CMJ
Page 36
I awoke with relief to the sound of birds singing on a warm tropical morning with a blue sky overhead made more interesting by small, white cumulus clouds. The sea beckoned for a swim before breakfast and, having shed the burden of daily writing, I had no work to do before catching another flight to Trinidad.
So why such a harrowing little dream? The answer, no doubt, is that worriers like myself will always find something to be anxious about and that the unpunctual get their just deserts.
Health and high self-esteem are the two keys to happiness, the elusive target of all of us. I continue to be, like most men, a confirmed hypochondriac. Something is usually aching, often my neck, which is only slightly shorter than that of a giraffe. When I consulted a renowned muscular-skeletal specialist, the former Cambridge cricket Blue Dr. Ian Thwaites, he tried everything: a jab or two of cortisone, a few attempts at acupuncture and some educated manhandling. He concluded by putting me on a tiny dose of pills once used as anti-depressants.
It was an odd cure for a stiff neck but he knew exactly what he was doing. There was, in fact, nothing wrong with my head and plenty wrong with my mind. When it comes to a mood of depression, though, I have, thank goodness, always found it quite hard to sustain it for long. Damon Runyan observed that that most of life is six to five against. I believe that, most of the time, it is actually five to four on.
On the whole I have found that the unbearable lightness of being is actually quite tolerable. I tend to see wild flowers rather than weeds. In other words there is a touch of the Micawber in me, not least, I’m afraid, when England are 94 for six against Australia, needing a mere 320 to win. They seldom do, naturally, but to have spent more than half my life pretending to be an authority on the reasons why, and still to be reasonably fit, thank God, in my middle sixties, makes me appreciate that I have been extraordinarily fortunate, whatever may lie ahead.
31
FRUSTRATIONS
Wonderful thing, technology; truly wonderful. Yet computers and new generations of mobile telephones provide the great paradox of our time. In one way these ever smaller, more versatile and sophisticated machines ‘save’ time to a miraculous degree. Wikipedia may not be infallible but it makes the old Encyclopaedia Britannica look like an elephant racing a whippet. In another way instant communications work and hound the user until he or she becomes no freer than a slave. Twenty-first century peace is a screen cleared of all emails and a mobile switched firmly to ‘off’.
There is too much of the irascible Victor Meldrew in me. All my life I have been prone to quick bursts of temper, generally concealed in public but frequently released in private, to my shame. I come to the boil less because of my own little mistakes, like pushing the toaster handle down a second time for a quick browning but forgetting until I smell burning, than because of the abundant frustrations of modern life. Notable amongst them are the sometimes infuriating habits of computers, especially when you have got nine-tenths of the way through some online transaction before being told that you should have given your date of birth before your mobile number and your mother’s maiden name; the knowledge that you will never switch one on without having lots of emails that you do not need; and the hair-tearingly relentless inhumanity of mechanised telephone responses.
It is extremely difficult to remain entirely calm when first you hear a voice telling you how important your call is, but that there is an unusually high ‘volume’ of calls that day, so you are being held in a queue; then when all suddenly goes silent before you hear a high-pitched hum; then when, having tried again and managed this time to get past the same first two steps, you are asked: ‘If your inquiry is about X please press A, if you want Y please press B.’ That hazard safely negotiated, you are requested to produce a security password that you have forgotten.
I could go on at some length about the frustrations of a contemporary life in which standards often seem to get lower. Why, to give but one small example, do all sandwiches and baguettes produced for people on the move in Britain now have to have a sour-tasting mayonnaise to keep them apparently fresh, rather than good, natural butter? I don’t want the ubiquitous ‘mayo’, thank you. Such changes are always, it seems, for the convenience of the producer and packager rather than for the consumer.
I shall confine myself here, however, to something that I am supposed to know something about, the standards set by our newspapers and broadcasting authorities. Aiming to the mass market for obvious reasons, instead of keeping a proper balance between the original BBC mantra, to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ they seem to be obsessed with soccer and celebrities. When it comes to ‘news’ the emphasis is too often on what somebody has said rather than on something that has happened. Nor is just what they say that can be frustrating. As with jokes, it is also the way that they say it.
Scriptwriters, talented though they are, must take some of the blame for failing to provide actors with English as it is actually spoken, or at least should be spoken. Perhaps statements in plays such as ‘I think I’ll go and lay down or ‘I was sat there minding my own business’ may be excused if they are conveying common English usage, but the more grammatical errors creep in and become fashionable, the less structure to the language there will be. When such errors are repeated in broadcasts or newspapers it is more a case of laziness or ignorance. Rather pompously and pedantically, I suppose, I bridle when I see a headline asking ‘Who did what to who?’ or a sentence such as ‘The future depends on him being able to deliver the goods’. So ‘him’ is going to deliver the goods is him?
