‘Cricket, Lovely Cricket’ : Much More than a Game...?
By Ghazala Akbar
Kuwait
‘Do not play marbles in the dust...it spoils your clothes and dirties your hands. We must stand up and play cricket’... a bit of lofty advice, given by a 14-year-old Mohammed Ali Jinnah to a crouching neighbour Nanji Jaffar, in the alleyways of Karachi in the 1890s. I remember this quotation well. Back in the pre-historic days when we had foreign teams touring Pakistan, it was obligatory reading on the first page of every Test ‘Souvenir’ - a highly - collectible item that contained edifying messages, articles, photos, score sheets and statistics. In those days, Pakistan cricket was a spectator sport, a spectacle watched ‘live’ in a packed stadium. Terror was Fazal Mahmood with a new ball, not the Taliban; a good shot came from Hanif Mohammed, not a sniper; the crowd had a blast with firecrackers, not bombs.
Mr Jinnah, in extolling the gentlemanly and character building virtues of this colonial game, was echoing a widely held notion common amongst the functionaries and subjects of the British Empire that there is something quintessentially upright and noble about the game of cricket that is not shared by other sports. This virtuousness of cricket, its quaint chivalry, its sense of fair play has sub-consciously crept into the English language itself where ‘playing with a straight bat’ is equated with honesty, and straightforwardness. Conversely, ‘that’snot cricket’ denotes villainy and underhandedness. As the Duke of Wellington bragged, ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.’ Obviously, the frog-eating, non-cricket-playing French upstart Napoleon and his cohorts had no chance against well-heeled British officers, who presumably, acquired all the desired qualities -- of character, discipline and teamwork when they were wee lads in the grounds of their boarding school.
In the far-flung posts of the British Empire, Victorian Imperialists heavily laden with the White Man’s Burden introduced the game as a means of inculcating ‘civilising’ values amongst the colonised people. The wearing of cricketing ‘whites’, stoppages for lunch and tea had a becalming effect on excitable folk. In due course, this exercise proved to be a bit of a double-edged sword when wily natives sharpened their skills (and tongues) regularly beating the masters at their own game, their moments of victory gleefully savoured as emblematic of their struggle against colonial rule. The Bollywood film, ‘Lagan’ encapsulated this aspect brilliantly. Last week, as a resurrected Pakistan team completed a three-nil whitewash over England in the UAE, some old Gents at the MCC Long Room must be questioning the wisdom of their colonial forbears!
It’s an oft-repeated cliché but Cricket is generally regarded as more than a game, its glorious uncertainties, a metaphor for life in all its multi-facets. In fact, the game’s terminology is replete with phrases that have come to illustrate life’s vicissitudes and vagaries: batting on a sticky wicket, to have had a good innings...a second innings, be caught out, stumped, use underarm tactics, be bowled over, and take long walk back to the pavilion! Of late doosra and teesra have also entered the English lexis although the meaning is yet to be deciphered or read properly!
Is cricket really more than a game?
The great Trinidadian writer and social commentator CLR James, in his seminal work ‘Beyond the Boundary’ (1963), paraphrased Rudyard Kipling to pose the question: ‘what do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?’ As the title and the question suggest, the author surmised that cricket’s resonance extends much further beyond the traditional boundaries of the cricket field. In the West Indies where James grew up, ‘social and political passions, denied normal outlets, expressed themselves so fiercely in cricket.’ Cricket was about not only winning, losing or how you played the game: it was also to do with social class, race, colour, colonial history, politics and nationalism. This was visibly demonstrated in 1968 when the inclusion of Basil D’Oliveira, a ‘Cape Coloured’ forced a cancellation of the English tour of South Africa. The adverse publicity brought the Apartheid policies of the South African regime to international attention even in non-cricket playing countries.
Both South Africa and Cricket have come a long way since then. In a post-colonial world, while cricket occasionally reminds one of past imperialism (England still curiously being the country everyone loves to beat!) it has also displayed a remarkable ability to transcend class and ethnic divisions internally within a country and also externally across every continent in which it is played. On a long-haul flight, I once sat between a strapping West Indian and a South African. We didn’t seem to have much in common. We made polite conversation about the weather punctuated by long silences...until somebody mentioned cricket. The hours went quickly. I probably couldn’t locate Antigua on a map but I knew Sir Vivien Richards came from there and Curtly Ambrose too. They knew of Multan through its then ‘Sultan’, Inzamam ul Haq!
