We will never take cricket's gentle rituals for granted ever again

PAUL EDWARDS: Post-series beers, Wisden dropping through the letterbox or your finding your favourite seat at your chosen ground - cricket is sometimes about the little things

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Perhaps as much as any sport cricket is governed by ritual and courtesy. At what might seem the most trivial level this can be seen in the placing of the bails on the stumps by the umpires just before play begins and their removal at the day’s end. Yet even this act symbolises the officials’ authority over the game and I’m convinced cricket would be a lesser sport if people did not mind their manners even as they are engaging in a brutal battle over 22 yards.

A little to my surprise, the players seem to agree. Until I spoke to England’s analyst, Nathan Leamon, whose novel The Test I will continue to recommend until there are no copies left in the shops, I didn’t realise that the batting side always gives way to bowlers and fielders at meal breaks during international games. Consider, if you will, an Ashes Test: Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood are steaming in like battle-cruisers and balls are whistling past the nappers of Joe Root and Jos Buttler. Twenty minutes later the England batsmen are letting the Australian bowlers have first pick of the cold meat salads.

Is there not something admirable about a game that can maintain such a careful dividing line between war and peace? Was not David Warner’s fracas with Quinton de Kock on the staircase at Durban a sign that something had been broken well before the ball-tampering business discharged its poison. Was not the best photograph from the 2019 Ashes series the snap that showed both teams and officials enjoying a beer after the five Tests were finished? And I’ve done my very best but I can’t resist the memory of Colin Cowdrey arriving in the middle at Perth on December 13, 1974, offering a handshake to Jeff Thomson and saying: “I don’t believe we’ve met, I’m Colin Cowdrey.”

^{Cricket nets have been erected at clubs around the country with a degree of permanence}

If you think these things are false or forced or that they don’t matter or aren’t relevant any more, that’s your choice, but please remember that Cowdrey was apparently one of the most disarmingly tough cricketers who ever played the game and that Australian supporters unfurled a banner during the Melbourne Test in 1975 thanking him for his six MCC tours to their country. Playing against worthy opponents is as much an honour as a challenge. It’s one of the reasons why we have a drink with them afterwards. Or to put it another way: if Mitchell Johnson was really no bloody good, would the Barmy Army have made up a song about him? 

There are parochial rituals, too. At my own club, putting up the outdoor nets always marks the start of the season, regardless of when the first game takes place. And there is also a gentle sadness when they are taken down. Soon after that job is done, Colin Maxwell, our groundsman, will finish his autumn’s work and will put up a small fence around the square. Throughout the close season, in good weather and bad, I try to visit the club several times a week and walk at least six circuits, watching the changing seasons closely and thinking of summers to come. 

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience,” wrote the Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh. “In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.” I’m not sure I completely agree with Kavanagh but that is nothing like the point. Thinking about what he wrote has helped me understand my own rituals as I look ever more closely at things, cricket included, that I might have previously taken for granted.

"Is there not something admirable about a game that can maintain such a careful dividing line between war and peace?"

For many cricket lovers, the arrival of membership cards and annuals are significant, not least because they constitute reassurance that another season will begin soon. The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack is, perhaps, the most famous and highly-regarded sportsbook in the English-speaking world. Its editors approach their many tasks with Jesuitical attention to detail. But I think the purchase of the Playfair Cricket Annual matters just as much to the supporters who will attend matches in a little over a week’s time. 

That book’s organisation of each player’s career records is a marvellous exercise in compression and by the end of September, some supporters’ copies are held together with little more than love. The exception, of course, was last year, when books, wall charts and membership cards were hardly touched. There will come a time when even the sight of the uncreased 2020 Playfair will be a poignant reminder of a summer we nearly lost.

To a large degree, such considerations were minor when set against the other effects of the pandemic but Covid-19’s disruption of the year’s rituals contributed to the disorientation many of us felt and its impact will continue for a year or so yet. My ECB accreditation was late arriving this season and my Wisden has yet to thud on the doormat, although that’s probably more down to the courier than Covid. 

^{Favourite vantage points will soon be filled once again}

Having understood why we saw so little cricket last year we are now enormously grateful for a full season. There will no doubt be civilised queues, sanitisation stations and social distancing when the spectators are allowed into the grounds but none of that will matter when set against the resumption of old friendships and gentle rituals.

And the return of supporters will also reveal the limitations of the counties’ streaming services. For nearly a year we have all been enormously grateful to the video technicians who have filmed almost every match in the Bob Willis Trophy and the County Championship. The clarity and technical sophistication of streaming has increased as the counties have put more money into the operation.

Yet to watch live action on a screen is to surrender your choice to the person pointing the camera. That is why people watching sport give up the comfort of their sofas and instead pay for the advantages and discomforts of being present on the ground. Others will be happy with streaming or radio commentary or may even read reports of matches online or in daily papers. Some may even do all of these things at various times and I hope to address the importance of such choices next week when this column will be written not in Headingley but in Hove.

Top image courtesy of @dannyreuben

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