As I write, the sixth one day international between England and Australia is about to start. Australia have won the first five by playing competent cricket at a consistently higher standard than England, and at the moment look as if they might win the next hundred games were the series to be prolonged that far. As well it might be, if the ECB thought it could fill the stadiums and make a buck. In this form of the game, England aren’t very good just at the present. Times without number in this series, their batsmen have got set, only to make an error at a point which has disrupted the rhythm of the overall batting performance. Their bowling although solid and reliable, has lacked the cutting edge to put pressure on their opponents. Their fielding has been no more than respectable. It’s been dispiriting to watch and listen to. It’s taken the edge off a season which might have been remembered with affection. Now we just all want to get it over and done.
This isn’t how a story should end. The action should move from one fast-paced chapter to another, a cliff-hanger at every turn, until in the last twenty pages, there’s a dénouement of startling originality, with the intriguing possibility of a sequel left hanging in the air. If I tried handing in something like this, my editor would send me a stern note and tell me to do better, and quickly.
But maybe if you or I had bought a ticket to one of the games, and we hadn’t seen the Australians yet this summer it would still have provided golden moments. The chance to see heroes at close quarters is always special. Otherwise why attend athletics meetings in the aftermath of the World Champs, or be present for your football club any time after Christmas, when the writing’s on the wall that yet another mid-table slot is more or less guaranteed. We want to be there at Trent Bridge or Southampton, in the company of others, to appreciate just how blisteringly quick Brett Lee is at full throttle, to see Ricky Ponting bat in case he never returns to England, to enjoy the sight of Michael Hussey dropping a catch he’d have taken ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to remember how beautifully a cricket ground is mown, to take in the atmosphere a crowd creates, and have a memory to cherish over the Yuletide sherry. If you were there, what does it matter that the game was meaningless or pedestrian. You’ll have noticed, of course, but not as much as we who watch at a safe uninvolved distance from the comfort of our sofas will have noticed. Cor blimey guvnor, the TV pundits have even been on the backs of the crowds for not making enough noise, as if it’s their fault or something, rather than their right, handsomely paid for. Maybe athey were just engrossed in what was happening. You don’t have to shout your head off to enjoy something.
I remember watching absolutely inconsequential games of cricket in my youth, and revelling in them. Images stay with one for ever. Derek Shackleton, the Hampshire medium pace bowler of legendary accuracy and subtlety fielding tall and lean at the boundary’s edge, and swapping friendly words and a cigarette with a spectator, before going back to his bowling mark and putting six balls on to the pitch within a half-crown of each other. Can that have been so? I think it was. And in the same match, his bowling partner ‘Butch’ White, delivering at express pace from the ‘wrong’ foot, dropping short and being pulled off the front foot an inch or two from his eyebrows by my hero Colin Cowdrey to the midwicket boundary. How did Cowdrey have the bravery and time to do that? Without a helmet! Or another time at Canterbury, the Kent stalwart Alan Dixon, bowling off-cutters that looked so easy, I reckoned even I could have made a hundred, but still managing a five-fer not many. Brian Luckhurst squirting the ball to the square boundary time after time. Wayne Daniel at Lords, so quick the ball was quite invisible from side on. Kapil Dev hitting the ball with a smile into the top tier at Northampton’s County Ground. Massive, balding, Garth Le Roux hitting parked cars at the same venue. Wayne the larrikin Larkins belting Northants to an improbable victory against the clock with half a dozen sixes. Michael Holding whispering to the bowling crease from a run that started pretty much at the sight screen. A pretty much unknown Michael Hussey accumulating 329 runs with an efficiency that had one scratching the head. How come this guy couldn’t get in the Australian team? The results of the matches are rarely recalled, but a thousand individual images come back with clarity and gratitude just to have been there and captured them in the camera of the mind.
