They can’t hear you scream in space but at a completely empty Ageas Bowl, they most certainly can. In the forthcoming lockdown Tests, every energy-boosting exhortation and maybe even a smattering of expletives will be broadcast live to the world.
“They might need to polish their chirps,” says Jeremy Snape, the former England spinner turned psychologist. One presumes, though, that TV audiences won’t be faced with the watershed-busting barrage of profanity that accompanied the introduction of stump microphones during the first season of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia in 1977. Stump mics “had given a new, sometimes blue, perspective on the game,” wrote Gideon Haigh in The Cricket War. John Crilly, the director of Channel 9’s groundbreaking coverage, recalled: “The count for the first season was something like 13 shits, 14 ‘you bastards’, three fucks and one cunt that got on the air.”
The other challenge that WSC faced initially was the almost total absence of a live audience. Australian opener Ian Davis had played in the Centenary Test in early 1977 in front of more than 50,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Eight months later, he walked out to bat in the first WSC Supertest in front of fewer than 500 people at the cavernous VFL Park. Haigh wrote: “Now only the cap was different – gold rather than green – but he could hear his own breathing. ‘Here I am playing with all these great players,’ Davis thought. ‘And no one’s here. Jesus it’s not going to work.’”
Every professional cricketer can empathise with Davis. They’ve all played domestic games in front of a handful of spectators, from Colombo to Colchester, Kingston to Karachi. And the same goes for most Test cricketers, who at some stage will likely have had to perform in front of thousands of empty seats.
No players have felt this dispiriting sensation more acutely than Pakistan’s, whose home matches were relocated to the UAE after the Lahore terror attacks in 2009. Batsman Asad Shafiq has been an international cricketer for a decade, playing almost 150 games across all formats but, until December last year, none in his own country.
“It was incredibly tough on them,” says former Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur. “They never even really got to perform in front of family and friends.” Arthur took over as coach of Sri Lanka just as the side went to Pakistan for a hugely poignant and important tour. In the second Test, Shafiq made a fifty on his home ground, the National Stadium in Karachi. “It was an amazing occasion for him,” remembers Arthur, “because suddenly his whole family were there watching.”
Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s former captain and now coach and selector, found the disparity between the empty seats of the UAE and the packed houses of England hard to take. “It is tough as a player to feel motivated,” he told The National in 2016. “There [in England] you saw full stands, and every good shot, good fielding or a good ball was appreciated by the crowd. It was a completely different atmosphere, and we play for the crowd.”
Arthur offered a workaround. “What we used to say to the Pakistan guys was consider the amount of eyeballs in front of TV sets and online – a large percentage of a population of 200 million are watching. That should motivate them to go above and beyond.”
The uniqueness of the situation facing the players of England, West Indies and, all being well, Pakistan should ensure uplifting, rather than downbeat, occasions. There is a marked difference between spectators choosing not to turn up, and not being allowed to.
“It can be dispiriting if no one’s there,” says BBC radio commentator Daniel Norcross. “I remember commentating on England’s Test in Chittagong in 2016 when for the first two days the crowd was minuscule. A group of Bangladeshis followed the shadow of the floodlight pylon to get shade and that’s what you commented on. The reality bites that Test cricket isn’t hugely popular at this venue so that can suppress your excitement – hang on a minute, am I really involved in top-level sport here?”
Norcross explains that commentators “feed off the crowd, it almost informs your tone of voice”. Without a crowd there is a gap to fill, he says. “Your commentary becomes more chatty, you burble more because you’re trying to compensate for the emptiness of the sound. Your conversational style is required to do a lot more heavy lifting. You find yourself being more jovial, more verbose, sillier.”
Even more than a commentator, a player draws inspiration from the crowd. England bowler Chris Woakes acknowledges that the landmark moments in his career are special, in part, because of the presence and involvement of a packed, impassioned crowd. “When you play for your country there is a sense that it’s more than just a cricket game,” he says. “And the crowd enhances that feeling.”
Unsurprisingly as a Brummie, Woakes loves Edgbaston and its raucous, partisan reputation. “I’ve never experienced an atmosphere like the World Cup semi-final against Australia when Jofra [Archer] and I were picking up wickets. It really drove me on. I’d do anything to go back and live that moment again – it was incredible.”
