Showing posts with label craft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label craft. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 April 2017
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Cricket - Were the good old days really better?
Let's break it down to a few parameters and try to make an objective analysis
March 20, 2013
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Technology or human eyesight? Helmets or bare bonces? Covered or uncovered pitches? Back-foot no-ball law or front? Arlott or Bumble? Does any breed of sporting spectator spend quite so much time as we cricket folk when it comes to debating the merits of the way we were and the way we are? Granted, our baseball and boxing counterparts in particular might scoff at such a suggestion, but they haven't seen their game repackaged as three distinct products.
"Before the Fall? Reflections on cricket in England during the 1950s" is that sagacious social historian David Kynaston's contribution to an annual lecture series at Lord's. A prolific author and academic whose books range from Austerity Britain to W.G.'s Birthday Party, Kynaston uses ten criteria to compare past with present: aesthetic, meritocratic, competitive, craft, excitement, personalities, sportsmanship, walking, crowd behaviour, "mattering", and coverage. Overall, he concludes, "it comes out pretty even".
Loath as I am to take issue with such an esteemed chronicler - and bearing in mind that I had yet to celebrate my third birthday when the 1950s ended - this strikes me as a perfect case of nostalgia overshadowing, if not fact, then assuredly common sense.
Given that we are six weeks away from the 50th anniversary of the most far-reaching of cricket's innovations,the limited-overs game (90 years, it should be noted, after the first knockout cup event was abandoned after a solitary match), now seems an apt moment to stand back and reflect on how far we have come and whether, on balance, we have advanced. Most of Kynaston's categories will do nicely, although it feels reasonable to merge walking and sportsmanship (is the former not an intrinsic, if extreme, aspect of the latter?).
Before we begin, let's reel back to a revealing Daily Express survey from that summer of '63: the "Better Cricket Competition". Readers were invited to make five suggestions to improve the County Championship, then the planet's lone competition for full-time pros. The judges - Alec Bedser, Doug Insole and Norman Preston, editor of Wisden - assessed 2000-plus entries, from whence came sundry proposals: overseas players, Sunday play, promotion and relegation, over-restricted first innings, more overs per hour, 15-pace run-ups, rewards for faster scoring, leg-before decisions to dissuade pad-play, and eight- or even ten-ball overs.
The more sensible of these would soon be woven into the first-class fabric, though it is intriguing to note that the judges were unanimous in insisting that the most pressing need was the elimination of time-wasting. In this respect, at least, it seems fair to say that cricket in 2013 lags a vast way behind 1963, though whether this matters is another kettle of cod entirely. It certainly didn't seem terribly important to those who completed the recent public surveys conducted by the ECB and Cricket Australia.
And so to the Kynaston Test. Not unnaturally, some of his sub-divisions permit more objective analysis than others. So, for all that he rightly deems it to be "somewhere near the core pleasure", let's dispense with the aesthetic, the "sensory aspect". The way he sees it, much has been lost through the arrival of "helmets, garish-coloured clothing, umpires no longer in white coats, sponsors' markings on the playing arena" and the "continual noise and exaggerated celebrations" of the players; such preoccupations will strike younger generations as profoundly old hat, not to say downright petty and daft.
