Two for the Price of One: Fave All-rounders

Unearthing a genuine all-rounder is akin to finding the holy grail. I’m not talking about someone who can merely bat and bowl a bit, smash a quick thirty and strangle the middle-overs scoring rate in an ODI. Nor am I concerned with Twenty20 where anyone who can slog to ‘cow corner’ and deliver a ‘dot ball’ is hailed as an all-rounder. No, I’m referring to those rare treasures capable of holding down a place in a first-class cricket Eleven as both a batsman and bowler.

That is a mighty tough criterion to satisfy. In England, Ian Botham is often held up as a world-class all-rounder. Statistically that may be true but, in the second half of his career, he was little more than a medium-pacer living off the glories of the 1978-81 era. Although he played several years for Somerset, ‘Beefy’ was never a favourite of mine. To be honest, neither were any of those subsequently touted, however briefly and with fingers firmly crossed, as ‘The New Botham’. David Capel, Chris Lewis, Dominic Cork, Ronnie Irani, Adam Hollioake, Craig White, Mark Alleyne and now the Curran brothers were, or are, fine county players. Some, like Paul Collingwood, enjoyed lengthy international careers but I’d hardly describe him as a Test cricket all-rounder.

In the modern game of short boundaries and long hitting, Ben Stokes is the nearest we have come to that elusive target. The problem is that not only can he strike a double-century, bowl at 90mph and pull off miraculous catches but also packs a mean punch on a boozy night out. His face seems frozen into a perma-sneer. It doesn’t endear him to me one jot. So who have been the all-rounders to win me over?

Thirty years before Jacques Kallis blew previous Test all-rounder records out of the water, I was transfixed by Garry Sobers. I only really saw him play in his late thirties, whether in the Sunday League for Nottinghamshire or for the West Indies on tour here in 1973, but he was always worth watching. His left-arm pace bowling action was surprisingly ugly and yet he wielded the blade with languid ease. His 8,032 Test run aggregate lasted throughout my teenage years before Geoff Boycott surpassed it, and I wish I could have seen him in his prime.

I’ve already raved about Mike Procter who, while prevented by South Africa’s isolation, graced the county game with Gloucestershire. During the Seventies he produced some superb innings and could bowl both at high speed – off the wrong foot - and off-spin. At the start of that decade an Oxford undergraduate began to make a name in the English game and went on to become the finest all-rounder of his generation. Imran Khan wasn’t your typical cricketer, and his playboy proclivities didn’t chime with my idea of a sporting idol. Nevertheless, he scored thirty first-class centuries and was a superb swing and seam bowler whose near 1,800 career wickets were achieved at under 23 apiece. His action was a dream and so was the way he capped a 22-year spell with Pakistan by winning the 1992 World Cup.

Imran’s protégé Wasim Akram’s bowling action was very different. It seemed innocuous at the point of release but then the batsman often didn’t know what hit him, either metaphorically or physically.  I also enjoyed watching him bat but it was as a limited-overs bowler that he excelled. No other paceman has more than his 502 ODI victims.

However, I actually preferred another Pakistan stalwart from the Seventies, Asif Iqbal. He neither ripped up the record books, bowled at fearsome pace nor blazed brutally with the bat, but it was the calm elegance he exuded which appealed to me. I saw little of him representing Pakistan but he achieved a lot of success with Kent in their heyday and was one of the most recognisable players on the circuit.

There have been many other high-quality all-rounders, of course. Kapil Dev was one of the very best in the Eighties, while in more recent times there have been Shane Watson, Shahid Afridi, Ravi Jadeja and Bangladesh’s one-man band Shakib al-Hasan, the latter three being members of the slow bowling fraternity. I used to like Moeen Ali. when he was just a stylish left-hander, but his forced conversion into frontline spinner has sadly somewhat diminished his batting and consequently his all-round credentials.

Other multi-talented home cricketers have caught my eye over the years. The big-bellied boozers Ians Blackwell and Austin copied the ‘beefy’ physique of Botham but without quite emulating his feats on the pitch. I also recall hearing the Chelmsford chants of “Ronnie Irani’s Barmy Army” greeting the popular Essex man in the Nineties. Personally I wasn’t a fan of his, but have to admit his charisma earned him considerable rapport with spectators, even the good-humoured Aussies.

