The Wicket Keeper - From the Editor
Leon Fine
“Silly mid-on; a snick into the slips; LBW; cover drive; Wikie”. These terms will immediately make sense to readers, usually males, who grew up in the British Commonwealth in the latter half of the 20th century. They will, however, be obscure to most readers of this magazine. Of course, they are the language of the sport of cricket, a sport in which it can take 5 days to complete a Test match between international teams.
“Wikie” is the affectionate term for the wicket keeper, who is the player who guards the “stumps”, those 3 wooden poles on each end of the cricket pitch, which a batsman defends against balls delivered at speed or at spin by a bowler. The wicket keeper’s job is to stand behind the wicket (stumps) to prevent the balls that are not struck by a batsman from rolling to the edge of the field or, more importantly, to catch a ball that has touched the bat of the batsman, a “snick”, which would bring an end to the innings of the batsman, catching him out as he would be by any fielder who caught the ball in the field.
In essence, the wicket keeper has a dual role: as a defender of the ball and an effector of the goal of defeating an opposing batsman. It is here that I introduce the late Jerrold Kessel, who died in 2011 and who carried these two leadership dimensions into his professional life
Jerrold was a member of the South African Zionist youth movement, Habonim, with whom many of my generation, (now in their 80s) were associated for many years. He had been in the youth movement since age 12 and emigrated to Israel (made aliyah) after high school, completed his first and second degrees at the Hebrew University and for many years was an obsessive cricket player. He was the wicket keeper who ultimately captained the Israel cricket tour of England in 1974 and 1979. He was an unlikely sportsman, being portly and often disheveled, who also related to invisible listeners the progression of the game as if he was in the commentator’s box. He was an obsessive collector of cricket memorabilia.
We remember him not only as a sportsman, but as someone who portrayed an exemplary level of fair play and sportsmanship on the field.
Jerrold’s day-job was as a correspondent. He was renowned in the Middle East and abroad. And in this role too, he had a dual influence as both a defender of human values and a persuasive effector of political strategies.
He was a correspondent of substantial importance on the Middle East, where he worked as the reporter for several media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, The London Jewish Chronicle and BBC radio. He acted as series editor for the Jerusalem Post, worked for CNN from 1990 to 2003 and was one of the networks most regular reporting faces.
Jerrold was a guiding force not only for the wider public, but also for politicians far and wide, who needed insight into the goings on in the Middle East. He was a lead reporter on the Middle East, including the Oslo accords between Israel and Palestinians, all the way through to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Intifada. It was clear that many were waiting for his reporting before expressing their own views on any subject relevant to the Middle East.
Jerrold went out of his way to understand the context of a story and to portray it honestly and objectively. Walter Rogers, Jerusalem chief of CNN, mentioned a London correspondent who would rewrite Jerrold's CNN Jerusalem bureau's daily reports and file them as his own words. Much of the time the US embassy just rewrote his views as if they were their own reports. “You know what we considered an intelligent scoop? It's when we beat CNN out of the Middle East”.
David Landau of Haaretz portrayed Jerrold’s two loves, apart from his family, as sports and journalism. Kessel’s “apotheosis of intellectual endeavor, in his own eyes, was sports journalism, an amalgam of two precious metals.”
Pierre Klochendler, Jerrold’s friend and colleague said it simply: “he taught me and many others what it takes to be a decent journalist. He had a passion for his work, but his reporting was dispassionate and he grounded himself in facts”. Klochendler and Jerrold left CNN at the same time, both ready to do other things.
I well remember discussing with Jerrold his personal passion at the time, which was the concept of an independent local television network, an advertisement-free venture which would provide the man on the street with real facts without any bias. Clearly the funding for such a project would have to be ensured and to my knowledge this never materialized.
The great adventure in which the two engaged, would be a book, a historical novel, “Goals for Galilee”, which portrayed the lives of members of the Israeli Arab soccer team from the village of Sakhnin, portraying the obsession of supporters, their crucial games and their competition for pre-eminence against Jewish Israeli soccer teams. Ultimately the book was a quest for understanding by the Israeli public.
In his last days, suffering from progressive cancer, I did my best to support Jerrold emotionally, through conversations by e-mail and by telephone, hoping to help him through his difficult time. Throughout, he remained stoical, highly appreciative of my concern and attention, and continued to be communicative as things deteriorated.
Upon his passing, his wife, Lorraine received a letter of sadness and appreciation from the President of Israel.
We all benefitted profoundly from knowing this great wicket keeper.
