In defence of cricket

What a spectacle. There have now been two Test matches which have left the Anglo-Australian cricketing world emotionally exhausted. These were far more than games. To claim otherwise would be to insist that Antigone, Othello or Lear were only plays.

Lords on Saturday, Edgbaston the previous week were both cathartic, inviting comparison with the Ring Cycle. At Edgbaston, the match could have gone either way – until Pat Cummins hit two sixes off Joe Root. At Lords, the Australians were always on top – until Stokes got tore in. Surely the target was too great, the Ozzie quicks too fast, the wicket too unhelpful, while the record books were clear that it could not be done. Then came Stokes, who thinks that records should be set, not studied, and as for sixes… It still seemed impossible, and, alas, it was. Yet suddenly everyone understood why Nathan Lyon had hobbled to the wicket facilitating a stand of 15 runs. Australia might have needed those runs. In both Tests, it seemed not impossible that the match could end in a tie. At Edgbaston, that would have been a fair result. Neither side deserved to lose. Lord’s was different. The Australians’ boots were never far from the game’s throat. But then came Stokes.

He added further electricity to an already super-charged contest. Before lunch on Friday, England was on the scaffold. It even seemed possible that we might not have reached three figures. Two down with three to play is bad, but if the second defeat had ended in a morale-crushing massacre, the series would suddenly have seemed less interesting. Bazball might have been discredited. Then came Stokes. 
The Australians will almost certainly win the Ashes. They could even triumph in all the remaining Tests. But if so, they will know that they have been in a fight. This will only be fiercer after the controversy over Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal. People who understand both the laws of cricket and the spirit in which those laws should be played are on fiercely opposed sides. One suspects, however, that there will not be much nuanced disagreement in either dressing-room. The English with have a further reason to be stoked-up.

We will be discussing this series for years. Bazball, Bairstow, Stokes’s declaration on day one at Edgbaston, crucial dropped catches, and not only by England: all will provide endless material for debate well beyond this summer.

Meanwhile, as cricket reached new heights, new glories and the possibility of new records, some new participants tried to start a debate on the game’s future. The Independent Committee for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) produced a report. They have identified cricket’s problems, principally racism, elitism, classism and sexism.

The authors insist that they love the game. Well, you could have fooled me. Although they could not necessarily be expected to write like Neville Cardus, people who love the game ought to do better than this. Their document reads like a prospectus from a third-rate business school. They are also much more energised when they deal with their dislikes. They cannot bear the thought that Eton versus Harrow and Oxford versus Cambridge still play matches at Lord’s. They argue that this might put off working-class, non-white or female aspirant cricketers.

Diddums. Cricket is a hard game as well as a beautiful one. Imagine what Jimmy Anderson’s upper body would have looked like yesterday after he had been worked over by the Australian pace-men. He would have deserved a massage. But those snow-flakes who look to cricket as an opportunity to massage their social chips have no place in the game and should take their confounded nuisance-value elsewhere.

This report spends some time stating the obvious. In the British colonies, cricket was imported by the then Imperial masters. At a very early phase, some of them might have owned slaves. Later on, some of the English rulers would have made patronising assumptions about the local inhabitants. Equally, some of those English rulers would have been involved in suppressing the slave trade. So what? That was all a long time ago. It tells us nothing about English cricket today. Moreover, the colonial administrators introduced the game, one of the many benefits which the British Empire brought to its subject peoples. Today, England often struggles to defeat its former pupils.

On the subject of contemporary relevance, our authors also drag in George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. I was not aware that anyone of any race played cricket in Minneapolis. His fate has as little to do with English cricket as do the current riots in France.

The report also fails to produce convincing evidence that non-whites face discrimination in English cricket. There is an access problem. A lot of state schools have lost interest in cricket, and far too many playing-fields have been sold off. This has also been deleterious for white kids from poor backgrounds. It has nothing to do with race.

The race relations industry, heavily influenced by the ICEC report, has a vested interest in exaggerating racial difficulties, even if that means inflaming racial tensions. But anyone who thinks that Britain is riven by racial oppression should consider the present composition of the Tory party. Equally, they should ponder over the sad case of Jofra Archer. 

It was easy to identify one English weakness which should help the Australians to win the Ashes. Their fast bowlers have a yard of pace over ours. That would not have been the case if the two fastest bowlers who should have been available for England had not been injured. If Mark Wood and Jofra Archer had been pounding in, matters might have been very different. Archer is black, and has received every encouragement from the authorities. Although his Test match figures are not that impressive, he has already been a Wisden Cricketer of the Year. Everyone was cheering him on to move beyond promise to thundering successes, winning Test series and becoming a world-class player. Instead, he has been crocked. No-one is suggesting that this is his fault, but as I suspect that ninety-nine percent of English cricket supporters are willing him to recover, this is not a racist game.

Apropos black cricket, there is one sadness in world cricket today. There was a time when the West Indies were usually the best team on the planet, partly because of several fearsome fast bowlers. Now, their youngsters have been tempted away to play baseball or basketball instead. The decline is such that Scotland have just knocked the Windies out of the one-day cricket world cup. Scotland is not a rising cricket power.  

Leaving race canards aside, one almost feels sorry for the ICEC team. Their timing was unlucky. They arrive whining and grumbling, to find that England is in the midst of what may turn out to be one of the greatest series of all time. They would like to ignore the strengths of the present and concentrate on trashing the past. They are too mentally purblind to recognise that tradition is part of the game, and not only at Lord’s. Village cricket still thrives on village greens. Sunshine, splendid trees, the village church (still, one hopes, resisting wokery), the village pub for later – and a tea, fully worthy of the occasion, prepared lovingly by wives and daughters. That is part of old England.

These days, some of the wives and daughters might want to play cricket, and why not? But we should be clear on one point. Cricket is a pyramid. That brings us to elitism. Is cricket elitist? At its highest level, of course it is and so it should be. So should all sport at the peak. Imagine. It is easy to abuse members of Lords, who are usually too polite to answer back – but try telling a group of football supporters that their side should be less elitist. Of course, the elitism ought to be based on talent. It seems unlikely that there are fewer working-class cricketers around than in the days when the Northern and Midland counties recruited from pit villages. So much more should be done to increase opportunity, thus broadening the elite and producing a stronger side.

On to the rest of the series and this is no time to despair. Although the Ashes may seem gone, the age of miracles is not past.

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