Two decades earlier, Stuart Turner was another Essex stalwart but his near-14,000 runs and 1,300 wickets were not considered sufficient to warrant international recognition. Trevor Jesty was even more unfortunate not to win an England Test cap given his superior batsmanship. I mainly remember him representing his native Hampshire but continued to score runs for Surrey and Lancashire into his forties.

Someone who is still producing eye-catching performances in his fifth decade is Darren Stevens. I’ve only really admired him in the past half a dozen years when he has defied the ageing process by consistently clubbing runs in all formats for Kent, allied to nagging medium-paced seam and swing which in 2017 netted 62 Championship wickets at 18 apiece. I bumped into him at Membury Services a few summers ago,. At first I didn’t recognise the unremarkable figure in natty leather cap, tweed jacket and greying stubble, resembling a trusty gamekeeper rather than a brilliant county cricketer. He’d never fit in with the England set-up but what a player!

Chris Woakes has at least more than a hundred international appearances to his name but his batting and bowling record for Warwickshire indicates that he should have many, many more. His Test averages are on a par with Andrew Flintoff’s, yet he remains woefully under-rated. He’s nudging thirty but continues to look a lanky twelve so with luck and lack of injury he may yet regain a regular spot. I hope so.

I couldn’t review my list of fave all-rounders without revisiting Somerset and selecting Peter Trego. Since returning to the West Country, this son of Weston-Super-Mare has become a cult hero. His whizz-bang batting has won many a match in all three formats while even in his mid-thirties was carrying an injury-plagued attack in the Championship. He even blazed a trail by sporting an ugly ‘sleeve’ tattoo before it became fashionable. At 37, he still earns a crust around the world but, even with white ball only, hopefully there’ll be further prolific summers at Taunton, too.

Overseas Inspirations

At the start of each year, county cricket club websites are full of excited reports raving about their new overseas signing for the forthcoming T20 Blast or maybe three Championship games in May. Rolling my eyes at such promotional puff I recall the days when many of the world's biggest stars would appear for the same county, year after year, April to September, first-class fixtures and one-dayers.

Long before I was born, overseas players would extend their earning period by signing as a professional in the Yorkshire or Lancashire leagues. This continued well into the Eighties – imagine taking guard at say, Haslingden, watching Rishton’s Michael Holding steaming in towards you! – but I feel fortunate that my initiation into the joys of cricket coincided with a golden era of international cricketers on the county circuit.

It was probably no coincidence at all. In the early Seventies, watching live coverage of one-dayers, especially the Sunday League, I was thrilled by the performances of the overseas recruits. Most of them were West Indians or Pakistanis, who seemed to play a different way from the home-grown contingent. It’s cricket, Jim, but not as we know it. The Caribbean crew in particular seemed to boast the fastest bowlers, most athletic fielders and finest strokemakers. Watching the likes of Clive Lloyd (Lancashire), Roy Fredericks (Glamorgan), Alvin Kallicharran (Warwickshire) and Vanburn Holder (Worcestershire) also meant I didn’t have to wait four years for the next West Indies tour to enjoy their unique approach to the sport. I vividly recall the black and white images of Nottinghamshire’s Garfield Sobers at Swansea heaving poor Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over in 1968.

It wasn’t just about telly. At my first taste of live cricket in May 1975, it was the batting of Somerset’s Viv Richards and fielding of Essex’s Keith Boyce which made the greatest impression on me. Later that summer, I became engrossed in the inaugural Prudential World Cup, noting that many of the biggest names were already on the county scene. If they weren’t at that stage, I wouldn’t have long to wait.

They weren’t the modern day ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ contracts either. Lloyd, Richards, Kalli, Greenidge, Walsh, Marshall and Zaheer Abbas each represented their respective counties for a decade or more. With none of today’s distractions of year-round T20 tourneys and short ODI series, they racked up career tallies of first-class runs and wickets which dwarf those of current Test superstars. Boosted by their prolific seasons at Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Northants, Courtney Walsh, Malcolm Marshall and Bishan Bedi each retired with well over 1,500 first-class scalps to their names. At the time of writing, Dale Steyn has a mere 612, and even the perennially fit Jimmy Anderson remains ninety short of the thousand landmark.