There is no cosmic significance in any of this, although if you view it with the eye of faith, you may think that a kindly God gave us these things for our comfort and relaxation. But there is shared ritual here, which needs the contrivance of the relevant authorities to nurture and support. The watcher on TV is on the fringes: he or she remains uninitiated into the true mysteries. All they will want is Big Bangs. The smell of fried onions (or until recently at Northampton Saints Rugby Club in a certain part of the main stand, ‘Deep Heat’ wafting up from the team changing rooms) is just as much a part of the action for the paying customer at the ground.
This isn’t how a story should end. The action should move from one fast-paced chapter to another, a cliff-hanger at every turn, until in the last twenty pages, there’s a dénouement of startling originality, with the intriguing possibility of a sequel left hanging in the air. If I tried handing in something like this, my editor would send me a stern note and tell me to do better, and quickly.
But maybe if you or I had bought a ticket to one of the games, and we hadn’t seen the Australians yet this summer it would still have provided golden moments. The chance to see heroes at close quarters is always special. Otherwise why attend athletics meetings in the aftermath of the World Champs, or be present for your football club any time after Christmas, when the writing’s on the wall that yet another mid-table slot is more or less guaranteed. We want to be there at Trent Bridge or Southampton, in the company of others, to appreciate just how blisteringly quick Brett Lee is at full throttle, to see Ricky Ponting bat in case he never returns to England, to enjoy the sight of Michael Hussey dropping a catch he’d have taken ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to remember how beautifully a cricket ground is mown, to take in the atmosphere a crowd creates, and have a memory to cherish over the Yuletide sherry. If you were there, what does it matter that the game was meaningless or pedestrian. You’ll have noticed, of course, but not as much as we who watch at a safe uninvolved distance from the comfort of our sofas will have noticed. Cor blimey guvnor, the TV pundits have even been on the backs of the crowds for not making enough noise, as if it’s their fault or something, rather than their right, handsomely paid for. Maybe athey were just engrossed in what was happening. You don’t have to shout your head off to enjoy something.
I remember watching absolutely inconsequential games of cricket in my youth, and revelling in them. Images stay with one for ever. Derek Shackleton, the Hampshire medium pace bowler of legendary accuracy and subtlety fielding tall and lean at the boundary’s edge, and swapping friendly words and a cigarette with a spectator, before going back to his bowling mark and putting six balls on to the pitch within a half-crown of each other. Can that have been so? I think it was. And in the same match, his bowling partner ‘Butch’ White, delivering at express pace from the ‘wrong’ foot, dropping short and being pulled off the front foot an inch or two from his eyebrows by my hero Colin Cowdrey to the midwicket boundary. How did Cowdrey have the bravery and time to do that? Without a helmet! Or another time at Canterbury, the Kent stalwart Alan Dixon, bowling off-cutters that looked so easy, I reckoned even I could have made a hundred, but still managing a five-fer not many. Brian Luckhurst squirting the ball to the square boundary time after time. Wayne Daniel at Lords, so quick the ball was quite invisible from side on. Kapil Dev hitting the ball with a smile into the top tier at Northampton’s County Ground. Massive, balding, Garth Le Roux hitting parked cars at the same venue. Wayne the larrikin Larkins belting Northants to an improbable victory against the clock with half a dozen sixes. Michael Holding whispering to the bowling crease from a run that started pretty much at the sight screen. A pretty much unknown Michael Hussey accumulating 329 runs with an efficiency that had one scratching the head. How come this guy couldn’t get in the Australian team? The results of the matches are rarely recalled, but a thousand individual images come back with clarity and gratitude just to have been there and captured them in the camera of the mind.
There is no cosmic significance in any of this, although if you view it with the eye of faith, you may think that a kindly God gave us these things for our comfort and relaxation. But there is shared ritual here, which needs the contrivance of the relevant authorities to nurture and support. The watcher on TV is on the fringes: he or she remains uninitiated into the true mysteries. All they will want is Big Bangs. The smell of fried onions (or until recently at Northampton Saints Rugby Club in a certain part of the main stand, ‘Deep Heat’ wafting up from the team changing rooms) is just as much a part of the action for the paying customer at the ground.