If we abandon the simple essential of every English sentence, the subject, verb and object, we abandon all pretence of any structure. ‘Whom’ seems in the process of being almost deliberately abandoned by newspapers and scriptwriters, as if by some kind of inverse snobbery that considers it passé to write or speak proper English.
I wince when I hear contributors to programmes on radio or television (especially politicians) saying that they will ‘try and do something’, instead of ‘try to do something’. Or, worse, when in what are presumably carefully written bulletins, newsreaders or reporters say, every day of the week, such things as: ‘A group of scientists have written a critical report; or ‘the board of directors have resigned, or ‘one in five children have played truant’, rather than the grammatically correct has; or ‘if he had not dropped the ball he would have scored a try and the eventual result may have been different’ rather than might have been different. Will the vast majority of journalists, especially those in Australia now aped by British ones, not appreciate that ‘may’ is the present tense, ‘might’ the past; and that while ‘may’ expresses a definite possibility, ‘might, expresses the idea that it is just possible but unlikely? The collective noun debate, I should add in fairness to all sports editors, is confused by the long-established habit in Britain of referring to representative sports teams as if they are a plural entity. We say ‘England have scored 208 for six’ when strictly it should be ‘England has’. The Australians get this right: we don’t.
These are subtleties that good communicators should cherish and preserve, not arrogantly and ignorantly ignore. They reflect poor education too. Even enlightened newspaper editors seem to have abandoned a proper distinction between any subject and object.
I know that the counter-argument is that if something can be understood it is acceptable English. New vogue words sometimes add usefully to the language. I accept, too, that lazy linguistic fashions imported so willingly and uncritically from America (showcased, immortalisation, outside of etc) are more a matter of taste than things that are right or wrong. The same is true of pronunciations (tempor-ary, skedule etc) But poor basic grammar simply demeans the language.
32
CRICKET’S FUTURE
Twenty20 cricket is the often exciting fashion of the moment. Some believe that it is the game’s only future but they are wrong. For all its popular appeal, it has essentially demeaned a multi-faceted game.
At it
s professional level cricket, like champagne, is more often than not in a state of ferment. Despite the sudden passion for franchises involving vast sums of money and what we had better now call the ‘Twenty20 Revolution’, the instant version will not supersede Test cricket.
‘Cricket is the new football’ we were told, curiously not in reference to Twenty20 but in 2005 when an exalted Ashes series was gripping a wider than usual proportion of the British public. Only two years later came the first ‘global’ Twenty20 tournament in South Africa. India happened to win it (better still, beating Pakistan in the final) so much of India’s vast population was captivated, much as the explosive fast bowling of Lillee and Thomson enthused Australians, amongst them Kerry Packer, in 1974/5.
Cricket’s popularity ebbs and flows, like the game itself, but it keeps flowing. Not because it is the new football, but because it is the old cricket, a series of duels between a batsman and a bowler in a team context, a game demanding greater discipline, technique and intelligence than any other.
In 1900 cricket was ‘in the very direst peril of degenerating from the finest of all summer games into an exhibition of dullness and weariness’ according to the great Victorian all-rounder A.G. Steel, following two hot seasons in which batsmen had had things too much their own way and there were too many draws. Historians now call the era to which he was referring the ‘Golden Age’.
It is not dullness and weariness that everyone is worried about now, but glitz and superficial razzmatazz: a boiled-down version of a profound game that is hauling in television advertisers, not to mention easily pleased spectators, in India, the land where passion for the game knows no bounds. The consequences are that more than just a few leading players are becoming millionaires, that the bash, dash and dazzle game is getting wider exposure, but that at the same time the game is in danger of losing its balance.
Cricket cannot live by Twenty20 alone. The game’s skills and tactics have to be learned in a harder school. That is not to say, of course, that the advent of the Twenty20 leagues is not a historic landmark for professional cricket nor a great opportunity for the game’s further expansion so long as the leading administrators – and players more powerful than ever before – show some restraint. But the broader view will not be taken by business folk keen to cash in on the fashion for quickfire cricket. There is obvious danger to the international game when Twenty20 franchises offer players greater riches for less work
Hindsight suggests that the brilliant original concept of the Indian Premier League had serious flaws. First, by choosing the eye-catching means of a public auction for players who had already been promised a generous enough base rate by the BCCI for their six weeks of cricket, the IPL created salaries inflated to the point at which they threatened to unbalance all other forms of cricket, especially Tests and one-day internationals.
If Andrew Symonds could have his initial US$250,000 salary, guaranteed by the BCCI for joining the league, inflated to $1.35 million by his franchise, why would he bother to play all the year round for Australia? He had come late to international cricket for one so talented and he had enjoyed his prominent role in winning back the Ashes in 2006/7 but the self-discipline and dedication required to keep his place seemed less important when such easy wealth came his way. Very soon, he and his Australian employers parted.
