Which brings me to a long-running argument with
Mike Atherton. I wrote that Flintoff was a great cricketer;
he disagreed in print the next day. Cricket people are
obsessed with excellence proven over time: the sport that
can be proved by stats.
So when my turn came round again, I pointed out
that Usain Bolt achieved for-all-time greatness in 9.69
seconds (his time at the Olympic Games in Beijing in
2008) and that Bob Beamon did the same in a single
second with his world-record-shattering long-jump at
the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968.
Flintoff was great for a whole seven weeks. In the
summer of 2005, he was the greatest cricketer on earth.
He was great with the bat and he was great with the
ball; Flintoff’s summer of greatness changed England’s
cricketing history. And it’s the sort of thing that the great
allrounders do.
A few years ago, researching A Book of Heroes, I
wondered if Sobers had ever kept wicket. Tony Cozier,
much taken by the question, kindly asked around for me.
And no one – no one at all could remember seeing Sobers
behind the stumps, though all agreed that had he ever
done so, he would probably have been the fi nest keeper
that ever pulled on a pair of gauntlets.
And that’s a pity, because it would have been nice to
compare him with the recent trend in cricket – in which
the top allrounders are more likely to be wicketkeeper/
batsmen. Adam Gilchrist is generally regarded as the
founding father of the movement, though Alec Stewart
could give him an argument there. (I always thought that
Stewart was the Corporal Jones of cricket, taking every
job on offer: “I would like to volunteer to be the man what
wears those gloves, sir!”)
There have been a good few others, cricketers of the
highest class: MS Dhoni, Brendon McCullum, Dinesh
Karthik, Kumar Sangakkara, and England’s Jonny
Bairstow and Jos Buttler. By no means all of these are
late-order smiters: building an innings in the classic
fashion is in the repertoire of most of these.
It’s a change that might have you worrying about a
terminal decline in the standard of wicketkeeping. What?
Are the people who take wickets getting phased out of
the game? But if you saw Sarfraz Ahmed (batting No.6
for Pakistan against England) standing up to 85mph
bowling to keep Buttler in his crease, you can relax. Some
of the keeping to spin in the IPL is bewilderingly good:
stumpings of a wide dart-ball are routine.
The thing about the great allrounders is that you always
get more than you bargained for. These people want to do
everything – and they don’t stop wanting when the match
is over. They don’t just allow you play an extra bowler
and/or an extra batsman; they kind of take over. They
need to be humoured, loved, made much of, tolerated,
made excuses for, and above all else, forgiven again and
again – and then, when the day comes, they will reward
you with more than you dared to ask for.
They are seldom team players, in the classic sense of
the term: rather they are the sun around which the team
revolves. There’s no point in telling them “it’s not all
about you, you know”. The very concept is alien: of course
it’s about me. What else is the point of it?
They can be insufferable and at the same time, the very
best of people. You get fed up with them and then you fi nd
you not only need them but you want them. They drive
you mad – but they bring you victory. They are the people
who always bring you more. And perhaps these – not
the specialists – are the truly great cricketers, the real
masters of the universe.IAN BOTHAM
5200 runs @ 33.54
383 wkts @ 28.40
GARFIELD SOBERS
8032 runs @ 57.78
235 wkts @ 34.03
KEITH
MILLER2958 runs
@ 36.97
170 wkts
@ 22.97
thecricketer.com | ALLROUNDERS | FEATURE