A friend, a particularly mordant romantic, reckons the saddest thing about first-class cricket’s frantic attempts to ‘get with it’ — and appeal to everybody except those who love it dearly already — is that each team’s scorer is now ordered by Lord’s to use computer laptops to notch the runs and wickets. Leisurely, lovingly inking-into the summer’s book the ones and twos, the dots and dashes, the w’s, the c’s and b’s, the lb’s and st’s are all now strictly banned by St John’s Wood decree. Not only that; this summer, by all accounts, is the first in which not one of the 18 county sides employs a scorer who was once a player himself. All press-button boffins now.
Just before Christmas the sudden death of good Mike Smith signalled the end of the touching and timeless ritual of the stalwart county pro who soldiers on for the love of the cause by notching every run, wicket and leg-bye in the county’s almost sacred scorebook.
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