The total income of the India captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, was estimated at around US$25 million in 2010, of which only $200,000 was his central contract for India. Dhoni had originally found his fame and fortune as an international cricketer but there is clearly a danger, if the IPL continues to thrive, that younger ambitious cricketers will see the Indian league and Twenty20 cricket in other countries as a much easier way of making a fine living from the game without having to suffer the rigours of Test cricket. Ravi Bopara, for example, temporarily rejected by England’s selectors after a promising start, did well in the 2010 IPL but in the auction the following year he was not selected for another contract, partly because the timing of the season in England prevented him from committing to the full tournament.
Lesser cricketers from India, Australia and other countries got lucrative contracts instead, in some cases, ironically, because they had failed to make it to their national squads and could therefore give the ‘bash and dash’ game their full attention. A little-known Australian named Dan Christian was taken on for three years at a salary of $900,000 for three years. It is surely the duty of administrators planning the game’s future to ensure that the prime purpose of every ambitious young cricketer should be to play for his country. Rewards for doing so have to be commensurate with the honour, and fixtures have to be planned to keep a proper balance between international contests and the cricket played by franchises.
A second strategic error was made by the BCCI and Lalit Modi, the dynamic businessman who drove the IPL into existence with the help of the International Management Group. IMG is the company with tentacles profitably entwined in most televised international sport. The BCCI chose not to reward the other international boards for allowing their own contracted players to participate. The sop, instead, was to create yet another spurious international tournament, the ‘Champions League’, contested by the finalists in the various domestic Twenty20 competitions in other countries. In England this has forced the ECB to change the pattern of the county season for the worse. Yet the money promised to national boards participating in the 2010 Champions League had still not been paid six months after it had been promised.
For the BCCI it has been no great problem since they were taking the profits from selling the franchises but in other countries it has meant administrators having to renegotiate contracts, a process requiring heavy legal fees. The unity of national squads has been threatened in consequence and the arrangement of fixtures in an already crowded programme has been further complicated.
The IPL could not have taken off as spectacularly as it did without the energy, initiative and drive of Modi but he evidently became carried away by becoming a media star. His downfall started in April 2010, after he had added two more franchises to the original eight, none of which could expect any profit from their investments for a number of years. The BCCI relieved him of all responsibility for the IPL and, a few months later, lodged a complaint against him with the Chennai police alleging misappropriation of Board funds of around US$105 million relating mainly to the allotment of media and commercial rights.
Modi was also accused of a conflict of interests because of family involvements in franchises but he was not alone in that. One of his accusers, the BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan, was on the board of India Cements, owners of the Chennai Super Kings. Accused of just such a conflict, he defended himself by saying that he had received clearance from the senior figure in Indian cricket, the Cabinet Minister and now ICC chairman, Sharad Pawar.
When I started writing and talking about cricket the game was run, albeit with too little regard for the financial well being of the top players, by administrators whose main concern was the maintenance of the long tradition of Test cricket. England and Australia usually held sway in the ICC. Now the power has passed to India and the game’s future will depend on how responsibly they use it.
The advent of Twenty20 is just the latest shift in a game that has always mirrored social trends. Packer’s cricket in coloured clothes was innovative, it seemed, but they played in coloured kit, albeit rather more tasteful, in the 18th century. Twentyovers- a-side cricket matches themselves are not new. Like many amateurs, as I have mentioned, I played them on summer evenings in the 1960s. It was just as much fun then, because matches were always vital and competitive.
Nor is slickly marketed cricket anything unusual. William Clarke of Nottingham was every bit as much an entrepreneur with his touring England XIs in the 1840s as Modi in the first decade of the 21st century. Almost a century before Clarke, moreover, one of the driving forces behind the very first professional cricketers was the fact that aristocrats with too much time and money want
ed to bet on matches and, much like the aficionados of Bollywood and the captains of Indian industry, they rather fancied owning their own teams.
So, gambling on cricket is not new either. Inderjit Singh Bindra, the wily Indian administrator from Chandigarh who did most to bring the fifty-over World Cup to India for the first time, estimated that around £90 billion had been wagered on the IPL when it had reached the end of its long and fevered first round in 2008. That was astonishing, but so is the fact that in 1743, when Richard Newland of Slindon (Sussex) led ‘Three of England’ against ‘Three of Kent’ on the Artillery Field in London (where cricket is still played), the crowd was 10,000 and the purse £500. At twopence per entry that would still have made a tidy sum for the promoters. A contemporary report said that ‘near £20,000 is depending’ on bets associated with the Earl of Sandwich’s matches at Newmarket in 1751 between ‘Old Etonians’ and ‘England’. The prize money was £1500. Today that is worth £225,000. Plus ça change.
Provided there is no corruption – and history tells that there has to be unstinting education and supervision to prevent it – the sudden fresh injection of money into the game will be good, not just for the lucky few players in the right place at the right time, but for its expansion into new areas of the world, particularly the largely untapped ‘markets’ of China and the USA.