| On Monday 21st April Cranleigh School hosted the MCC’s ‘Spirit of Cricket’ Schools’ evening through the recently launched Cranleigh Foundation and in association with fund managers Artemis. A huge amount of planning by Cranleigh School’s cricket coach Stuart Welch, Foundation Director David Johnston, School Governor Richard Johnson and Jeremy Cowdrey was rewarded by the enthusiasm of the audience of young (and older) cricketers from a wide range of schools as well as members of the Cranleigh Village club. Over forty South of England schools in total were represented with Wasim Khan’s ‘Chance to Shine’ programme helping to boost the attendance from state school cricketers. Cranleigh School pupil Seren Waters (a cricketer who is on the Surrey County Cricket Club’s ‘Emerging Players’ programme) welcomed the host Chris Cowdrey, who spoke of his pride in the achievement of his father Colin in setting out a vision for the spirit of cricket with Ted Dexter, which was incorporated into the actual laws of the game. Graham stressed the key role the captain plays in any team’s playing the game in the right spirit and stressed the concept of ‘respect’.
The evening was a great success despite Middlesex captain Ed Smith being taken ill on the journey from London and Monty Panesar’s car being banged into just a mile short of the School! Graham Cowdrey stood in for the indisposed Ed Smith and spoke to the packed audience in the Cranleigh School Speech Hall about his recent experience at the IPL in India, seeing a full house of 50,000 watching a game in Bangalore. He commented that it was especially encouraging in a time of the game’s increasing popularity that so many great players were signing up to the concept of the spirit of cricket and thus acting as role models to young players throughout the world.
His thoughts were echoed by two great England spin bowlers, past and present: England’s national selector (and former vice-captain) Geoff Miller and Monty Panesar. In the lavish souvenir programme Sunil Gavaskar wrote of Panesar being ‘a wonderful example to budding cricketers’ and how he, like Geoff Miller let ‘the ball do the talking.’ Members of the audience were able to put questions to the panel and one of these focused on the increase of ‘sledging’ in the modern game, something the panel felt should be clamped down on at junior level by umpires and which is specifically condemned in the Spirit of Cricket, published as a Preamble to the Laws of Cricket and reproduced in the programme. This publication also featured personal messages from such luminaries as England captain Michael Vaughan and the Rt Hon. Sir John Major.
Before the questions to the panel the audience were entertained by Geoff Miller’s famous anecdotes which helped emphasise how much cricket is made special by its rich history and colourful characters and that there was a danger of the modern game being so intense that the spirit of the game can be overshadowed by fierce competitiveness. However, one of the questions to the panel asked whether the antagonism in some recent Test series was any worse than in the past, citing the infamous ‘Bodyline’ tests.
The young cricketers in the audience were asked to ponder further on what is really meant by the Sprit of Cricket and how this can still be compatible with hard, competitive sport. Cranleigh School Head Guy Waller ended this special evening with a vote of thanks and hoped that it would “do much towards achieving the goal of all school cricket coaches: to instil in young cricketers all that is important in this, the greatest of games.”
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