The Googly
Huw Turbervill @huwzat
David Gower became tired of pyjama cricket
GETTY IMAGES
A different game for Gower
David Gower’s got me thinking… Not at how anybody can make batting appear so graceful; or why he sat smiling as he endured years of inane ‘wafting outside off‘ bantz from far less talented people on They Think It’s All Over… No, it’s about something he said at The_Cricketer’s ‘evening with’ earlier in the_year. “I felt I was good at one-day cricket, but as time went on my mind changed and it was Tests that I wanted to play. There was a tailing offin my one-day performances. I liked the pressure of Test cricket. I got slightly bored of thinking, ‘I’ve got to hit this next ball for four’. To have to generate it, because the scoreboard said you had to score at 6.43 an over (nowadays it’s 16), for some reason it turned me off.” It popped into my head again the other night when I was walking the dog. To me it is the perfect articulation of why Test (or longer-form) cricket is so entirely difierent to the limited-overs game… and how it also illustrates that no other sport has two incredibly distinct forms like cricket has.