There's no game like cricket

2006-07-04T00:44:00.000-07:00

Followers of many ball games claim that their particular love is, in some qualitative way, different from other, loosely similar, pastimes. Can the cricketer's assertion be sustained or is it no more than special pleading born of a sentimental regard?

If one thing distinguishes cricket, it is the immense variety of activities which it encompasses. The duration of the game encourages this but is not, I think, the determining influence. Time gives the opportunity, it does not provide an unavoidable imperative.

Consider first the playing area. The size of the field of play generally determines the accuracy needed when propelling a ball. Only games such as cricket and baseball use both a large and a small area, the pitch and the outfield, which necessitates completely different skills and standards of accuracy in each area.

The quality of the playing surface is important in many outdoor sports, but only in cricket is its nature absolutely crucial. Footballers may dislike playing on heavy ground, for example, but conditions are roughly the same for both sides at all times in a match. Similarly, climatic conditions can assist a cricket side to a far greater degree than a tennis player or a rugby team. Moreover, the extreme duration of a irst class match - quite unlike any other ball game - greatly enhances the opportunity for widely differing climatic conditions during the course of play..

Turning to the player, what are the qualities demanded by ball games generally? There would seen to be four common things: moral and physical courage, concentration, judgement of speed and distance, and physical coordination. But the importance of each ability varies greatly from game to game.

The distinction of cricket is that it not only requires such qualities but requires them all in many different forms. Thus the batsman and the close fielder must have the concentration of the billiard player and the reactions and coordination of the squash player. At times the game is slow and allows ample opportunity for moral cowardice; at others it is so fast that no more than an instinctive reaction is possible. Again what game demands more physical courage? Is there anything in other ball games to compare with the nerve required to face a truly fast bowler? Certainly other games have elements of danger, but none has the certainty of assault coupled with time to reflect.

What other distinctions can be made? Well, balls are kicked, caught, thrown, headed or hit with either hand or instrument. Most games rely on only one or two of these actions. Cricket is not unique in (normally) using three of them - rugby, for example, does. Where it is unusual is in combining the individual battle between batsman and bowler, which might be likened to a tennis player receiving service, with the needs of a team game. Baseball does this, but there the variety of stroke is severely limited by the nature of the pitcher's delivery and the shape of the bat. Cricket also has many more ways of fielding and catching.

The more one reflects upon the skills required to play cricket, the more it seems that the game is an archetype or a compendium of ball games. When a batsman faces the bowler, he is the racquets player receiving service but with far more to worry about, for he will receive a considerably greater variety of delivery and must consider the general position of an entire side rather than a single opponent. A man bowls and he is the baseball pitcher possessed of a much greater number of alternatives. A catch is taken in the slips and the cricketer is doing something which has no parallel in any other game. He moves to the outfield and calls upon the resources of the pure athlete. Everything, with the exception of kicking and heading a ball, which can be found in other ball games, can normally be found on the cricket field.

Because it is so various, cricket allows the athlete and non athlete a place. What other ball game could have accommodated Bomber Wells and Colin Bland and allowed both to express their talent to the full?

It is perhaps no coincidence that cricket has produced such a voluminous literature for there is a monstrous multiplicity of detail to describe. Try reporting any other game and the difference is readily apparent. At a tennis match what can be said beyond a forehand here, a smash there. The best that can be done is to give a general sense of the mood of the game. With cricket it is different. Each ball has a readily definable purpose; each action is complete in itself. This, I am sure, is what produces the incongruity of notably individual behaviour within a team game.

There is also a dramatic quality about cricket which is unlike that of any other game. To witness a cricket match is akin to watching a play in the writing or a life unfolding. Comedy, farce and tragedy can be found in an hour. Each individual is picked up, examined and starkly judged in turn. Incompetence, lack of nerve, courage, skill, desire and indifference jostle one another. The game is as cruel a delineator of human personality as any activity I can think of other than war. As with the physical circumstances of the game, the difference here between cricket and other ball games is variety. The game manages to combine moments of exhilaration - for example, a great fast bowler on song - akin to the most exciting moments of fast moving games such as football and rugby with the nerve racking anticipation of a close game of golf or snooker. Indeed, fond as I am of many games, I have never found anything which comes close to matching the sheer excruciating tension of a close finish at cricket. It is perhaps not to be wondered at that one man died and another chewed through his umbrella handle at the climax of the 1882 Oval Test match.

Cricket is ... but there I will leave it before sentiment is given too much freedom.

Thanks - Robert Henderson

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There's no game like cricket