“It isn’t cricket” supposedly set the ethical standard around the British Empire for over a century. Last week saw Lords, the ‘home of cricket,’ validate a damning report about racism, elitism, classism and sexism in British cricket just days after it was issued.
The facts were simple. England’s last recognised batsman, Johnny Bairstow, also their wicket-keeper, dozily wandered out of his crease and was the victim of a long-range stumping by Alex Carey, his Australian counterpart. All within the rules, and he had tried the same trick on Australian batsman David Warner in their first innings.
“The spirit of cricket” was then invoked to say ‘let him stay.’ But the Australian captain, Pat Cummins, didn’t play Englishball. The crowd booed, and classism, elitism and racism were on full display in the hallowed Lords Long Room as the garishly-striped members jostled and abused the Australians as they passed through on the way to their dressing-room. Usman Khawaja – he’s brown – called out a couple of members and it is likely that heads will roll. Oh what tragedy, the waiting list for membership at Lords is measured, like its Roll of Honour, in centuries.
That other great English trait, hypocrisy, was on full display in the baying crowd. But what a hoot, and a cartoonist’s delight for Antpodeans. Here’s Aussie cartoonist First Dog on the Moon in the Guardian:
But it also reminded me of one of my great reading loves when I was growing up – the story of the village cricket match in Canadian satirist A. G. Macdonell’s England Their England.
I had great pleasure in reading it again today. Lords was caricatured:
“Mr Hodge the captain “turned up at twenty-five minutes past 11, resplendent in flannels, a red-and-white football shirt with a lace-up collar, and a blazer of purple-and-yellow stripes, each stripe being at least two inches across, and surmounted by a purple-and-yellow cap that made him somehow reminiscent of one of the Michelin twins.”
“Mr. Hodge, having won the toss by a system of his own founded upon the differential calculus and the Copernican theory, sent in his opening pair to bat. One was James Livingstone, a very sound club cricketer, and the other one was called, simply, Boone. Boone was a huge, awe-inspiring colossus of a man, weighing at least eighteen stone and wearing all the majestic trappings of a Cambridge Blue. Donald felt that it was hardly fair to loose such cracks upon a humble English village until he fortunately remembered that he, of all people, a foreigner, admitted by courtesy to the National Game, ought not to set himself up to be a judge of what is, and what is not, cricket.
I particularly liked the blacksmith fast bowler:
“The second ball went full-pitch into the wicket-keeper’s stomach and there was a delay while the deputy wicket-keeper was invested with the pads and gloves of office. The third ball, making a noise like a partridge, would have hummed past Mr. Livingstone’s left ear had he not dexterously struck it out of the ground for six, and the fourth took his leg bail with a bullet-like full-pitch. Ten runs for one wicket, last man six. The professor got the fifth ball on the left ear and went back to the Three Horseshoes, while Mr. Harcourt had the singular misfortune to hit his wicket before the sixth ball was even delivered.
Ten runs for two wickets and one man retired hurt. A slow left-hand bowler was on at the other end, the local rate-collector, a man whose whole life was one of infinite patience and guile. Off his first ball the massive Cambridge Blue was easily stumped, having executed a movement that aroused the professional admiration of the Ancient who was leaning upon his scythe. Donald was puzzled that so famous a player should play so execrable a stroke until it transpired, later on, that a wrong impression had been created and that the portentous Boone had gained his Blue at Cambridge for rowing (mine was boxing) and not for cricket.
Three more tests to go – should be fun.
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