In search of a Golden Age...

When I saw that The Atlantic had a feature on "The Greatest Sports Book Ever Written" in its October edition I thought, well, that's nice but I daresay they really mean "The Greatest Sports Book Ever Written That Isn't About Cricket." Be wary of your assumptions. turns out I underestimated the Atlantic's taste and perspicacity. For, lo, there it is: a fine piece by Joseph O'Neill explaining why CLR James' Beyond A Boundary is an important work - though a mystifying one should you have no knowledge of the greatest game of them all.

O'Neill concludes that it's sad that Beyond A Boundary is off-limits to Americans. But I'm not so sure that's the case. I'm generally a fan of globalisation, but I draw a line in the sand when it comes to cricket.

In this instance big bucks means worse sport, corrupting the very attributes that make cricket cricket in an effort to turn it into just another leisure activity or commodity. The rise of Twenty20 cricket is the latest threat hailed as cricket's saviour. The Economist explains the commercial opportunities available in the light of Twenty20's arrival, here

Foreign Policy's Prerna Mankad agrees that

Americans certainly don't have the patience for five days of regular cricket, but Twenty20 might catch on. Watch this space.

Let us sincerely hope this is not the case. I am an unabashed cricket snob and thus cannot accept that Twenty20 is proper cricket. It's a bastardisation of the game designed to appeal to people who don't like cricket. Americans baffled by the idea of a five day contest in which there may be no winner will doubtless be amused that a form of cricket that lasts as long as the average baseball game might be considered an improperly abbreviated version of the noble sport but there you have it.

The best one may say for Twenty20 is that it may prove a gateway to an appreciation of real cricket for some fans; much more likely, however, is that it will further erode the viability of test match cricket which is already in trouble everywhere outside England and Australia.

This is not merely a question of money, but ones of technique, discipline and mental fortitude. One day cricket alters the way batsmen and bowlers approach the game. How many batsmen now have the patience, let alone the technique required, to bat all day on a difficult wicket? Precious few. How many bowlers, used to being smashed off a length in hit-and-run cricket, now possess the ability to stick to line and length? Precious few.

It may be silly to think there was once a golden age - Cardus after all mourned the pre-1914 game even as he was writing about Bradman and Hammond and Woolley and Headley and all the rest  - but skills once considered integral to the game are disappearing and part of the blame for that must be apportioned to the proliferation of one-day cricket.

That's the modern world, of course, but that doesn't mean one must rush to embrace every element of what's laughingly called progress. CLR James asked "what do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" but we might ask the games' custodians (ie, the accountants and marketing executives): what do they know of cricket who only television know?

Do we really have to kill cricket to save it? Apparently so and all in the name of spreading the sport to people who for perfectly good reasons of their own have shown no inclination to be persuaded of its many merits. That's their prerogative and I've no desire to persuade them of the error of their ways if that means that cricket must be changed to accommodate these newcomers. If that makes me a reactionary then so be it.

Comments

[Chris]

It all started to go wrong when they changed the name of ICC from the Imperial Cricket Conference to the International Cricket Council :(

[amoz]

Alex,

I love Test cricket too but I think you are being a bit unfair to one-day cricket. Yes one-day cricket has led to batsmen having worse defensive skills. At the same time though, it has made batsmen more attacking and led to way more Tests ending in results instead of boring draws. Just look at how the scoring rates have increased since the 80s. Look at how exciting the 2005 Ashes and the 2003-2004 India-Australia series were. As far as T20 is concerned I think it threatens one-day cricket way more than it does Test cricket since it preserves the exciting parts of one-day cricket and cuts out the "boring" middle-overs part.
Anyway, I think it was Chris Rock who once said "Just because I can have filet mignon everyday doesn't mean I don't like a hamburger once in a while".

[kishnevi]

The problem we Yanks have with cricket is not (or at least not only) the length of the game; and if it is, one day cricket won't help. If we want long long games, we already have association football, which has the advantage of being somewhat shorter, and still is having trouble getting strong roots in the US.

The real problem is that we have no idea of what the real merits are; we meet a forest of terms that are not explained and a game in which the scores are computed in the hundreds. I'm not aware of any attempt by anyone to sit down and actually explain the game to us. (If you think that's a hint, it probably is.)

[Andrew]

If you want an explanation of cricket, http://www.dangermouse.net/cricket/ is a good place to start. He even has a page explaining the rules based on the fact that you already know baseball: http://www.dangermouse.net/cricket/baseball.html

I was amused at this part of the post: "...a form of cricket that lasts as long as the average baseball game might be considered an improperly abbreviated version of the noble sport..." There are some that might argue that baseball IS an improperly abbreviated version of cricket. I'm a yank, though; and while I loved listening to the Ashes on BBC, I'd rather have the thrill of a pennant chase anyday.

[deiseach]

The people who show no inclination for the long version of the game that the short versions are catering for are not the Americans, they're the Indians. But hey, sod a billion genuine cricket lovers, let's pitch the sport towards the tens who watch county cricket

[tommy]

thats baws alex

i am not sure that I (we) would be such fanatics of test match cricket were it not for the 30 year and counting improvement in run rate brought about by the attitudes of sides who are experienced in the one day game.

I really like 20:20, it does not threaten the long format of the game but may (just) hail the end of the 50 over format - something which you may previously have welcomed.

Whether the yanks get it is neither here nor there