‘Why do you get so upset about cricket?’ my wife asked me when I came back to bed at 7 am , having checked the score in the first Ashes* test match in Perth which strongly suggested that England would succumb to defeat in 2 days, raising fears of yet another Australian whitewash.**** ‘It’s only a game!’ she added.
It’s hard to answer. I do get quite worked up over home test matches, though generally these are quite competitive, rarely one-sided and (since Brendan McCullum and Ben Stokes took over the England team (aka ‘Bazball’) ) usually very exciting. Ashes contests in Australia are usually the opposite, and so uniquely depressing for the England fan. This piece is an attempt to understand why and to answer Sarah’s question, from my particular standpoint.
It’s 60 years exactly since I first listened to the commentary on an Ashes test match in Australia. I remember creeping downstairs at 5am to our father’s study, where the wireless was kept, and tuning into shortwave radio to hear Brian Johnston, John Arlott, Trevor Bailey and Alan McGilvray (amongst others) bring us news from the 1965-6 tour. The cricket in that tour, in common with most of the matches in that decade, was pretty dull, with the likes of Bob Barber, Geoff Boycott and Bill Lawry scoring big centuries, the cricket slowly leading to inconclusive finishes. (15 out of 20 tests in that period were drawn). Today a drawn test match happens only rarely, usually because of rain interruptions.
Yet my memories of that listening experience ( and it was entirely aural- there were no TV highlights and I don’t remember pictures in the papers) are magical, with descriptions offered to us, draped as we were in dressing gowns, huddled together against the cold around the crackly wireless, of hot bright dusty grounds such as the Woolloongabba and WACA, surrounded by exotic things such as ‘The Outer’ ‘The Hill’ The Adelaide Cathedral and the Fremantle Doctor.** It seemed, and was a world away. Wickets fell and hundreds were scored , generating excitement, but nothing in a hurry. Because there was no text, it took you a long time (after tuning in) to find out the good or bad news.
Now, it comes in a torrent on your smartphone: ‘Dismal England slump to 70-6’, you read, bleary-eyed. Not surprising that many turn it off and go back to bed. Yes, of course there are many who watch it live on TV throughout the night, but this holds no appeal for me, even in retirement. The thought of losing a night’s sleep, with all the topsy turvy emotions attached to it, seems to me not a good use of time. I prefer to wait for the highlights show later in the day.
Yet the whole thing is a bit mad: the exaggerated claims of players and pundits, the wild predictions, the gladiatorial atmosphere of the huge stadiums, so different to our smaller grounds steeped in history, the frantic speed of the play. None of it is restful, none of it eases you into the day. I used to find that especially hard when I was working, having to pick oneself from this emotional roller-coaster before the day started, in the build-up to Christmas, the busiest time of the year.
It’s a strange thing to say, but there’s nothing like sport to induce a temporary mental blackness. I remember when I played cricket and sometimes got out for 0 or another low score, coming back to the pavilion and just staring at the wall for 10 minutes. Everything looked bleak for a while, but after half an hour I started thinking of other things in my life and the mood lifted. This also helps me when contemplating the fortunes of our national team. That is why I always considered the words of Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly, ‘Football isn’t a matter of life and death- it’s much more serious than that’ to be either tongue in cheek, or quite dangerous. (Apparently, he was quite serious in this view) Dwelling on these things for any length of time cannot be good for you.
I love Test Cricket. I loved it 60 years ago and I love it more now, with its slow build-up to a result, and many twists and turns. There’ s even part of me that loves the Ashes down-under, that in the darkest and coldest days of the year the summer game is being played. But I don’t like what it does to me, to our two nations, to the players and and to the cricket commentariat.
Australia generally have a good record at home against all opposition and are hard to beat, because physical conditions are quite tough and their team is very good. (In the same way England haven’t been beaten in many home series this century). Yet every defeat is greeted as an abject failure by commentators from both sides. (I’m told that, after day 1 of the first test, won handsomely by Australia there were some Australian journalists ready to write off their team). Can’t we just admit it when their bowlers or batters play better than ours (Like the extraordinary Travis Head in the first test)? And if our players really do struggle, can’t we try to encourage them like the annoying Barmy Army***** does to its credit?
In my youth I enjoyed playing cricket, and in retirement I have discovered the joys of playing live music to an audience. Yet I would never want to make a living out of either, and to be the mercy of Kipling’s twin imposters (Success or failure). For if instant depression can be induced in a fan by poor performance , how much more in a player?
When I was at school in Canterbury, in those days when touring teams played county sides, I remember hearing a School Assembly talk by New Zealand cricketer Vic Pollard. He spoke about the up-and-downness of sporting achievement and how, for him, it was essential to hold to the Christian faith and the self-worth it gave him. I still remember it now, 52 years alter.
In recent years the issue of suicide in young men has been highlighted. From my experience, suicide occurs when you feel you’re stuck in a mental box, with no way out. I can think of one young man who seemed to have the world at his feet and yet took his life. Cricket has had its suicides (Graham Thorpe being the most recent), often arising out of depression, a depression which the England captain himself, Ben Stokes, has suffered from and spoken movingly about. I really hope he has good support to help him through this tour.
None of what I have written is a conclusive answer to Sarah’s question, but all are facets of it. The fact is, in common with a great many sporting fans, I do get upset at cricket failure, especially early in the morning, but I wish I didn’t!
England may yet recover from this early loss and, of course, I hope they do. Yet above all I hope that, in this world of truly terrible news, we can allow sport to be entertainment- something we can enjoy and delight in -and not just another bad news story to wake up to.
Footnotes
*Ashes. This is the name given to the small urn containing the ashes of a stump bail, given following a mock obituary in the Sporting Times in 1882, ‘in memory of the death of English cricket’. Every contest between the two nations at test level is over ‘The Ashes’.
**Woolloongabba (‘Gabba’) is the name of the stadium at Brisbane. WACA is the (old) Perth Cricket ground (W Australian Cricket Assn), ‘Outer’ a section of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, ‘The Hill’, the grassed area of the Sydney Cricket Ground. The ‘Framantle doctor’ is a ccoling breeze that comes down the Swan River from the port of Fremantle laste in the afternoon.
***Coming from a Down-Under is an adaptation of a pop song by the Australian band Men at Work in the 1980s- ‘I come from the land of a- Down Under)
****Whitewash is a 4-0 or 5-0 victory to Australia, a result that has happened many times in recent years.
*****Barmy Army referrs to the enthusiastic and raucous group of England suppprters, modelled on football fans, who travel across the world to support the team
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