The first day of the final Test is over, and it seems like honours even. As I leave the ground, with the high cloud still overhead, like many South African supporters, I worry about day two. There’s a song in my head from the musical Annie that I can’t dislodge: “The sun’ll come out, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun!” with the closing lines “The sun’ll come out, tomorrow, So you gotta hang on ’til tomorrow, Come what may…”
That may have explained the anguished look on Ryan Rickelton’s face when he was the first of four batters to be dismissed in just six balls by searing yorkers from Mitchell Starc. It may have been a portent of doom from the Proteas’ Wicketkeeper/Batter.
Day 2 is set to be sunny, and I pen this opening stanza just after I see a tiny portion of the bold face of Table Mountain from my lounge window. It’s going to be a batting day at Newlands, methinks. Oh, why could South Africa have not held on ‘til tomorrow?
Arriving about an hour before the start, I get fuelled up with coffee and head out to chat to some of the fans on the Western side of the ground. The sun is beating down and the crowd is relieved to have the cooling South-Easter funnelled around the President’s pavilion. The consensus is clear from the fans, it looks like a good day to bat. Like me they bemoan the batting collapses that cost South Africa dearly on day 1.
The other thing they all agree on is that this is a magnificent place to come and watch cricket. Irrespective of what happens on the field, they are ready to have a great day. I come across a group with matching T-Shirts. They have a picture of theirlate friend Richard Webb emblazoned across the front, complete with logo “Rich the Legend” and the bespectacled Richard, gazing at me with his Proteas Floppy and Shirt. They are here to honour their friend, and whether it is a batting day or a bowling day, it’s Richard’s day.
On a batting morning, Australia’s openers take them to 50/0, or 0/50 if you are from Adelaide, as are the gentlemen I speak to in front of the Snakepit building, which is to the right of the large electronic scoreboard. They are having a wonderful time in Cape Town, enjoying the Test and the time they are spending here.
They were sitting in the North Stand on day 1, and their faces bear the resemblance of those who did not apply essential sunscreen, to which they admit. They didn’t enjoy session one, but they loved the last half hour. It gets me thinking about yorkers, to which South Africa succumbed.
This is a topic close to the hearts of the fast bowlers’ club. I am reminded during my pre-tea visit to Anthony Telfer, founder of Spirit of Cricket in Australia, that Garth le Roux was lamenting the demise of the yorker as an offensive weapon. (OK, they were particularly offensive yesterday if you are South African…)
I dig out some info on the term, as cricketing lingo fascinates the nerd in me. There are several theories as to the origin, all of which unsurprisingly come from the county of Yorkshire. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it could be thatbowlers from the county used the delivery often, so it became known as a “Yorkshire-style delivery” before being shortened to “yorker”.
The hidden rogue in me prefers the second explanation, which is that it originated from 18th- and 19th-century slang. The yesteryear phrase “to pull a Yorkshire” or the verb “to york”meant to trick, cheat, or deceive someone. The Australian villain Mitchell Starc used his skill to execute the perfect actsof deception and trapped the handsome South African princes with his trickery.
Google also tells me that the delivery was also called a tice, which is a shortened form of entice, as it lured the batter forward, only to either get their toes tickled or their stumps uprooted.
The decision of the jury is unanimous when it comes to the “yorker”. It is a devilish delivery, bedecked with deceptionand devoid of decency. You have to love it.
What of other fiendish fireballs that batters have to deal with? The beamer springs to mind. The history is less colourful than the yorker, and more direct, like the delivery itself. It apparently takes its name from a beam of light, and first came into cricket’s terminology in the 1950’s.
The more subtle art of spin-bowling has spawned some of its own standouts. The slider is one of those. The concept is not new in cricket. Richie Benaud’s “sliding topspinner” was such a delivery, a variation which would come on to the batter quicker, and without the regular leg-spin or the googly (more of this later)
Some believe that the slider in baseball also had some influence on the naming of cricket’s delivery, with a slider there being a pitch that looks standard but deviates at the last minute. The link is in the deception of being the same out of the hand.
The late legend Shane Warne made the slider a household name. He could strike fear into the hearts of any batter with a normal leg-spinner, let alone his variations.
Our last variation is that most fearsome weapon in a leg-spinner’s arsenal, the googly. Its etymology is also varied dependent on the hemisphere. The variation itself is attributed to the English bowler Bernard Bosanquet in or around 1900. The most likely explanation of the name is that its origin is from the word Goggle (meaning to roll the eyes or stare in astonishment). The “googly” can leave a batter “goggle-eyed” in surprise as it goes the other way (the wrong’un).
The crowd hasn’t seen any yorkers, sliders, beamers or googlies on day 2. They are enjoying their day out in the sun, which will also be out tomorrow.