Throughout my life I haven’t attended a huge volume of county matches but I’ve been lucky to have witnessed some superb international players in action, even if they weren’t necessarily at their best. In addition to the incomparable Viv and Joel Garner for Somerset, Essex used to feature batsmen of the quality of Andy Flower, South African Ken McEwan and Aussies Allan Border, Mark Waugh and Stuart Law.

Other personal highlights have been the giant Sarfraz Nawaz bowling for Northants and Younis Ahmed’s resounding crack of an off drive for Surrey in ’76  (it resonates in my mind still), the jaw-dropping pace of Warwickshire’s Allan Donald (bowling second change) at Ilford in ’95 and Mike Procter almost singlehandedly saving Gloucestershire against Somerset at Bath in ’81. I’m glad he failed in the end!

My favourite Procter moment, however, was when he destroyed Dad’s beloved Hampshire in a 1977 B&H Cup semi-final, this time with his pace bowling. It must have been the first time I’d seen a hat-trick. Had South Africa not been isolated by their country’s political apartheid abomination, Procter would surely have gone down as one of the greatest ever all-rounders. His compatriot Barry Richards was similarly disadvantaged but he and Gordon Greenidge (below) formed for several years the county game’s most formidable opening partnership.

In subsequent decades, other Southern Africans opted to seek international cricket with England by serving their seven-year county apprenticeship to achieve residential status. Allan Lamb, Graeme Hick and Kevin Pietersen spring to mind. It’s not all about traditional Test playing nations, either. I recall in the ‘80s/’90s the extremely economical Danish seamer Ole Mortensen for Derbyshire and Somerset’s profligate Dutchman, Adrian van Troost promoting the European Union.

Imran Khan graced the county circuit for many years, too, first with Sussex then Worcestershire, by which time Pakistan’s Wasim Akram (Lancs) and Waqar Younis (Surrey and Glamorgan) were also on these shores. Banned rebel West Indian Frankly Stephenson twice achieved the 1000 runs/100 wickets double for Notts in 1988 and 1989. In the Nineties, it was against Durham at Edgbaston that Brian Lara stunned the world with his record-breaking 501 not out, and two decades later with Surrey that both Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara opted to end their first-class careers, the latter in stunning style in 2017.

In more recent times, county fortunes have often been galvanised by the arrival of foreign internationals. Mushtaq Ahmed’s leg-spin transformed Somerset and especially Sussex for whom he helped win two Championship titles. Shane Warne’s overall aura and astute captaincy gave Hampshire impetus in the Noughties, and the veteran Ottis Gibson bowled Durham to success. Several Aussies, unable to break into a formidable Baggy Green batting line-up, also proved influential over here, notably Stuart Law, Michael di Venuto and Chris Rogers, while Michael Klinger’s batting and leadership took Gloucestershire to T20 glory.  

All this brings me back to the current fetish for ultra-brief stints by the likes of Muralitharan, McCullum and Gilchrist, plus jobbing Twenty20 specialists such as Dirk Nannes, Aaron Finch, Kieron Pollard and the Sultan of Sixes himself, Chris Gayle. These stars undoubtedly help shift season tickets and advance Blast sales. Unfortunately, when in 2015 Somerset snapped up the Jamaican, the biggest star of them all, it proved to be a bittersweet experience. In the January, it was revealed he’d made good on a three-year promise to join the county for a maximum of six T20 fixtures. Six games! Yippee! He was certainly a huge draw and demonstrated the right attitude towards promotional appearances in schools, etc.

On the pitch, too, Chris Gayle fulfilled the hype with devastating innings at Taunton, even if his 151 not out against Kent wasn’t enough to win the match. If only I’d crippled the visitors’ team bus the day before at Membury Services maybe the result would have been different! Sadly he decided that three matches were enough and duly buggered off. Remember that “maximum of” prefix to the six? He did return to play what must have been an exhausting five matches the following June but with considerably less impact.

It's all a far cry from those dizzying days of Asif Iqbal, Farokh Engineer, Glenn Turner and Sylvester Clarke, who’d delight county crowds week in week out. And when they weren’t representing a county, such cricketing celebs would also grace our grounds as part of their respective country’s tour schedules, which deserves a blog entry of its own.