> G'day Chas - and whomever else finds cricket interesting,
Near enough to my heart to flush me out of LBO lurkdom with a first post here.
> Ulhas writes:
>
> >Thus, cricket today is vastly different from what would appear to be the
> >case from the posting based on James' book Beyond a Boundary.
>
> I reckon the advertising-friendly,
> work-day-compatible,all-heat-and-no-light, Jamesonian
> spectacle-at-the-cost-of-meaning one day game has altered everything most
> profoundly.
I don't know that you can attribute pervasive changes in professional cricket solely to the baleful "Gladiators" influence of the one-day game, however precisely such contests attest to the accuracy of Jameson's formulations about spectacle at the cost of meaning. For all but the very few who play the game professionally, one-day (limited-overs) games embody a standard that I'd guess will last for ever, and the roughhouse energy of one-day games must bring professional contests much closer to the experiences of week-end hackers everywhere, including southern California, where I played most of my cricket.
> The cut shot is beautiful, but is discouraged nowadays because there is
> always someone at third-man (that's the relevant defensive fielding
> position) and because express bowling just outside the off-stump (the
> primary invitation to attempt a cut) is not tenable in one-day cricket
> (it's a wicket-taking genre rather than a run-saving one). Instead of the
> shot that threw James into purple tribute, we now have the deliberately
> lofted shots over the in-field - not as pretty and not as hard.
I bowled leg-breaks when I was playing, trying to spin the ball off the ground away from right-handed batsmen, and that meant I always had someone parked at third man to deny runs to right-handers who fancied themselves as cutters. Anything short of a length would get whacked without mercy, then as, apparently, now, the difference being that very few of us at that level had the reflexes or the skills (or the protective helmets) to field very close to the bat. Gratuitous lofted shots over the infield used to be dismissed with great snottiness as 'cow-shots,' but, despite diligent practice, I always found such disgraceful strokes extremely difficult to execute, especially off fast bowlers. Misses were punished by the infliction of embarrassing bruises as well as by general hilarity in the field. My own retirement, however, was eventually prompted as much by deficient depth perception as by increasing ineptitude.
> All kinds of transformations attend the fact that bowlers exist now not to
> dismiss batters but to deny them runs.
>
> I think the standard of batting in all modes of cricket has deteriorated
> (especially on James's aesthetic criteria) as a direct consequence of this
> commodified form of cricket. Bowling is typically more accurate, but less
> varied. The bowler has less tactical scope available to him. And bowlers
> now play so many one-day games their careers are both short and
> injury-ridden. 'Tis the fielding that has advanced profoundly.
Denying batsmen runs was always a key feature of the one-day, limited-overs games I played in, in England as well as here in Santa Barbara. If I could pin batsmen down for a few overs, they'd be more likely to try something daft and get themselves out.
> Less complexity, less aesthetics and less significance as forum for
> intra-commonwealth contention.
> >And if there is any class struggle in cricket, then I have not noticed it.
>
> 'Tis my firm opinion (and not just mine) that, in England, working class
> lads and northerners in general (those whose accents do not echo well in
> the Long Room at Marylebone Cricket Club), have been woefully
> underselected. Furthermore, black bowlers (typically the fastest bowlers
> on the English menu) are ever in and out of the side. Mebbe this is why
> England have so long been so awful ...
According to the last cricket book I read (long-time pro Simon Hughes' autobiography), credit for contemporary English failures in cricket must be ascribed to pervasive administrative imbecilism, which may or may not (but probably does) subsume racism and patrician oppression. By Hughes' own witless account, West Indian teammates on the Middlesex team were known collectively as the Jackson Five, a sobriquet that Hughes quite happily accepts as evidence of enlightened equal-opprtunity bonhomie rather than of racist laddism.
> And most Pakistani internationals, especially the senior players, do have
> rather plumby Raj accents, too (Imran and Wasim come to mind).
>
> As for the erstwhile giants from the West Indies; their great desire to
> vanquish the old rulers on the cricket field has been dissipating for some
> time. Some speculate it's to do with satellite TV basketball from the US.
> And mebbe the old ruler just doesn't signify much to today's youngsters.
Come off it. Imran and Wasim are just a couple of . . . erm . . . jolly decent chaps. And a couple of years from now, the Windies will be invincible again; this is just a phase.
> Cheers,
> Rob.
Also included in "Beyond a Boundary" was a piece James wrote in 1957 for 'The Cricketer' from which I've rudely wrenched the two paragraphs (pp 216 - 217 in the 1984 edition from Duke University Press) below:
"The prevailing attitude of the players of 1890 - 1914 was daring, adventure, creation. The prevailing attitude of 1957 can be summed up in one word--security. Bowlers and batsmen are dominated by it. the long forward-defensive push, the negative bowling, are the techniques of specialized performers (professional or amateur) in a security-minded age. As a corollary, we find much fast bowling and brilliant and daring close fielding and wicketkeeping--they are the only spheres where the spirit of adventure can express itself. The cricketers of today play the cricket of a specialized stratum, that of functionaries in the Welfare State. When many millions of people all over the world demand security and a state that must guarantee it, that's one thing. But when bowlers or batsmen, responsible for an activity essentially artistic and therefore individual, are dominated by the same principles, then the result is what we have.
"And it is clear that those who support the Welfare State idea in politics and social life do not want it on the cricket field. They will not come to look at it."