A remarkable act of batting defiance

Cussedness — deliberate obstinacy — is a behavioral trait often associated with people in northern England. My experience of this quality stems from an upbringing in mining communities in Derbyshire, in the East Midlands.

When Ian Bestwick strode out to bat for Darley Abbey Cricket Club’s 4th X1 in Division Nine South of the Derbyshire County Cricket League on Aug. 24, he could have had little idea that he was about to take cussedness to a new level.

Bestwick was to face the might of Mickleover CC’s 3rd X1 bowlers. In 35 overs, these opponents had amassed a total of 271 for four declared, of which 19-year-old opening bat Max Thompson blasted 186. In the Derbyshire league, matches in Divisions 7 to 10 consist of 80 overs, with the team batting first limited to a maximum of half the overs. However, teams are allowed to declare their innings closed after 30 overs have been bowled. Perhaps Bestwick was piqued that Mickleover did not declare after 30 overs with their total on 192.

There has been many a cricketer who has felt that the opposition should have declared earlier than they did. This is one reason limited-over cricket was introduced. The reason for the introduction of the declaration option by this league at this level of cricket is not clear. It is also unclear why the matches are not “win or lose,” in which the team scoring the highest number of runs in a fixed number of overs is the winner.

A combination of the declaration option, which varies the number of overs available to both teams and which allows the possibility of a drawn match, provided the context for Bestwick’s innings. His team was young and inexperienced and had just been subjected to a battering. They also had to face 45 overs, since the overs unused by Mickleover were carried over. Added to this, both teams were near the foot of the table and desperate for points. An attempt to deny Mickleover points would be a logical justification for slow batting.

Bestwick took this attempt seriously. He batted throughout the innings, faced 137 deliveries and scored zero runs. Remarkably, he was dismissed early in his innings, but the delivery was declared a no-ball by the umpire, who was his captain. After that Bestwick grew into his task. It seems that he refused to run when he could have done so, not only off his own batting but also as the non-striker. This behavior was deliberately and determinedly stubborn, not helpful to others, and must have been of immense irritation to the opposition. One wonders what sort of remarks they may have made during the course of the innings.

The upshot of his efforts was that his team’s total score after 45 overs was a paltry 21 for the loss of four wickets. Nine of those runs were extras and a further four were scored in a single shot by Bestwick’s son, Thomas, with whom he shared a partnership of 11 in 24 overs. If the original intention was to deny Mickleover points this was partly achieved. They gained 18 points in achieving a winning draw as opposed to 27 on offer for an outright win. However, Darley Abbey gained only three points for scoring so lowly in a losing draw and, with three matches remaining, the points difference between them, Mickleover and one other team is 42 points, a gap which may be too much to bridge.

Reports have suggested that the mood in Darley Abbey’s team after the match was euphoric. Bestwick’s extraordinary feat of defiance and concentration made headlines not just in Derbyshire, but also in the UK’s national media and other parts of the world. Inevitably, comparisons have been made with slow scoring innings and players in professional cricket. There are many examples. The most frequently quoted in terms of number of deliveries faced without scoring a run was by New Zealand’s Geoff Allott, who failed to score from 77 deliveries in 1999. This effort helped his team secure a draw.

Other players have been cast as slow scorers, not always fairly. One example is Geoffrey Boycott, who was once dropped by England after scoring 246 in 555 deliveries against India in 1967 in a match which England won. Boycott described his exclusion as “the deepest wound of his professional career.”

Chris Tavare is another who acquired a reputation as a blocker. In his younger days in county cricket Tavare was an elegant attacking batter. At that time, England required an opening batter and he was asked to adapt his game for the sake of the team, something he achieved with notoriety. Among his slowest innings was one of 35 runs scored in Madras in six-and-a-half hours in 1982. Among Indians, a slow innings is referred to as “doing a Tavare”.

It remains to be seen if “doing a Bestwick” becomes part of cricket’s lexicon. While constructing this column the name Bestwick began ringing other bells. Digging deeper, I discovered a Billy Bestwick and, to my surprise, he was born less than half a mile from my birthplace in Heanor, Derbyshire, but a long time earlier in 1875. He played 323 matches for Derbyshire between 1898 and 1925, claiming almost 1,500 wickets. These included the rare feat of all 10 in an innings, all of which were bowled.

Billy Bestwick’s record would have been more impressive but for a verdict of “justifiable homicide” brought against him in 1907 after a man was killed in an establishment which he frequented. He was fired by Derbyshire and moved to South Wales, rejoining Derbyshire in 1919. After retirement he became a Test match umpire in which role he acquired a reputation for cussedness, upsetting several famous names with decisions of which they did not approve. In conclusion, it should not be assumed from these cautionary Bestwickian tales that cussedness, cricket and products of Derbyshire mining communities are synonymous, although I can think of many other examples.