A game needs boring. Boring provides ballast and balance; something to moan about and grudgingly admire. It makes top-level sport human as well as righting the moral universe by rewarding dedication and tenacity. And throughout English cricket history the slow, steady and sometimes dull batsman has played an honourable role.
He was there during the Golden Age, there either side of the war. He was there in the 1970s and ’80s when fast men and hairy allrounders dominated. He hung around during the era of the unconventional spinner and held his ground when pinch-hitters advanced. As seasons passed and the baby faces of the young men marching out to bat sprouted moustaches, he, Chris or Geoff remained: dependable, steady as she goes, stoutly and forever patting it back to the bowler.
But things are moving on. As the County Championship eases into a few creaking stretches after a seven-and-a-half-week midsummer break (minus a one-off round in early August to give festival cricket a chance), spare a thought for Andy Umeed of Warwickshire. He made a name for himself in late June with the second-slowest hundred in Championship history – a 429-minute effort against Lancashire in the pink-ball round – but since then has spent his time mostly with the second XI. Spare a thought, too, for Lancashire’s baby Boycott, Haseeb Hameed, who at last managed a fruitful first-class outing – 77 not out against Hampshire in the lone August game – and then had to wait three weeks for some meaningful cricket to press his case, probably too late now, to be taming the timorous butterflies in the dressing room at The Gabba in late November.
For while their team-mates have been hammering the ball into the stratosphere in the T20 Blast the anchor men have been stewing away in the nets without an audience, blocking, blocking and blocking again, groove right out of sync. The rejigging of the season means the old rhythm of the Championship – the wet fog of April, the rains of May, the endless days of June, the baked sandpits of July and August and the dog days of September – is no more. That once purple patch in the school holidays is now a wasteland for the first-class specialist.
And when in three years’ time the new T20 competition is introduced, to run alongside the Blast, with eight new teams playing 36 games in a 38-day summer window, he will have even more reason to feel inadequate as he endlessly fills the drinks tray for his more muscle-bound colleagues.
The question is, does it matter to anyone apart from us old romantics who enjoyed cricket having space for the solid woodchopper as well as the prince dandy? The spectator appeal was always niche even within a game as forgiving as cricket. An innings like Alastair Cook’s 243 at Edgbaston, and to some extent Kraigg Brathwaite’s 134 at Headingley, shows there is still a place for old-fashioned efforts – but they are not going to be kept alive by a plethora of Test mismatches, in which the weaker team flails away and the stronger one brings in the bulldozers.
With the current speed of Test cricket will anyone care if the blocker vanishes, even if it means losing the odd game here or there? And if slow batting is no longer much needed or valued in Tests perhaps there is little point in players polishing it to perfection at county level. And therefore little point in counties investing in it, especially given the other temptations.
Cook has continued to thrive, batting today much as he did five years ago, serenely indifferent to the winds of change. His 856-minute 263 against Pakistan in 2015 was the longest innings in English Test history, giving him two innings in the all-time top 10. But even relieved of the burden of captaincy he cannot go on forever.
And when he tidies away the pads for the final time will he mark the end of the line, the closing down of the sepia factory? No one quite knows, neither player nor fan, as the English game enters a period of flux with different formats jostling for position and Test cricket stretching well into September. There is always hope. When T20 cricket started, spinners thought they would be left twiddling their thumbs but managed to find a role, piling on the pressure at one end and getting people caught on the boundary. However, it is difficult to see how the blocker can reinvent himself so easily and keep July and August as meaningful months on the calendar.
So for the final rounds of the Championship, as late summer pulls on the overcoat of early autumn, wish those sticky barnacles hard pitches and unseasonal sun. Wish them luck and courage. And cherish them while you can. Boring? It is the new pink.
• This is an extract taken from The Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
