Does it really matter?
Alan Gibson
The sight of the England captain opening an England innings at Lord's in a crash helmet of repellent ugliness caused much shaking(=if heads, and what B. Pleydell used to call gernashing of teeth. Even the Sage of Longparish, a staunch supporter of Brearley in the stately columns of The Times, felt that he showed 'no sense of occasion'. Some of the more embittered comments arose, I sasPect, because Brearley, dammit, was supposed to be one of Us —Cambridge man, scholar they say, captain of Middlesex. 'kind of thing you might expect from that feller Greig or that feller Boycott.' But Brearley, no doubt to his own quiet amuseMent, had been the 'establishment' candidate for the captaincy. Coming after the incident of the bouncer at the tail-ender (I hag your pardon, non-recognised batsman) in the previous Test — when Brearley, following the example set in a different context by his predecessor Close, compounded the sin by refusing to apologise — the crash helmet gave a feeling that Mike, though a Pedigree dog and well trained, had bitten his master. Might it not be as well, after all, to have another look at one or two of the Others, even if they were brought up in the Cats and Dogs Home? One felt, last Monday morning, even ,t,hough England were winning the Test easily, that if Boycott were to mend his thumb, Or whatever is troubling him at present, and get some runs; and that if Brearley failed to make a good score soon; and then that if baoycott were to 'let it be known' that he disapproves of crash helmets, the England captaincy in Australia would be an open question again. Then I heard that Brearley had decided against the use of the new-style crash helmet in future — not, you under
stand, that that he disapproved of the principle (he hardly could, since he had patented his Own design) but because he found the new
00e impeded his vision at times. This must have been something of a disappointment
° the manufacturers, but they had had
splendid publicity, and are already selling Models for children, I am told, as worn by
the top cricketers. Nevertheless I admired rearley's timing in making his statement. The same day, according to that reliable
Paper, the Bath and West Evening Chroni cle, Boycott declined to comment upon reports that he might retire. This is why I _think Brearley is a better captain than Boyc.ott: he sizes up a situation more swiftly and Is ready to modify his actions when things go Wrong. I have been reading The Return of the 4,„-viles, by Brearley and Dudley Doust krelham Books £5.50) which tells us a good deal about the man. Of course he did not
need an assistant to write a book, and of course he insists on giving him a full share of the credit, which is characteristic of his hon esty and generosity. The book is a picture book accompanied by a long essay, and both the pictures and the essay are good.
There are some illuminating passages. Dudley Doust, in his introduction to chapter four, recalls how Brearley introduced the crash helmet to cricket (you will hear people talking about Hendren wearing one, but that was only a joke).
'A polythene shell, resembling a scrum cap, covers his vulnerable temple areas and fits snugly under his cricket cap. He and Tony Greig devised the idea. . . Both players, with Bill Swanwick who made it, applied for the patent of the product, had wax moulds made of their heads, but only Brearley followed it up with an actual helmet.' It was much less offensive than the fashionable visored monstrosities.
That was in 1976. A year later, during the third Test, Brearley had dinner with John Arlott and Tony Lewis. John said to him, 'The great thing about you, Mike, is that you are the only England captain who knows it doesn't really matter.' After dinner they were joined by the umpire Dickie Bird. Bird has also recently written a book, in collaboration, minimally acknowledged, with Brian Scovell. (Not Out, Arthur Barker £4.95, which has some interesting umpiring reminiscences, but too much padding.) Brearley writes of Bird: 'My only complaint with him is that he requires a degree of certainty that is almost neurotic, like that of a man who has to keep going back to the front door to make sure he locked it . . . I said to him, half-joking, "Dickie, there is no such thing as absolute certainty, only the certainty that befits the subject. What is certain or accurate for a carpenter is not certain or accurate for a geometer".' Bird agrees, in his book, that he has this passion for certainty. 'I did not spell out in too much detail,' Brearley goes on, 'the relevance of Aristotle's point to lbw
decisions; I was batting the next day and I didn't want him suddenly to adopt less ,exacting standards of certainty.' He has now, apparently, applied the Aristotelian principle to crash helmets.
Brearley was made captain of England, among other reasons, because, it was thought, he knew that it didn't really matter. He describes how he rejected overtures from Mr Packer. He was not quite a good enough cricketer, and he saw promising opportunities of various kinds developing as captain of England. But it was a mistake for the establishment to think that he was one of theirs, simply because he turned down Packer, and was a Cambridge philosopher (a dangerous species at the best of times). Certainly he knows that it does not really matter, in the sense that cricket is only a game, and that a lost Test is not a national disaster. But it also follows from this attitude that some of cricket's traditional values do not really matter either: that if a night-watchman is standing stubbornly in your way you are entitled to bounce him out; that crash helmets are better than cracked heads; that cricketers play for money as well as love, and it is not wicked to like a lot of it.
Still, I hope he remembers that 'This same philosophy is a good horse, but an arrant jade on a journey'. And I hope he soon gets some runs, and then takes England to Australia, for he is A GoodNateur'd Man.
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