras at Cheltenham was also of more than passing interest: 81 equalled the fourth-highest number conceded in a county championship match (achieved on no fewer than six occasions), but was well short of the 98 Essex let slip against Northants in 1999. (How disappointing that Essex didn’t manage a century of sundries – out in the nervous nineties.) Eighty-one is an admirable effort, but it is the record-equalling byes total that is the true “I was there” moment for the thousand or so aficionados who attended each day of the Cheltenham Festival – a traditional cricketing ritual about as far removed from The Hundred as can be imagined.

I was keen to know more of Bracey’s epic performance, but sought in vain for proper coverage. Sky mentioned it, but thought Colin de Grandhomme’s four wickets earlier in the match more significant. The BBC blog offered a tantalising line: “Ryan Higgins raises his arms in a ‘what’s going on?’ gesture after four more byes race by, with James Bracey virtually motionless behind the stumps. The Gloucestershire skipper takes his helmet off for a few moments. He’s really under it here.” Statistician Andrew Samson picked up the captaincy angle in a tweet, noting that it was the most byes conceded by a keeper-captain in a first-class innings. And that was that.

Once, E W Swanton would have done a couple of thousand words on the history-making match in the Daily Telegraph, but no longer. A major statistical moment in cricketing history had passed almost unnoticed. Perhaps the proponents of The Hundred are right, and cricket is now so marginalised that the whole thing has to be tossed away and a new sport invented. But I still wanted to know what happened. Was Bracey suffering from sunburn? Was Higgins genuinely furious? Posterity needed to understand what had transpired on days two and three of that historic match, as Hampshire steadily compiled their imposing total, boosted by this excess of extras. So, with the needs of cricketing history sitting squarely on my shoulders, I settled down retrospectively to watch the entirety of the Hampshire innings – all 143 overs of it – on what was no longer quite such a livestream. Am I mad? Probably.

The first thing to say is that Bracey definitely can’t blame sunburn. The skies were largely grey, with just occasional bursts of sunshine. How can I describe his keeping? It wasn’t terrible. Most of the byes, almost all fours, were the result of right-arm bowlers – both medium pace and spin – bowling round the wicket and delivering balls down the legside where he would have been unsighted. The loyal Gloucestershire commentators were at pains to absolve poor Bracey (as I fear he will henceforth be known) from blame, and it is true that he was not helped by an uneven pitch, with the odd ball shooting or taking off, a depleted bowling line-up, and a strangely lacklustre, directionless Gloucestershire performance in the field. But there is something missing in his keeping: animation, alertness, that capacity to be in constant motion and at the centre of everything that the best wicketkeepers have.

Bracey looks like what he is – a manufactured keeper. And he does sometimes have an unfortunate expression of surprise on his face when the ball settles in his gloves. What he was being asked to do at Cheltenham was too much: to keep, captain and bat three, the defensive lynchpin of the team. One admires the ambition, but it was misplaced: he kept without distinction, captained without obvious imagination, and scored 0 and 8. Bracey – a mainly defensive batsman rather than a No 7 destroyer of tiring attacks in the mould of Adam Gilchrist and Jos Buttler – might be well advised to give up the gloves and concentrate on becoming a rock-like No 3.

One thing I do want to correct for the record – and this makes my eight hours spent watching the “livestream” worthwhile – is that Ryan Higgins was not protesting at Bracey’s incompetence when his legside delivery went for four byes to bring up the historic total of 48 just before Hampshire declared. He did throw his hands up in apparent despair, but that was surely because of the extravagant bounce of the ball off the pitch which speared it down the legside past batsman Keith Barker and keeper Bracey. Higgins – a feisty, never-say-die cricketer who might himself make an inspirational captain – may have been fulminating against God, but he was not dissing his skipper.

The great landmark of 48 had been reached, but at the time no one realised it. The crowd were somnolent, the commentators idly discussing the death of the official drinks break. History had been made, and no one gave a damn. Then or, it seems, since. Bracey might be happy to consign the moment to oblivion, but if we give up on cricketing history, we give up on cricket itself. Didn’t CLR James say that?

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