Our club’s ethos is that our ideal game at Middleton Stoney CC is one which goes to the last possible over with all results possible (win, lose, draw, tie) and which we then win.

On Sunday, local rivals Steeple Aston won the toss and put us into bat. To their credit, they bowled and fielded through an hour of drizzle but we then lost twenty minutes or so when rain forced the players into the pavilion. David Lewis was simultaneously waiting to bat, taking his turn at umpiring and making a bid for our photo of the season award when he captured the atmosphere at the resumption in the image above. It was difficult to pick up the pace of our innings, given the conditions after the break. I asked the opposition captain if we could have a five minute delay to tea. He agreed and I declared on 198 for 5, twenty or thirty runs short of the total we would have liked to set such strong opposition.

We play timed or declaration matches but there must be at least 20 overs in the last hour. Steeple Aston raced ahead of the target until they only needed 20 runs from the last five overs and eventually three from the last one. I was mortified to mis-field the first nudge and they took a single. Sorry, team. Then our bowler, Sathya Vadivale, bowled four superb deliveries which were all dot balls, and could have all taken wickets, which would have put them nine wickets down. As it was, they stayed on 197 for 5, so they needed two to win and we could only draw. I still thought the most likely outcome of the mounting pressure was a wicket and Sathya duly bowled another good ball but this time their batsman hit it well over long on for a 6 to win the game.

So my mistakes as a fielder could be blamed for us losing the game. Or we could say that we lost because of my schoolboy errors as a captain, such as losing the toss yet again, or supplying them with a fielder throughout our innings as one of their players did not arrive until after tea (!), or my overly generous declaration or my bowling changes or my field-placing. For instance, some other players told me at various points that they would have had more sweepers on the boundaries. In each case, I had already suggested that to the bowlers who wanted a less defensive field. It’s ultimately the captain’s call but I chose to back the bowlers as their confidence is paramount. Still, I should have found a way to encourage the team to turn round our performance.

Of course, if you lose on the last delivery, you could also say that if we had not made some other mistake on any particular ball of the game, we might have drawn. For instance, our top scorer was run out. While that was too risky a single, we were too slow in other cases, for instance, when batsmen assumed their firm shots were going for 4s only to find the ball stopping in the wet outfield inches short of the boundary. Every cricketer learns at a young age that you should run hard rather than stand admiring your shot. The winner of our ground-fielding award in 2018 unleashed again his sliding tackle technique but this time did not quite stop a boundary at long leg in his first piece of fielding for us in 2019. Other aspects of our fielding (dropped catches) and bowling (wides) were sloppier than usual.

On the other hand, though, I was proud of us ‘making a game of it’ and then clawing our way back into it. One of our bowlers took two fine wickets and we had two outstanding examples of out-fielding on the boundary, one achieving a run-out of a batsman who was on 90 and the other causing the closest thing imaginable to a run-out without it actually being given out by the umpire. Batsmen on both sides did well in difficult conditions. And we turned a damp afternoon into an exciting finish, closely aligned to our club ethos, just missing out the bit about winning. We can only play games which have different results possible in the final overs if we can cope with losing. Still, how could we have won, or at least played better, or enjoyed it even more, or bounced back with more resilience from our mistakes?

I mention all this not just because it was our experience on Sunday but because our grassroots match had something in common with our sport at its highest level, namely England’s surprising defeat by Pakistan on the following day in the cricket world cup. Jason Roy inexplicably dropped a sitter of a catch. A fine piece of fielding by Joe Root was spoiled by the failure of others to back up, so his stop and attempted run out went for four overthrows. Even the captain, Eoin Morgan, had fumbled a ball in the first over, costing the side a boundary and seemingly setting the tone for a poor day in the field. Yet there were still some excellent aspects to England’s performance, including four catches in the outfield by Chris Woakes, one of which was stunning, and centuries by Joe Root and Jos Buttler. Plus, Pakistan, like Steeple Aston, played well. When the momentum was against England, though, when their heads were down, how could the captain or the ethos of the team have turned mistakes into reasons for snapping out of a poor spell?

