da aposte e ganhe： Whoa there
da supremo： Lynn McConnell05-Jun-2002Whoa there. Hold your horses.It’s about time a little straightening out was done on the cricket front.That’s to avoid some of the constant re-writing of history that is inadvertently, or perhaps that should be advertently, being done to cricket.Just as some of the great quotations of history are so commonly mashed up, so are some cricket facts.People may foul up Sir Winston Churchill’s famous words as Britain faced invasion in World War Two from the original, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” to the sadly common “blood, sweat and tears”, who were after all, a very good rock group, but not a true representation of Churchill’s fighting talk. But they are wrong.All of which it might be said have nothing whatsoever to do with cricket.Ah, but there you are.It’s the mis-quoting that is the problem.And New Zealand cricket history is being done a serious dis-service by those who would perpetuate the myth that the Sri Lankan batsmen at the 1996 World Cup, bless their hearts, were the originators of the 15-over slog at the start of One-Day Internationals. In their case, Sanath Jayasuriya especially, helped them to a famous World Cup victory.But the facts are quite different.You see four years earlier, a big burly brute by the name of Mark Greatbatch, a batsman who had played a bit of rugby in his time, and another burly bloke, a bit shorter but who had played considerably more rugby, Rod Latham, took to the opposition bowling on several occasions. The North Stand at Eden Park took such a hammering it was pulled down a few years later.Oops sorry! It was pulled down but the Greatbatch-Latham hitting was only partly responsible, well, perhaps minutely.But check out the facts, especially in the games against the South Africans and the West Indies. Greatbatch wasn’t chosen for the two games against Australia and Sri Lanka and only came in when John Wright was injured.There’s no doubting the effectiveness of the Greatbatch-Latham combination. Against South Africa they scored 103 runs in 15 overs!They put on 67 in 11 overs against the West Indies a week later.Greatbatch scored 73 off 77 balls against India and New Zealand were 75/1 after 15 overs.Then followed with 35 off 37 balls against England.Fair chance that a recognisable practise of thrashing in the first 15 overs was well advanced before 1996, wouldn’t you agree?Certainly Greatbatch and Latham were the first successful duo in the art.It could be argued with little opposition that Glenn Turner developed the early assault years before anyone else, even if doing it all by himself, on the English county circuit.Kris Srikkanth started the same process in international matches for India in matches against Sri Lanka in 1982/83, just a month or two before Turner returned to the international scene from which he had been absent since 1979.Turner proceeded to show, in the one-day game what he had been doing in English county cricket for some seasons by toying with bowlers in the first 15 overs during England’s three ODIs tour of New Zealand in 1983 and it continued against Sri Lanka that same season.In his book, ‘Opening Up’ Turner described his approach, “My policy in such games was, when I felt in good nick and the ball looked as if it could be hit, to get after it.”In the first ODI at Auckland, Turner and Bruce Edgar put on 101 runs by the 21st over.In the second at Wellington, they scored 152 by the halfway stage of the innings. Turner scored at a strike of 100.Then in Christchurch, they failed. They scored only 64.In the Auckland match against Sri Lanka, Turner scored 140 off 130 balls at a strike rate of 107.69.But in a magnanimous show of bi-partisanship, all New Zealanders will admit that Australia might even lay claim to the initiation of the policy in one-day games, although it proved a oncer.The second final of the 1982/83 World Series in Melbourne saw Steve Smith and Graeme Wood put on 140 in 24 overs against a Richard Hadlee-less attack to well and truly sink New Zealand.Perhaps that should be enough evidence, or then again it might prove that ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’Sorry, as Alexander Pope originally wrote it, that should be “A little learning is a dangerous thing”.