Last July, Tim Murtagh helped Ireland bowl England out for 85 at Lord’s. In sweltering temperatures that matched his age, the 38-year-old seamer took five wickets in a nine-over opening spell. “There were a lot more Irish supporters there than I’d expected,” he recalls. “Maybe people had seen me play for Middlesex or had a soft spot for us, I don’t know, but the crowd noise and adrenaline carried me for probably two overs more than normal.”
The absence of spectators may lessen home advantage and will affect players in different ways. Just as the absence of braying backbenchers at Prime Minister’s Questions have exposed Boris Johnson wafting outside off stump to Keir Starmer’s probing line, big occasion players may have their wings clipped.
“When competitive juices are flowing, a crowd can accelerate the momentum,” explains Jeremy Snape, who is the founder of high-performance consultancy firm Sporting Edge. “But it can have an equally debilitating effect if you’re losing. Senior players might have to find their own fight, and for junior players who might have been intimidated by that ferocity of the crowd, it could be more of a level playing field. It will feel more like a clinical trial. There are no extraneous factors and it’s about a battle between players in a pure environment without the theatre and gladiatorial emotion. It will test players in a different way.”
That “pure environment” potentially removes the danger that Murtagh expresses of “getting over pumped up”. Snape recalls a moment from his days as a coach in the IPL. “One guy played an incredible, instinctive reverse-sweep for four. He got his peacock chest out and was strutting around. Next ball he came down the wicket and got stumped by a metre. I asked him to tell me about the ball that got him out. ‘Well, it spun a bit.’ ‘No, that wasn’t the ball that got you out, it was the reverse-sweep because you couldn’t forget the fact.’ When we’re at our weakest and most volatile, we’re allowing the crowd to dictate our emotions. We’ve got the wall of noise, the barbed comment and the power of silence – these are the three major psychological issues. They all have their dangers.”
Much of Murtagh’s work for Middlesex is conducted in front of hundreds rather than tens of thousands of spectators. It’s still an audience, though. “The amount of time we spend on the field makes cricket unique and you can’t concentrate fully all the time,” he says. “You need things to distract your mind and I like standing on the boundary having a drink between balls and chatting to someone in the crowd. Even if it’s just 10 blokes down at the bottom of the Mound Stand, it’s nice to have that sense of someone else being there.”
But whether it’s 10 blokes or 15,000, individual voices can still be heard – and exert an influence – as the normally calm and collected Woakes knows well. In England’s World Cup group match against Pakistan at Trent Bridge last summer, he was fielding at long-off. “I was getting a bit of abuse from Pakistan fans in that corner,” he recalls with a chuckle. “They were giving me some and I was giving a bit back and one guy shouted something like ‘Woakes will drop it anyway’.” When Imamul-Haq skied one to deep extra-cover, Woakes ran round to take an outstanding diving catch, prompting him to turn to the crowd and, with index finger pressed to the lips, make the sort of ‘shush’ gesture more commonly seen in football. “It was all in jest but it seemed apt,” says Woakes, though he received a “ticking off” from the umpires.
Both Woakes and Snape talk about the cues that players can take from the crowd, whether that’s recognition of a fine shot or lousy fielding, but also simply staying in tune with the rhythm of the game. “When I was at Gloucestershire,” says Snape, “we used to buzz the ball back to the bowler – point to square-leg, extra-cover to mid-on, creating this sort of knitting pattern across the square. Occasionally we’d wing one down to third-man to keep him on his toes – that may help to keep everyone connected [without a crowd present].”
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Woakes admits that the goading from the crowd actually gave him “extra incentive to get to that catch” at Trent Bridge. In the absence of crowd noise, boundary fielders will have to be extra alert to events in the middle. “It is those small things, the cues from the crowd,” says Woakes. “When something magical happens, they let you know. Jofra’s spell at Lord’s [in last year’s Ashes] was ramped up by the crowd reacting to it. Those moments become historic in part because of the crowd and their impact on the game. It’s such a shame [spectators won’t be there] but we have a responsibility to get cricket back out there.”
Cue, round of virtual applause.
• This article appeared first in Wisden Cricket Monthly
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