Cricket is a game that can only be played well by having a laxer like focus on the moment.
Should you find yourself at the crease as a dense projectile is approaching your skull at around 80mph it is best not to have your sex life, tax bill or a plot point from “Line Of Duty” running through your mind.
If you do, the ball will hit you hard and it will hurt.
Watching cricket is another matter entirely. Watching cricket is all about refracting the present though the prism of the past. The history of the players, teams, their culture and the venue are vital to its appreciation. Because the game can go on for as long as five days there is enough time for rumination while observing what is unfolding before your eyes.
Every time I enter Lords Cricket Ground I check out the various places where I have sat with my dad as a boy. I find my self in 1971, 1985, 1993 and the present simultaneously. Recently I have been attending Test Matches with a good friend of over 30 years. We have perfected the ability to drink enough by lunch to loosen our uptight English inhibitions and talk freely about our lives, fears, disappointments and victories but not so much that we become incoherent by end of play. We are tipsy in the past and the present.
Harold Pinter instictively knew about these phenomena and that is what his brief, evocative “Cricket Poem” is all about. A keen amateur cricketer and an avid cricket watcher, Pinter revelled in the nostalgia of the game. His boyhood hero, and subject of this poem was Len Hutton.
Hutton was the first captain of England not to be privately educated, which was incredibly rare, as the class divide between what were considered “Gentlemen” and “Players” was enormous. Technically as a cricketer he was a genius. At the age of 22 Hutton scored the highest individual innings in a Test match - a milestone that stood for nearly 20 years and is still the highest ever scored by an Englishman. He was one of the more successful captains of England winning twice as many as he lost.
But it was not the numbers that attracted Pinter to Hutton, it was his Grace.
Grace is easily recognised but difficult to describe. The dictionary defines it as “a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance” but for non-believers like Pinter or myself it is a trickier concept to articulate.
I observed one clear example when I watched Michael Jordan play basketball at Madison Square Garden in the early 1990’s. The paradox he wore so lightly meant that he could simultaneously treat each moment as:
a) a moment of life or death
b) a game no more important than one in the backyard after Sunday lunch.
But Grace is not only expressed on the sporting field. Last October I underwent surgery for Cauda equina that, if it were not performed with extreme skill, could have ended up with me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. The surgeon - Elani Maratos of Kings College Hospital - had the ability to not only perform the surgery with extreme skill but to communicate exactly what she was going to do and the possible ramifications of her work with such clarity that my fears were assuaged. She was Grace personified.
“A Cricket Poem” is very short. Eleven words in total including two that are repeated but Pinter was so excited when he finished it that he fired up his fax machine (remember them?) and sent it to all of his cricket loving friends. Most called back to to praise and discuss the work but one friend did not reply. Pinter called him and asked about his thoughts. The reply he recieved?
“Errr… sorry… I haven’t finished it yet.”
I too have not finished it.
Never will.
The poem is read by Test Match Special presenter Daniel Norcross. I first met Dan when he was doing a stint for Guerilla Cricket. He is one of my favourite commentators because he also has the rare ability to refract the present moment of play through the prism of the past and is one of the few presenters that has never played professionally and can therefore communicate the awe non-professionals feel when in the presence of sporting genius.
You can read his babbling on twitter: @norcrosscricket