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John Arlott, a distinguished cricket commentator but also an accomplished wine writer, wrote, “The most important single factor governing any first-class cricket match is the wicket.”
Pitches, like vineyards, are influenced by the sun, soil, climate and weather. Bounce and pace varies according to the soil, just as (to a certain extent) vigour and yield do in a vineyard. Perth, for instance, was for years renowned for its rock hard, lightning-fast, clay-heavy pitch baked in the scorching Western Australian sun, a bit like some Australian wines are known, rightly or wrongly, for their high alcohol and deep colour. Vineyards with clay subsoil are prized for their water retention and coolness.
A groundsman, just like a vigneron, spends the winter and spring tending to his few acres. The grass on a cricket pitch is close-cropped like vines being pruned for a short back and sides. Groundsmen like to add nitrogen to their pitches to produce a vivid green grass, which looks nice on the telly, just as spraying nitrogen in a vineyard encourages vigour.
Heavy rolling and covering the wicket is akin to spraying, a contrived manipulation of the environment that lessens the effects of climate and weather on how the pitch wears or the grapes ripen. Covers keep the area dry but can encourage fusarium, the cricket pitch equivalent of Downy Mildew.
The Hill of Lord’s
The Hill of Grace vineyard is like Lord’s Cricket Ground, a few acres to which people from around the world pay pilgrimage. Lord’s, in chilly London, is far slower than Perth, though not without its own particular terroir of a slope of six and a half feet down from the Grandstand boundary to the Tavern stand. Before drainage was installed, Lord’s used to flood in front of the Tavern Stand, like the bottom parts of Clos de Vougeot.
The “ridge”, a fractional undulation in the surface right across the table of wickets, which runs east by north to west by south, also defines the terroir of Lord’s. Glenn McGrath obtained maximum extraction in 2005 during an amazing spell in which he took 5–21.
Lord’s uses – or formerly used – Sprinter, Majestic and Island Brown Top grass varieties. Different sorts of grass are used for sport pitches, just as different vine clones are used in a vineyard.
Lord’s is also known for humidity, though The Oval – which is much closer to the River Thames – does not have this. The wind at Lord’s comes predominantly from the west and blows through the gap between the Pavilion and the Warner Stand. In 1972, Bob Massie took 8-84 and 8-53, every ball swinging prodigiously because of the humidity and wind.
The cricket season in England ends just as grapes are harvested across Europe – and the season starts in Australia.
Top of the averages
Although everybody but Doug Harris’s wickets might have been a touch expensive in the recent Ashes series, in the UK his country’s wines are anything but, with an average retail price of £4.49 / $6.97 (as of March 2010), though it still beats the average retail price of £4.36 / $6.77 of all bottled wine sold in the UK. The South Africans, as the Wine Australia website gleefully points out, average £3.85 / $5.98, “the only New World producer with an average trade under £4.00.” Jacques Kallis’s batting average against India during their recent tour of South Africa was rather better.
Cricket and wine tragedies and tragics
In Australia some distinguished cricketers have been unable to resist basking in the reflected glory of their country’s vinous exploits. For example, Shane Warne, who took 708 Test wickets, had his own range of wines via the Zilzie winery at Sunraysia in Victoria.
The former leg spinner Stuart MacGill is a noted wine tragic. I nearly ruined his filming at Brokenwood in November 2004 when I entered the cellar door and caused the bell to ring. Brokenwood sells a “Cricket Pitch” wine, so-called because the vineyard adjacent to the winery was once the site of a cricket ground (though recent vintages of this wine have included grapes from outside the Hunter Valley). It also owns a “Graveyard” vineyard, presumably named in honour of England tours of Australia prior to 2010.
Geoff Merrill’s winery at Reynella has for many years been a favourite stop for England players during an Ashes series. His wines seemed to work wonders for our boys in January 1995 (especially Phillip DeFreitas: proof, if ever it were needed, that wine is good for you), when England won at the Adelaide Oval for the first time since 1979. But perhaps they enjoyed themselves a bit too much in 1998, 2002 and – especially – 2006, which all ended in humiliating defeats.
Scoring is an admirable occupation in the cricketing world, but rather controversial when applied to wine. The US wine writer Robert Parker rates wines on a 100-point scale; thus a century equals, for him, perfection in a wine glass.
The Invincibles
In Australian wine and cricket there are two Invincibles that stand apart: Sir Donald Bradman and Penfolds Grange. Both would be very costly things to drop.
Like a batsman set for a long innings, Grange displays tremendous concentration and, like the Don’s pull shot, it is immensely powerful. As with Glenn McGrath, this wine has impeccable length and line, the latter a wine term coined by the late Len Evans to describe a wine’s continuity of flavour and structure. Grange is fine, full and long, but perhaps with a slightly silly price nowadays.
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