Kevin Pietersen power show a reminder of Ted Dexter’s outrageous dominance
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Version 0 of 1. It was about three weeks ago in Barbados when Mike Atherton’s phone rang and he heard a voice, a little reedy now, but familiar to him. “It’s Edward Dexter here.” As an England captain at the time, Athers knows Ted Dexter, then chairman of selectors, as well as anyone of his generation. They would talk batting together and now he wanted to do so again. Ted had been watching Jonathan Trott bat, he said, and noted the way in which he was almost throwing himself behind the ball, with his momentum carrying him forwards as well, so that he was almost forced to bring his bat around his front pad and across the line of the ball. Please tell him, was Ted’s message, that you do not get behind the ball, you get “alongside” it. That way, he said, the bat can come down straight. Ted has always been an advocate of the truism that whether batting or bowling, cricket should be a side-on game. It was sound advice that he was offering, and typical of the man from whom it came. Related: Andrew Strauss insists on new England coach accepting stance on Kevin Pietersen Anyone who has ever spent any time with Ted will understand just how utterly absorbed he can be in the technicalities of sport. At a cricket match, no conversation can ever pass without him adopting a batting stance and demonstrating the fundamental theories of batsmanship that he believes stand the test of time irrespective of the advances the game has made in its approach. But then catch up with him at a golf tournament, and, as one of the most talented amateur golfers ever to play cricket, he will be expounding his latest swing changes. During his time as chairman of selectors, Ted was a figure increasingly lampooned as an eccentric, talking about the alignment of the planets as a reason for England’s failure (he was being jocular), or the smog in Kolkata (a serious issue actually, as any asthma sufferer will verify), which totally missed the point of his sporting intellect. He has always been absorbing company. I thought of Ted this week for several reasons. Firstly, last Friday, 15 May, arguably the most charismatic England cricketer of his time was 80 years old, a man so rounded that he played two sports, cricket and golf, to an extremely high standard; piloted his family to Australia in a light aircraft; stood for Parliament in Cardiff South East as a Tory candidate in the 1964 general election, and came out honourably well in a safe Labour seat against James Callaghan; and, with Sue, his model wife, was part of a celebrity couple (sadly, I still remember his advert for Noilly Prat, which apparently he drank “when the Dexters meet their friends at the Europa”). But the other reason came as the Kevin Pietersen saga continues. Now whatever one’s views on Pietersen and his place in the England team (and there really is no grey area on this one, we all know) he is unequivocally, in my estimation, the most captivating batsman I have seen playing for England, more so even than David Gower, who takes some beating. I can still hark back not so much to his great centuries – Oval, Colombo, Mumbai, Headingley – but instead to the eight deliveries he faced from Dale Steyn in Barbados during the 2010 World T20, in which he eviscerated the finest fast bowler on the planet. It was a snapshot demonstration of power and panache such as I had not seen. In fact, no England batsman has been capable of such a demolition job in half a century or more: not since Ted was in his pomp in fact. Ted could hit the ball harder than anyone else in the game, brutal through the offside some of whose drives, wrote the journalist William Donaldson, through his spoof Henry Root Letters, would “loosen the balls on a rhino”. Full bore, full follow through, capable of colossal hitting into the tennis courts at Adelaide, or straight almost out of the old MCG. It is 52 years now since Frank Worrell brought his West Indies team to England, with the formidable pace duo of Wes Hall, plus the controversial Charlie Griffith, whom many, Ted and Ken Barrington included, believed to be a chucker. Under Ted’s leadership, England were well beaten at Old Trafford in the first Test, after which West Indies went to Hove to play his county Sussex, who were bowled out for 59 in the first innings. Griffith was ferocious. In the second innings, Ted announced that he alone would take Griffith where possible, and did so with such brutality that he made 103 in two and a half hours. A week later at Lord’s, came a magnificent Test match, memorable in its climax for the sight of Colin Cowdrey, arm broken by Hall and in plaster, emerging to stand as non-striker so that David Allen could play out the final over and save the match. But it was Ted who lit up the match in the first innings, going in at two for one wicket, and tearing not just into Griffith once more, but Hall as well, making 70 out of 100, from 75 balls and in only 82 minutes. “I was quite certain as to what I was going to try to do,” Ted has said. “I had no intention of being an Aunt Sally for Hall and Griffith and I decided to strike back, top gear from the start.” On the radio, John Arlott, watching him reach 50 in 48 minutes, was at his finest: “There is about Dexter,” he purred, “when he chooses to face fast bowling with determination, a sort of air of command that lifts him, or seems to lift him, above ordinary players. He seems to find time to play the fastest of bowling and still retain dignity, something near majesty, as he does it.” Such words for such a player. Happy birthday Ted. |