Tag: cricket

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The beauty of cricket

The beauty of cricket, and the reason it can (sometimes) hold your attention for the whole five days of a test match, is that it’s well balanced. In almost any situation, the fall of a couple of quick wickets would significantly change the balance of the match. So even when there’s nothing very exciting happening (and that’s quite a lot of the time) there’s always the possibility that it’s about to.


photo © badgerswan

That’s probably why it’s always been so popular on the radio – because a large part of the pleasure is in the shifting of the balance between the two teams, and the mood that builds up over passages of play. Of course when something exciting does happen it would be nice to be able to see it, but it certainly works much better than most sports. It helps that they have so much time to talk between balls and between overs.

It’s probably true of all sports, of course, that to be successful they need to establish some kind of pseudo-narrative structure. Tennis, for example, would be a much less enjoyable spectator sport if the scoring system was different. You could argue it would be a fairer reflection of the balance of play if, instead of playing games and sets, they just counted up total points scored and the winner was the first to 75. But the gradual establishment of a lead by one player would have less drama than the current system, with its building up of tension towards the set points.

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Harmison’s dew-pearled

The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
Harmison is on fire,
Panesar is taking key wickets,
Pietersen is holding his catches,
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world!

As I’m sure Browning meant to say.

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Sport on YouTube

A flukey goal; a flukey hole in one; and a freakish cricket shot.

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Not exactly a thrashing

It seems only fair to point out that when I said, about the cricket match between England and Sri Lanka, that Sri Lanka were “almost certainly going to get thrashed” – I was wrong. After following on, they made one of the great comebacks in the history of Test cricket to be 537-9 at the end of the game.

And, again in translation for my American readers, we played one game for 5 days and it was a draw. That’s cricket.

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The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

The NY Times ‘sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years”‘. You can see the list of works that got more than one vote here. I’ve read embarrassingly few of them; one that I have read is the most recent, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which I read in Spain.

Considering the glowing reviews I read, I thought it was completely ordinary. The historical aspect of it – the speculation of how the US could have wandered into fascism under a Lindbergh presidency – was quite interesting and convincingly done. But as a literary work it did nothing for me. It felt like it could have been written by a journalist or a historian to make a historical point. I was reading it directly after some Pynchon, which probably made the style seem a bit flat in comparison, but still, the characterisation and dialogue seemed unremarkable to me. Perhaps I was just in the wrong mood for it, and I’m pretty sure that if it had been set in, say, Surrey instead of Newark it would have been more immediate for me, but I still wonder how it would have been received if it didn’t have Roth’s name attached to it.

The Pynchon, on the other hand (Gravity’s Rainbow), clearly was a remarkable bit of writing, but I’m not sure it was more than the sum of its parts. I think that’s generally a problem, though, with these sprawling, disjointed modernist novels going right back to Joyce and indeed Sterne – can the diversions and oddities justify themselves.

Anyway, I’m now rambling. I think it’s probably a mistake trying to talk coherently about literature and listen to the cricket at the same time. Jayawardene and Maharoof are doing a good job at the moment settling down the Sri Lankans but

And at that moment Hoggard took Maharoof’s wicket, caught and bowled. Leaving Sri Lanka on 129/7 in reply to 551/6 declared, which, in translation for my American readers, means they’re almost certainly going to get thrashed.

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England vs. India

I must admit, after the humiliation in Pakistan, I was starting to lose faith, but England’s performance to tie the series in India without Vaughan, Trescothick, Simon Jones or Ashley Giles, and for the last game without Harmison and Cook as well, was seriously impressive.

BTW, isn’t Marcus Trescothick just the perfect name for the hero of a bodice-ripper? Even better than the current Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education and Skills, whose name is Lord Adonis. I kid you not. Perhaps Lord Adonis could be the scheming, predatory English aristocrat, and Marcus Trescothick could be the swarthy, taciturn Cornishman who rescues the heroine from his clutches.

“Oh my darling, I know I’m vulnerable to well-pitched-up deliveries outside off stump, but can’t you see I love you?”