It’s up to you, skip, or, in the higher realms of competitive sport, it’s up to the coaching and playing team. In our club, we could say it’s a matter of the ethos in a deeper sense than turning up on time, taking our turns on the tea and barbecue rota, looking the part in our team kit, and so on (important though those points are, #justsaying). In the heat, or the damp, of the match, recriminations do not help. Even if the captain should have had sweepers out there, or even if the sweepers should have swept up every ball, or even if the bowlers should not have given their batsmen the opportunity to sweep, or reverse sweep, shouting about it is not as helpful as a lesson I learned from watching student rugby league. Fifty years into captaincy, the cricket on Sunday and Monday showed me that I need to find a way to retrieve, adapt and apply that lesson to cricket.

In my first year as vice-chancellor at Leeds Metropolitan University, known in sporting circles as Carnegie from one of its constituent colleges having been the Carnegie PE teacher training college, we lost the final of the men’s rugby league cup against the institution I had led for eight years but had just left, Liverpool Hope University. After that, though, we seemed to win every rugby league game for five years. The students even beat club sides in the Carnegie Challenge Cup. The head coach for rugby league, Paul Fletcher, and his assistant coach, Paul Cook, had a training night every week at the same time as I played football with other members of staff. From the training ground to the touchline in match after match, therefore, I had the privilege of witnessing the development of a seemingly invincible team spirit.

Carnegie had many other examples of outstanding coaches, such as Anna Carter and Tracey Neville in netball, John Hall, Chris Welburn and Graham Potter in football, James Vincent in badminton, Simon Lofthouse in volleyball, James Ross and Bobby Bhogal in hockey, Andy Siddall in cricket, Colin Stephens in rugby union, and the overall director of sport, Malcolm Brown, in athletics and triathlon. Some of those names you might recognise as being world-class in coaching professional clubs, national teams or Olympic champions. No wonder we won the UK’s Best Coaching Organisation of the Year award in 2008. It was a joy to see how these coaches inspired students. In rugby league, for example, Fletch inculcated the spirit that if one of our players made a mistake, the whole team should put in extra effort to make up for it, to recover that error.

Suppose Eoin had dropped a kick from the last play of the opposition’s first set of six tackles, the ball had fallen into the hands of an opponent and our team had to defend for another six tackles when they had been expecting to have the ball themselves. The coach on the touchline and the players on the field would be encouraging one another, and consoling Eoin, by shouting out, ‘One minute for Eoin, boys’, ‘A minute for Eoin, lads’, ‘Let’s do these six for Eoin’ and similar calls. Some could interpret that as belabouring the point, to Eoin’s embarrassment, that he had fumbled the ball, but they all seemed to appreciate that it was the opposite sentiment: remember everything that Eoin has done to help you as now it’s payback time, to cover his mistake.

Knowing how literal my cricketing team-mates can be when trying to reject my advice or pretending to follow it in name only (#uptoyouskip, #justsaying), I am not suggesting that a side which is already noisy enough should be shouting out ‘An over for Simon’ every time I drop a catch. But we could react to a mis-field on the boundary, which turns a two into a four, by saying, ‘Let’s get those two runs back’, and then pointing out to each other, in the batsmen’s hearing, when we have restored that balance. Of course, if Jason Roy drops Mohammad Hafeez on 14 who then goes on to score 84, it would sound a bit hollow to keep saying, ‘Let’s save 70 runs for Jason’. In a slower-paced sport than rugby league, perhaps nothing actually needs to be said if the spirit is there.

The reason for the ‘one minute’ call is that, on average, each set of six tackles in rugby league takes about sixty seconds, after which the other team will get the ball unless they make an error. After each tackle, the defending side runs backwards ten yards and then comes up to tackle again. It can look balletic and yet also requires the stamina to endure a half-marathon, plus the capacity of a boxer to take punches. So any such mistake is punishing for the whole team but, instead of blaming the individual miscreant, there is something life-enhancing about the rest of the team taking control of what needs to be done to make up for the error. Contrary to the more commonly heard expression of ‘taking one for the team’, the team taking responsibility together for recovering one player’s slip is a secret to flourishing, not only in sport but in wider life.