Oedipus Lex

…I love it. There, said it.

As I sit in my grey office on a grey day in a grey suit there is a light. It comes in the shape, or rather sound, of TMS (Test Match Special for the philistines) playing via the BBC on my PC. Cricket obviously has its detractors, I am constantly mocked for my unhealthy obsession with a game which can go on for five days and still end in a draw. A game that stops for drinks and lunch and tea. A game that doesn’t seem to move that quickly and is just the same repetitive action played again and again. Yet I and countless millions love the game. Why?

For me, and I warn you this is sentimental, cricket is more than a game it is a way of life, it is something pure. As I crouched behind the stumps on Sunday I saw an opposition batsman hit a lovely shot which was applauded by our team. Where else, but on the cricket field, in today’s fast paced competitive world, would you see that? Where else would the incoming batsman be clapped and wished good luck? As it happened we managed to beat the other team in record time. So the day wasn’t wasted and in an attempt at offering them some redemption from ignominy we played again. We then de-camped to the pub, together.

I’m not naive enough to suggest the spirit of fair play and decency extends into all levels of the game. I have no doubt that those with actual talent are as competitive as in any other sport. I am sure that WG Grace was a ruthless bastard, but at the amateur, rank amateur level, things are different. That said, even in today’s game there is a faint whiff of a mythical, old world where nothing more than a stiff upper lip and Corinthian spirit were needed to run an empire. There is a fair argument that cricket was developed to further the Christian ideals of the motherland to the colonials yet cricket with its Silly Mid Offs and Deep Backward Square Legs and Corridor of Uncertainty, for me, conjures images of something warm and fuzzy. When I listen to TMS in my office I feel like I should be wearing flannels and tweed rather than a suit and listening to it on an old Roberts rather than a PC. There is a strange part of me that likes the ritual of tuning an old radio to Radio 4 LW, hearing the other stations fizzing in and out until the genteel sound of mass clapping fills the airwaves.

I love the stats and, for a man with no head for numbers, the obsession with figures. I’ve just heard a commentator stating that this is the lowest score by an England team batting first at Headingly since 1953 – depressing yet glorious. A friend of mine has kept a spreadsheet of every ball bowled and faced since he was 11, he can reel off his batting and bowling figures on request without blinking. As I said, some think cricket is nothing but a man bowling a ball at another man endlessly for 5 days. They’re wrong. This simplistic view fails to take into consideration the endless personal duels, the traps, subtle changes of flight, and line and length.

Cricket will never replace football as the game of the masses, I wouldn’t want to it to. I suppose there is a part of me that enjoys being one of a self-selected band who huddle together in pubs selling real ales discussing obscure elements of a random game. This sums it up for me. It’s a game that even those of us who have been playing and watching for years don’t fully understand – most footballers can explain the off side rule but how many people know the penalty for a cricket ball hitting a hat placed on the floor by the fielding team? We don’t understand it, we’re not very good at it despite inventing and exporting it – how wonderfully British.