Cricket: Cavaliers pass on their wisdom

There's an old saying: 'Old cricketers never die, they just develop an extra cover.' Usually around the midriff, it means. It's a pointer to a graceful game from which first-class players past their best gracefully melt away, slipping into a comfortable retirement in the knowledge that they can no longer do what they once did.

Well, not a bit of it. Not for the Cavaliers side anyway. This collection of former New Zealand, Auckland and Northern Districts representatives can still be found on the cricket pitches of Auckland. But this time it's not about them or their cricket careers - it's about young cricketers on the way up.

The Cavaliers, captained and organised by former Auckland skipper and club cricket identity Bill 'Chook' Fowler, play secondary school teams and age-group representative sides around Auckland. The idea is to pass on the knowledge and skills of some of the finest cricketers from this part of the country to those who may one day follow in their batting and bowling footsteps.

Fowler, the rollicking batsman and handy left-arm spinner who played for Auckland during the 80s, is now 46 and was taken with the idea of a Cavaliers side after turning out for a Northern Districts version put together by long-time pal and Northern batsman Barry Cooper.

The idea snowballed and Fowler now has over 30 former first-class cricketers on his Cavaliers database, including New Zealand players Trevor Franklin, Dipak Patel, Danny Morrison, Phil Horne, Mark Richardson, Mark Burgess, Justin Vaughan, Warren Stott and Bryan Young; and former Auckland reps like Austin Parsons, Steve Brown, Martin Pringle, Tom Hellaby, Alan Hunt, Paul Kelly, Phil Haydon, Richard Drown, Nigel Scott and more.

If you've started to get the idea that this is just an old boys' club, invented so the participants can relive their glory days and find an excuse for a beer, better listen first to Fowler: "We can't bat like we could, we can't bowl like we could, we can't field, we can't sprint and we can't throw. No one is out there trying to show we can still do it or to prove a point. We've done all that."

So it's not about personal gratification. But it is about transference of skills. Fowler recalls a conversation with a member of a school First XI the Cavaliers had just beaten.

"I asked him how come a team like us had beaten them. I said we were all old, unfit and slow - so how did we win? His answer was spot on. He said: 'Because you guys all know the art of cricket."'

That's the nub of the Cavaliers' philosophy. It's also partly about winning. They might be 'formers' but there's nothing former about their will to win. In the three years the Cavaliers have been playing, they have lost only one match - to St Kentigern's College last year.

At one of the matches, against Kings College, the Cavaliers were able to field four former New Zealand openers - Franklin, Young, Horne and Richardson.

The Cavaliers play the game and then get together with the secondary schoolboys after the match to discuss what they did and how they did it. "The game itself is just a platform for the discussions afterwards," said Fowler. "That is where the real value is added."

Two names often crop up in Fowler's conversation when it comes to the difficult assignment of passing on the "art" of cricket - former New Zealand allrounder Dipak Patel and Auckland stalwart Warren Stott.

Patel, the Worcestershire and Auckland batsman and wily off-spinner, played 37 tests and 75 one-day internationals and is now 47. Still coaching cricket, it was 20 years ago that Patel gave this writer one of his most pleasant cricket coverage memories with a faultless 180 of great class on a rock-hard Lancaster Park pitch. He put mighty Canterbury to the sword with a languid grace quite beyond the block-and-bash stuff so often seen in New Zealand.

"Dipak scored 60-odd against one of the First XIs," said Fowler. "It was a beautiful knock. Everything along the ground, ones and twos, a fine example of placement and technique. It wasn't what he scored, it was how he scored them. I said to the kids afterwards that what they had just witnessed was worth more than 10 years of First XI cricket.

"Anyone can slog 60 to win a match, although you need a lot of luck. But this was all about how you build an innings, place the ball and work out the bowlers and field."

'Stotty' is now coming up to 59 and is remembered as one of the most diligent of warhorses. Never a big man and never a bullying bowler, Stott relied on subtlety and brains and his medium-pacers were delivered for Auckland between 1969 and 1984 in a career that saw him take 214 first-class wickets and 50 one-day wickets at a strike rate of 33.92.

Stott never attained the national recognition his first-class career might have earned him - his single ODI appearance seems scant reward for his skill - but generations of batsmen can recall facing 'Stotty', thinking he wasn't up to much and then finding themselves on the way back to the pavilion.

"Stotty is the one who's lost the least pace," said Fowler drily, a reflection on the fact that the genial Stott had little to lose in the first place. "But I heard him saying to one team that there were two things a bowler must do."

The first was to work out exactly where each batsman had that point which triggers doubt in his mind about whether to move forward or backward to the ball. Every batsman has such a "doubt zone", most in different spots.

"Stotty said the bowler had to work out where that spot was, probing and examining and working it out. That was the first thing. The second was to bowl every ball there."

While the aim is to use skilled, personable old pros like the ever-enthusiastic Stott to pass on some of cricket's finer points to young hopefuls, Fowler admits, with a grin: "We get as much out of it as the kids do. It's great to be out there playing, renewing old friendships and passing things on to a new generation."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY