Cheer up Nick, it could have been worse
Looks like the end, then, for Nick Compton. The final acts of his short England career being the few pieces of fielding he did in between all the squalls and showers on the fifth day of the third Test. His last innings was late on Saturday afternoon. Promoted to open in Alastair Cook’s absence, he made 19. Another disappointing knock but one which at least included three fine shots – a cut, a clip, and a drive. As the sage Scyld Berry wrote in the Telegraph the next day, there are worse ways to go than by middling a few sweet strokes for four on a sunny Saturday at Lord’s, before being applauded off by a sympathetic crowd. You hope Compton, when he looks back, will be able to appreciate that.
The final few weeks of Compton’s Test career have been hard enough to watch – and harder still, you imagine, for him to live through. He has looked so flatfooted and is so obviously out of form – without a single score of 50 or more since the first innings of the first Test against South Africa at Durban last year. Compton was selected for this series, they say, largely because of James Taylor’s sudden retirement and Trevor Bayliss’s admirable belief that it’s always better to give a player one Test too many than one too few. It was an unexpected opportunity, and one Compton was unable to take advantage of.
Some were baffled that the selectors had taken what looked like a backward step, picking a 32-year-old who had done nothing to prove he had improved since the winter. So even before Compton had played his first innings of the series, he was coming under pressure from the public and press. And then he was dismissed for a duck, done by a good ball from Dasun Shanaka. England won by an innings, so his next knock was in the second Test, where he threw a wild pull and was wonderfully caught by Suranga Lakmal at deep square leg. In the second innings Compton’s unbeaten 22 in a small total on a flattening track passed almost unnoticed.
Instead, everyone was talking. “I think a couple of scores back to back and he will be off and running,” said Paul Farbrace before the last match. “I can certainly relate to Nick feeling on edge, with the increased scrutiny about his position,” added Mark Ramprakash. “He knows he needs a score,” chipped in Alastair Cook. So the pressure grew. One more dismissal, caught behind for one in the first innings, and word spread that Scott Borthwick was soon going to be called up unless Compton could save his career in England’s second innings.
This, as Cook said, is just the nature of the game. “There’s always one person people are clamouring for their place. This is what happens in international cricket, why it’s different to county cricket, that external pressure.” The point isn’t that Compton has been especially hard done by, only that his season has provided another reminder of what a hard and unforgiving game Test cricket can be, how exposed the players sometimes are.
In fact, with 16 caps, Compton is comfortably among the more decorated of the 670 men who have played for England; 489 of them didn’t win so many. A majority played at a time when England didn’t have nearly so many games but still, Compton has won more caps than a number of his immediate predecessors, men such as Rob Key, Chris Read and Dean Headley. And his contemporaries too. Sixteen is the same number of caps as Eoin Morgan, one more than Gary Ballance, who may yet get another shot, three more than Ravi Bopara, who won’t. And there are those, including Compton’s old Somerset team-mate James Hildreth, who have never been given a chance to play for England at all.
If they’re ever sharing bad luck stories in the bar, Compton’s will pale when set next to those of, say, Steve James. James played two games, the second of them after a late call-up the day before the Test. It came just as his wife was going into labour with their first child. James travelled up to London, batted for two hours against Muttiah Muralitharan, made 36, raced back to Cardiff after stumps, saw the birth, stayed overnight, then returned to The Oval. Then his best mate, as he says, was arrested after “overindulging on the hospitality ticket” James had provided. James batted for another three hours against Murali in the second innings, walked after gloving a catch and was never picked again.
So you hope that for Compton, when this first flush of disappointment has faded – and last time he was dropped he said he felt like he’d been dumped by a girlfriend with no explanation – he will think fondly of all he achieved in the time he had. The fact is he was part of an England team who won series in India and South Africa and that his steadfast batting helped shape both victories. The opening stand of 165 he shared with Cook in England’s victory at Eden Gardens, the eight hours he batted against Steyn and Morkel in the win at Durban. And the back-to-back centuries he took off New Zealand in Dunedin and Wellington.
Because English cricketers are a little like politicians, in that, as Enoch Powell had it, more often than not their careers end in failure. And in time, it’s not the manner of the ending that matters, so much as the things they achieved along the way.
• This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. To subscribe just visit this page, find ‘The Spin’ and follow the instructions.