A recent entrant to the cricketing fraternity, the Chairman of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, stressing the importance of cricket in his war-torn country has this to say: ‘There is nothing that can touch cricket in popularity or as a force for good in Afghanistan... nothing that mobilises our society in the same way... not politics, political events or reconstruction.’ Are we crossing a new boundary here? While his country battled Pakistan in their maiden one-day encounter, he revealed astonishingly that ‘between 80-90% of the kids will be watching this game...President Karzai is watching...even the Opposition Taleban have sent a message of support. Their spokesman said we are praying for the success of the team.’ (Considering their opponents were Pakistan -- in Sharjah -- on a Friday, the Almighty must have had an earful of supplications!)
Whether God’s will or religious piety has anything to do with winning matches, is a moot point but Cricket -- more than any other sport is now associated with unity, patriotism, national pride and the forging of a national identity. From England to the Caribbean, Africa, the Asian Sub-continent down to Australia, the personal attributes and traits of individual cricketers, both positive and negative are transferred to a supra level and are somehow assumed to be reflective of a collective national character. ‘Happy-go-lucky West Indians, plucky New Zealanders, brash Aussies, are some of the choice stereo-type epithets. Even the imagery is evocative of local colour. Osman Samiuddin describes Pakistan’s defence of 142 runs in Abu Dhabi as a logic-defying collective frenzy approaching a Sufi-type Haal. The late Peter Roebuck compared Javed Miandad’s ability to pick gaps in the field to an auto- rickshaw weaving in and out of traffic in Karachi!
Success on the cricket field is also often perceived as an opportunity to avenge historical wrongs, score political points, assert racial and regional superiority and -- in a more recent development --demonstrate economic and financial clout. Until their surprising 8-0 drubbing at the hands of England and Australia, India’s unstoppable on-field successes were attributed to the self-confidence generated by its impressive economic growth. Pundits and punters alike considered its World Cup title a natural progression and a fitting tribute to a nation that had ‘arrived’ not only in the cricketing hierarchy but the world stage, a manifestation of what Jawaharlal Nehru described as India’s ‘tryst with destiny.’
The Indian print and electronic media and their corporate sponsors have peddled this contrived narrative -- of economic success underpinning India’s cricketing prowess -- relentlessly. Some of this hype is misplaced and smacks of jingoistic triumphalism. The Indian media though is not singular when it comes to unabashed gloating. After England downed Australia at home to take the Ashes in 2009, the English press had a field day with some serious Aussie–bashing of their own. It was payback time for all the ‘whinging Pommie B******S’ barbs of yester year by the ‘old enemy.’ Even the UK Government of the time joined the chorus in a display of sporting nationalism not seen in England since they won the Football World Cup in 1966!
The recent 3-0 pasting of the World’s number one team by lowly-ranked Pakistan is -- quite understandably -- being milked by the Government for all its worth. There’s a general feel - good factor in the air and why not! For the past few years, the misfortunes and woes of the Pakistan cricket team, on and off the field had been perceived by many, to be symptomatic of the general drift towards anarchy and decay of the Pakistani state: our batsmen’s propensity to self-destruct akin to an implosion of a suicide bomber; the team’s constant bickering and sniping reminiscent of our fractious politics; the stripping of co-host status at the 2011 World Cup, a reflection of our growing international isolation; the religious leanings of some players evidence of extremism; their poor English–language skills, a measure of our illiteracy; their financial corruption an extension of our moral bankruptcy. The country like our cricket was falling apart at the seams. Really? Is that a fair comparison? Can we seriously equate the two? Are the fortunes of the Pakistani State and our cricketers inextricably linked? Is winning, like Democracy, the best revenge? If so, we should be well on our way to peace, progress and prosperity because our cricketers have bamboozled England!
Let’s not get carried away by spin-doctors. It’s time to take a reality check. And the reality is that international cricket will not return to Pakistan’s shores unless our security situation improves. Our players will remain wandering nomads playing away in a desert called ‘home’ until we get our house in order. The reality is that gas, electricity, PIA, Pak Steel, or the Railways will not be up and running even if Cook is in a spin, Bell stumped or Pietersen’s footwork means a long walk back to the pavilion. The reality is that the admirable heroics of the eleven men in green can entertain and inspire but not materially improve the lives of 180 million people. We can’t expect Misbah and Company to come to the rescue while the rest of us are -- in the former English Captain, Nasser Hussain’s memorably descriptive phrase -- like donkeys in the field! In the final analysis, Cricket -- like marbles, is only a game, nothing more, nothing less.
Cricket, lovely cricket, it was at Lord’s that I first saw it...’ (West Indian victory calypso, 1951)
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