V V: Cricket in literature

Academic sport history has not made it big with mainstream publishers because of a commonly held view that sport is too enjoyable a business to be entrusted to academics. The thrills of sport, especially team games, must be reproduced as far as possible on page and TV screens. If an exception has to be made it would be in cricket, which has a considerable body of literature, imperial and post imperial: the first dominated by English publishers for the best part of three centuries, the second by an internationalism that removed England as the centre of cricket.

Hence, several questions arise. Does cricket as a genre possess some intrinsic qualities that explain why the sport attracts writers of the highest literary culture? Or has cricket attained its special position because it has been appropriated by men of letters? The answer will be found in a combination of both: writing defines cricket as a metaphor for life’s glorious uncertainties, as much as the game influences the writer. In The Cambridge Companion to Cricket (special Indian price: Rs 395), Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill (editors) have anthologised the principal themes and issues that have emerged as the game has developed over the past two-and-a-half centuries.

 

The book consists of 17 essays by a team of 20 international contributors, each an authority on some aspect of the game as it has evolved over time. Chapters range from the early development of the game to its growing popularity in the former British colonies, its celebration in literature, and the money that is now raked in by some cricket boards and players — and of course the controversies that surround them.

Here is a breakdown of the chapters: Cricket pastoral and Englishness; Cricket in the eighteenth century; Corruption in cricket; Broadcasting and cricket in England; Bodyline, Jardine and masculinity; Don Bradman: Just a boy from Bowral; The packer cricket war; New Zealand cricket and the colonial relationship; C L R James and cricket; Reading Brian Lara and the traditions of Caribbean cricket poetry; The detachment of West Indies cricket from the nationalist scaffold; The Indian Premier League and world cricket; Hero, celebrity and icon: Sachin Tendulkar and Indian public culture; Conflicting loyalties: nationalism and religion in India-Pakistan cricket relations; Cricket and representations of beauty: Newlands Cricket Ground and the roots of apartheid in South African cricket; Writing the modern game; and Cricket and international politics. The chapters are followed by a further reading list that will give some idea of the richness of literature generated by the game, beginning with Wordsworth, Byron, and Hazlitt down to A A Milne, Jerome K Jerome, Arthur Conan Doyle and P G Wodehouse. (Incidentally, cricket metaphors like “take the shine off the ball”; “in the deep”; “the slips”; “a long innings”; “a sticky wicket”; “hit for a six”; “clean bowled”; and others have now passed into everyday spoken and written language.)

Such anthologies inevitably provoke a mixed response. But their great advantage is their variety, the promise of containing something for every reader: you can dip into it, backwards and forward, put it down, wander around and come back to it afresh. Three basic themes tie the essays together: of change, of globalisation, and political and cultural contexts in the countries where the game is played.

Before going into some of the issues that have plagued cricket in the modern world, let’s look at some myths and legends around the heroes of our times. First Donald Bradman. Tom Heenan and David Dunstan tell us that “as an administrator [Bradman] was governed not by ideals but by the financial bottom line and the conviction that cricketing power was the preserve of a White, Anglo-Australian elite. If his views had prevailed, cricket might been split along racial lines”.

A recurring theme is hypocrisy in international cricketing circles which can be seen from western reactions to the success of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the financial rewards for the chosen ones. Boria Majumdar tells the story of when the legendary Arthur Morris, a key member of Don Bradman’s invincible team of the 1940s, was asked what he got out of playing cricket, his answer was “poverty”. With the cricketing revolution brought on by the IPL, “contemporary cricketers have a radically different answer to a similar question. Most will suggest, ‘We became millionaires.’”

Mr Majumdar elaborates: “One billion dollars in TV rights for a ten-year period, 12,700 advertisement slots on Sony Entertainment Television (the host broadcaster) for 59 games between 18 April and June 1, 2008, all sold, hitherto unthinkable players earning $1million in prize money, $5 million for title sponsorship rights for five years, unprecedented television ratings and capacity crowds in practically all the games in the first year of existence — what the IPL has unequivocally driven home is that the shift of the nerve centre of cricket to the subcontinent is now complete.”

There is a lot more in the book that manages to be both a serious academic contribution and an entertaining read for all cricketing enthusiasts.