Forget the fast men and the spinners, it takes a true connoisseur to appreciate the medium-pace seamer
During a recent visit to the metropolis I noted that a long-established restaurant chain is now describing itself as "Legendary". Beowulf, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Garfunkel's ? truly is Britain a land of heroes. However, while some may feel that had the chivalrous folk of Camelot tossed out the round table and replaced it with a self-service salad bar (with choice of dressings), the holy grail would have been located a whole lot quicker and Mordred and the forces of darkness vanquished before you can say "You can take as much as you want, but the plates are very small", others will see the veteran eatery's self-promotion as yet another sign of galloping status-inflation.
Whether Garfunkel's will ever be the subject of an epic poem, or a Walt Disney film, does not concern us here. What must be said, though, is that in an age when the word "iconic" has become a synonym for "vaguely familiar if you're particularly interested in that sort of thing", teenage Reece Topley's start to the County Championship season is already only a couple of wickets short of being "totally unforgettable".
This is good news indeed, and not only for those of us who have been following the Essex youngster's career ever since he was rushed to A&E after being beaned by Kevin Pietersen during a net practice at Loughborough when he was 15. Because Reece is the son of Don Topley, and therefore ? despite being 6ft 7in, left-handed and reportedly a bit nippy ? has the DNA of just the sort of medium-pace, doing-a-bit-off-the-seam fans of traditional English cricket are always on the lookout for.
Admittedly, I didn't always feel that way. Indeed there times when I failed fully to celebrate the endeavours of JCJ Dye and JD Inchmore (the D stood for Darling, incidentally), and may even have voiced the opinion that K Higgs was boring. But I am older now, and a good trundler is something you only come to appreciate later in life ? like comfort-fit slacks.
With the wisdom of years, I can see now, for instance, that the attack of Viv Richards's West Indies team was unbalanced not by the lack of a top-class spinner, but by the clear absence of an heir to Vanburn Holder, whose elegantly bowed legs and sensible insistence on line and length above pace and bounce brought a hint of the King's Singers to calypso cricket, I can see now why some of the gentlemen who sat around me at Headingley and Scarborough would greet the sight of Vanburn replacing Andy Roberts with the contented sigh of tired gardeners sniffing the scent of evening drizzle after a hot August day. You could relax with Vanburn.
Back in the 70s there was a profusion of books about pace bowlers ? The Fast Men by David Frith was one of my favourites as a teenager ? and recently a similar number of books have appeared about spinners. Nobody, though, gives the medium-pacer much shelf space. I tried to rectify the situation a year or so ago when proposing a book, Dobbers ? The Untold Story of the Cricket Men Nobody Really Notices, to my agent. Sadly he didn't share my enthusiasm. "Hmm," he said after I'd outlined the idea, "but aren't seamers a bit, you, know, dull?"
"Indeed," I responded cheerily, "as dull as mashed potato", and then, in case he should get the wrong idea, added, "Back in the days when mashed potato was grey and lumpy, nobody had thought of adding olive oil and wild garlic, and even the addition of butter was considered the sort of sensual excess that would lead inexorably to married couples having sexual congress on the sitting-room carpet, on weekday afternoons. But that," I continued with what I recognise was a wild hint of madness, "is what makes it so brilliant. I mean, what could be more banal than getting all excited about Michael Holding or Muralitharan? It's like enjoying sunshine. On the other hand it takes a lifetime's basting in the game to truly appreciate Paul Reifel."
Sadly, such is the modern obsession with excitement, my book, in which I planned studiously to ignore the Indian spin kings Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghavan and focus instead on the shine-on-the-new-ball-reducing efforts of Madan Lal and Eknath Solkar, will never see the light of day.
The summer game has moved on. New competitions and styles of play have made the sort of decaf cricket offered up by RFMers like Teesside icon (in the modern sense) Chris Old, a man who appeared permanently on the verge of a nosebleed, a thing of the past.
Glenn McGrath, very much "The Prince of Trundlers" ? an antipodean Mike Hendrick with peroxide and a big gob ? has left the scene, Matthew Hoggard and Dominic Cork limp on, their obvious talents as medium-pacers somewhat tarnished by diverting private lives. Their successors are different. These days fast-medium men are not content with hitting the seam in good areas, but are determined to reverse swing the cherry and all sorts of other fancy stuff. Let's just hope that should young Reece Topley look in danger of falling into that trap his dad will have a word. Britain is currently choc-a-bloc with stars and legends. Journeymen, however, are in short supply.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/apr/29/cricket-medium-pace-seamer
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