Meritocratic
Fifty Aprils ago marked the start of the first English season to be unencumbered by the distinction between shamateurs and professionals: all hail the new meritocracy. Now, thanks to the multiplicity of formats, the ultimate meritocracy is with us: not only can even an Afghan earn a penny or two, you can have a disobedient body, like Shaun Tait does, and still put in a fruitful day's work by bowling four overs. Today: 2pts
Fifty Aprils ago marked the start of the first English season to be unencumbered by the distinction between shamateurs and professionals: all hail the new meritocracy. Now, thanks to the multiplicity of formats, the ultimate meritocracy is with us: not only can even an Afghan earn a penny or two, you can have a disobedient body, like Shaun Tait does, and still put in a fruitful day's work by bowling four overs. Today: 2pts
Competitive
In the 1960s the average Test total was 323; over the past ten years it has been 350. Yet before we get too carried away with this apparent widening of the gap between bat and ball, the rise in scoring rates (from 2.49 runs per over to 3.27) has compensated handsomely for the reduction in the number of overs per day, the upshot being that the ratio of conclusive results has soared from to 53% to 74%. Throw in the fact that standards are far more uniform - while only England, Australia and West Indies were regular winners in the first period, this year alone has seen New Zealand take a one-day rubber against South Africa and force England to follow on, India all but reverse 2011-12's 4-0 loss to Australia, and Bangladesh trade 600s with Sri Lanka - and it's another no-contest. Today: 2pts
In the 1960s the average Test total was 323; over the past ten years it has been 350. Yet before we get too carried away with this apparent widening of the gap between bat and ball, the rise in scoring rates (from 2.49 runs per over to 3.27) has compensated handsomely for the reduction in the number of overs per day, the upshot being that the ratio of conclusive results has soared from to 53% to 74%. Throw in the fact that standards are far more uniform - while only England, Australia and West Indies were regular winners in the first period, this year alone has seen New Zealand take a one-day rubber against South Africa and force England to follow on, India all but reverse 2011-12's 4-0 loss to Australia, and Bangladesh trade 600s with Sri Lanka - and it's another no-contest. Today: 2pts
Craft
Uncovered pitches might have asked more of batsmen (and commensurately less of bowlers) but immeasurably more is demanded of today's practitioner. Who knows whether undimmable titans such as WG, Bradman or SF Barnes would have been so adaptable, but there is no question that Hashim Amla, Marlon Samuels and Graeme Swann are as effective over 20 overs and 50 overs as over five days. 1pt apiece
Uncovered pitches might have asked more of batsmen (and commensurately less of bowlers) but immeasurably more is demanded of today's practitioner. Who knows whether undimmable titans such as WG, Bradman or SF Barnes would have been so adaptable, but there is no question that Hashim Amla, Marlon Samuels and Graeme Swann are as effective over 20 overs and 50 overs as over five days. 1pt apiece
Excitement
Two words should suffice: "Virender" and "Sehwag". Or "Kevin" and "Pietersen". Or "De" and "Villiers". Or, if we're being thoroughly modern, "Shikhar" and "Dhawan". Or, if we're being meritocratic, "Lasith" and "Malinga" or "Saeed" and "Ajmal". Put it another way: when those of us who can remember that far back try to recall feeling excited while watching the game half a century ago, the options are generally confined to "Garry" and "Sobers". It helps, of course, that we can now trust our own eyes rather than parrot the word of others. Today: 2pts
Two words should suffice: "Virender" and "Sehwag". Or "Kevin" and "Pietersen". Or "De" and "Villiers". Or, if we're being thoroughly modern, "Shikhar" and "Dhawan". Or, if we're being meritocratic, "Lasith" and "Malinga" or "Saeed" and "Ajmal". Put it another way: when those of us who can remember that far back try to recall feeling excited while watching the game half a century ago, the options are generally confined to "Garry" and "Sobers". It helps, of course, that we can now trust our own eyes rather than parrot the word of others. Today: 2pts
| Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more? | |||
Personalities
Comparing characters from different eras is even more ludicrous than comparing Jonathan Trott and his distant ancestor Albert (though we can at least claim with some confidence that Albert, the only batsman to clear the Lord's pavilion with a single blow, was the more aggressive). Again, greater visibility predisposes us to favour the likes of Shane Warne, but this is counterbalanced by largely unpublicised stories from an era when sportsfolk were less closely monitored and hence able to get away with more.
Comparing characters from different eras is even more ludicrous than comparing Jonathan Trott and his distant ancestor Albert (though we can at least claim with some confidence that Albert, the only batsman to clear the Lord's pavilion with a single blow, was the more aggressive). Again, greater visibility predisposes us to favour the likes of Shane Warne, but this is counterbalanced by largely unpublicised stories from an era when sportsfolk were less closely monitored and hence able to get away with more.
