The art of cricket | thearticle

> _“Cricket is an art. Like all arts it has a technique, but its > finest moments come when the artist forgets about technique and is > absorbed in the game.”_ _CLR James_ Well,

that was quite the fairytale finish. Last Monday, in his final match in any form of professional cricket, Stuart Broad secured the win with the last ball he will ever bowl in a Test. The

previous morning, he’d smashed a six with the final ball he will ever _face _in a Test. We will miss the exuberance and optimism of Broad’s appeals, whether those appeals were justified or

(more usually) not. And what’s with that “bazball” stuff (a term hated by the England team apparently) — the incorporation into the longer game of the supposedly reckless techniques familiar

from the shorter form? There were times during the series when the Australian fielders looked as baffled as a victim of David Blaine’s “street magic”. Some of the most entertaining moments

of the series were generated by the hapless attempts of the Australian batsmen to emulate the bazball panache. To extend the Blaine analogy: they tended to drop the pack of cards. (That

wasn’t all they dropped, come to think of it; but to be fair, so did England.) This may or may not have been one of the best Test series of all time: a plausible assessment will require some

distance of time. But it was certainly one of the most absorbing — and in many ways, also perplexing). Not only was the series drawn (and therefore close). And not only was every _match_

close. And not only was every _session_ close. At times it felt like every _half_ session was close and could potentially turn on a sixpence. I was introduced to the magic of cricket by my

grandfather, who at the time was dying of the emphysema gifted to him by the Lancashire mines. This was in the 1970s, the days of Roberts and Holding; Lilley and Thompson. It was Grandad who

introduced me to the peculiar internal language of the game (just think of the field place names!) and supplied the necessary translations. I was lucky: as with learning a foreign language,

the acquisition of the grammar of cricket is best done in childhood; it can be baffling to the adult mind. Here’s an observation regarding that point. Children are proficient when it comes

to the internalisation of rules. And cricket, like all games, is a rigidly rule-governed activity. In the specific case of cricket, the governing rules are venerated to such a degree that

they are referred to as _laws.  _(For those without a life, you can find them in codified form in _The Laws of Cricket_, where they are set out as a system of numbered instructions. A bit

like Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus_, but somewhat harder to understand). There seems to be a paradox here. How can it be that an activity so rule-constrained facilitates such different styles of

play? How can there be room in cricket for both “bazball” and its Australian opposite? The answer, of course, is that this is the wrong way to look at it. Laws, rules, constraints are

necessary conditions of the creative impulse. There is a natural contrariness to the human psychology, a habit of subversion, which turns those rules to its advantage. It is, if you like,

difficult to do anything freely in the complete absence of constraint. And there is a conservative element to this as well. For the Burkean conservative, tradition is not the same as

_stasis. _Tradition allows for constrained renewal – on condition that the renewal in question pays due deference to the system of rules which makes it possible. There are few games more

“traditional” than cricket and it is this quality which has permitted its evolution, from the days of WG Grace to the modern bazball era. The Trinidadian cricket writer, CLR James, who

furnishes the quotation with which we began, was correct. Cricket is indeed an art, but one with an aesthetic which shifts subtly over time. Some of the greatest players even from just 30

years ago would be perplexed by the way England played this series. The Old Man himself, WG Grace, would not believe he was looking at the same game. I’m going to conclude with a rebuttal.

Earlier this Summer, something called _The Independent Commission for Equity Report_ issued a report in which cricket is criticised for its lack of “inclusion” in the game. It deploys the

predictable flipchart quota approach to James’ work of art. One can only hope that the panjandrums of this committee absorb the excitement and brilliance of this summer and conclude that

cricket is surviving just fine in the absence of their woke recommendations. This 2023 Ashes series has reaffirmed that there is only one “beautiful game”. And it isn’t football. _ _ A

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