Hugh "Toey" Tayfield is justly celebrated as the greatest of South African spinners, but it was a complete revelation to me to learn, this very week, not only that he was a rampant womaniser who died penniless and largely forgotten in a hospice, but that during the 1960 Old Trafford Test he had been due to appear in court for allegedly failing to repay a £230 loan ("He was a slow bowler and even a slower payer" quipped the prosecution lawyer). We know Sobers and Ted Dexter would have been "personalities" in any era, but given the greater rewards for notoriety today, Tayfield might have met a very different end. 1pt apiece
Sportsmanship
You could be forgiven, here, for concluding that higher stakes and more frequent fixtures have left today lagging miles behind yesterday, but is that truly the case? "Long after the unenterprising cricket of this Test is forgotten, people will talk of two incidents which brought to a head the question of whether batsmen should 'walk'." So attested Basil Easterbrook in Wisden of the 1965 Newlands Test, referring to Eddie Barlow's decision to ignore two appeals for catches (both rejected) and Ken Barrington's self-ordered exit following a thin nick that eluded detection - arguably the least profitable act of vengeance in the game's history. On the other hand, the capacity of the DRS to expose the truth economists has sired, if not a revival of this most honest (if class-ist) of sporting customs, then certainly a few more incidences than I can recollect witnessing in previous decades. 1pt apiece
You could be forgiven, here, for concluding that higher stakes and more frequent fixtures have left today lagging miles behind yesterday, but is that truly the case? "Long after the unenterprising cricket of this Test is forgotten, people will talk of two incidents which brought to a head the question of whether batsmen should 'walk'." So attested Basil Easterbrook in Wisden of the 1965 Newlands Test, referring to Eddie Barlow's decision to ignore two appeals for catches (both rejected) and Ken Barrington's self-ordered exit following a thin nick that eluded detection - arguably the least profitable act of vengeance in the game's history. On the other hand, the capacity of the DRS to expose the truth economists has sired, if not a revival of this most honest (if class-ist) of sporting customs, then certainly a few more incidences than I can recollect witnessing in previous decades. 1pt apiece
Crowd behaviour
Of the 11 riotous contests Ray Robinson analysed in The Wildest Tests, one was played in 1933, the others in the first quarter-century after the Second World War. Had he completed the book in 2002 rather than 1972, he would not have had many to add. Sure, there may be less inclination to applaud the opposition, but add comfier seats, more efficient policing of drunkenness and better protection from the elements to the joie de vivre of the Barmy and Swami armies, and there seems little reason not to believe things have improved.Today: 2pts
Of the 11 riotous contests Ray Robinson analysed in The Wildest Tests, one was played in 1933, the others in the first quarter-century after the Second World War. Had he completed the book in 2002 rather than 1972, he would not have had many to add. Sure, there may be less inclination to applaud the opposition, but add comfier seats, more efficient policing of drunkenness and better protection from the elements to the joie de vivre of the Barmy and Swami armies, and there seems little reason not to believe things have improved.Today: 2pts
Mattering
Much the trickiest category. Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. Kynaston disagrees, citing the rise in matches, freedom of player movement and alternative leisure activities alongside a decline in the ritual nature of the fixture list and a tighter focus on city-centre venues. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more? How often in days of yore did a bad result convince Indians or Sri Lankans to kill themselves? Yesterday: 2pts
Much the trickiest category. Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. Kynaston disagrees, citing the rise in matches, freedom of player movement and alternative leisure activities alongside a decline in the ritual nature of the fixture list and a tighter focus on city-centre venues. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more? How often in days of yore did a bad result convince Indians or Sri Lankans to kill themselves? Yesterday: 2pts
Coverage
There is, of course, no comparison here whatsoever, whether in depth or breadth or even - because we see and know and understand more - quality (literary worth, again, is strictly a matter of taste). At the risk of sounding as disinterested as a mongoose pronouncing judgement on a drunk and disorderly cobra, the range and geographical sources of the voices on this site surely supply incontrovertible proof that we've never had it so good. Hell, if the residents of the Tower of Babel had co-existed this peacefully, we'd all be speaking Hebrew now. Today: 2pts
There is, of course, no comparison here whatsoever, whether in depth or breadth or even - because we see and know and understand more - quality (literary worth, again, is strictly a matter of taste). At the risk of sounding as disinterested as a mongoose pronouncing judgement on a drunk and disorderly cobra, the range and geographical sources of the voices on this site surely supply incontrovertible proof that we've never had it so good. Hell, if the residents of the Tower of Babel had co-existed this peacefully, we'd all be speaking Hebrew now. Today: 2pts
Final score: Today 13, Yesterday 5
Let's face it: nostalgia simply ain't what it used to be.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Is sport an art?
In the early 1990s, there was a famous Reebok t-shirt with the simple slogan: "Sport is an art." Nice idea, but is it true? Can sport - which, by definition, is practical (score runs, take wickets) and competitive (beat the other guy) - belong to the same sphere as painting, literature and music?
The debate is not helped by the fact that sport and the arts are usually portrayed as antagonistic opposites - athletes v aesthetes, hearties v arties, jocks v thespians. From school to adult life, it is often (wrongly) assumed that there is little overlap between artistic creators and sporting competitors. (Writers, in fact, are often just as fiercely competitive as sportsmen.)
And yet no one (well, almost no one) disputes that sport can be beautiful. Last month, I tried to describe the aesthetic pleasure of watching David Gower bat - or just seeing him stand languidly and unhurriedly at the crease. When we watch Sachin Tendulkar turn his wrists at the very last moment, flicking the blade of the bat towards the on side just as the ball arrives under his eyes, we have experienced something beautiful: not just poise and grace but also concision and completeness. Nothing can be added or taken away from that Tendulkar flick that would not diminish the shot. Within its own terms, it cannot be improved upon.
A couple of years ago I watched Arsenal play Barcelona. The game finished a draw, but it was the spectacle rather than the result that left the deepest impression on me. Judged in terms of pure beauty - the physical grace of the players, the inventiveness of their movement - the match was surely the equal of any artistic or cultural event taking place in London that evening. Only someone with his eyes closed could pretend that the match had been defined completely in terms of goals scored and points bagged.
Occasionally I still hear arts-lovers complain that all sport is dull or anti-aesthetic. They are watching the wrong stuff. Anyone who loves ballet must surely recognise Roger Federer as one of their own. Again, elegance is matched by economy: the Federer effect is created not only by what he does but by what he avoids doing. There are no false brush strokes, no unnecessary chords, no superfluous sentences. There is no straining for effect, nothing is artificially tacked on.
There is another parallel between sport and the arts. In each sphere, the greats often have golden, productive spells late in their careers - periods when the insecurities have faded, when the urgent confusions that follow from deep ambition have receded. In his essay "Late Style", the academic Edward Said described how "age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity on late works". Yes, the artist may have been at the peak of his powers in his middle or "High" phase. But there is something even more moving about the final creative outpouring. (If you take only one thing from this article, listen, as I am doing now, to Richard Strauss'Four Last Songs - true Late Style.)
Said was writing about the arts, but the same principle applies to sport. The discerning fan will know the feeling of having watched a great player near the end of his career play sport on a higher level - without the fear and frantic-ness of his younger, restless days. We saw Late Federer in the Wimbledon final this summer, conjuring victory despite being outplayed for most of the first two sets. Late Zidane, too, seemed to grasp the whole football pitch before he made even the simplest pass. There was greatness in the small things - especially the small things.
But being beautiful does not make something an art. Many things are beautiful that cannot be classified as art. In The Principles of Art, the English philosopher RG Collingwood (no relation) set out to define the difference between an art and a craft. A skilled worker in a furniture workshop might be highly skilled - and might derive deep satisfaction from his work - but he is not an artist. He is a craftsman. A carpenter assembles bits of wood according to a plan for a table and, usually, the more exact the plan the better the table.
In contrast, art (according to Collingwood) demands a separation of means and ends. There must be an act of alchemy, the emergence of a creative vision. A poet "converts emotions into poems". Unlike the assembly of a table, the final poem is more than - and different from - the sum of its parts.
| A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand | |||
Where does this leave sport? I would say sport usually has more in common with craft than art. The batsman practising in the nets over many years is honing his craft. He is searching for a technique that is reliable, consistent, resilient and robust. And if one bit breaks or becomes damaged, he hopes the rest of his game will function adequately while he makes running repairs. The job of a good craftsman is to create a finished article that can be repaired without the whole thing always needing a structural refit.
But sport is not limited to being a craft. A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand, let alone articulate. But I suspect this artistic strand can only be achieved by accident. If I was a coach, I would be worried if my star batsman said, "Today I am going to bat beautifully." Far better that he tried to bat as simply and naturally as possible - and the beauty happened along the way, as a happy but unintentional by-product.
Sport, I think, can momentarily touch the arts. But it cannot permanently belong as one.
But sports certainly fulfil some artistic roles. In the classical world, the arts had a defined religious purpose. For the Greeks, watching a play was a communal act of piety, a form of shared worship. Modern sport achieves something similar. What do we feel when we walk among the masses to a vast sports stadium? We are part of the crowd, we share a purpose and sense of hope with the thousands around us - we belong to a broader congregation. That religious language follows naturally. The art critic Robert Hughes famously wrote that train stations were the cathedrals of the industrial age. To update Hughes: sports stadiums are the cathedrals of the post-industrial age.
Above all, sport provides us with timeless stories. It reveals, in dramatic ways, essential elements of the human condition. A few years ago, speaking at a BBC debate called "Sport v the Arts", the classical scholar Edith Hall made this startling claim: "Sport has only two narratives - either you win or you lose - how boring!"
The truth could not be more different. A moment's reflection reveals that within the overarching narrative of victory or defeat (there are also draws and ties, Edith), there are countless twists and subplots - often far more interesting and affecting than the headline-grabbing result. Sometimes you have to look more carefully to see the real story.
Sport can be experienced at many different levels. Just like the arts.
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