MICHAEL HENDERSON: If so many sportsmen choose to have tattoos, joining the club is merely becoming, to borrow a phrase from Louis MacNeice, part of the pattern in the lino.
Imagine, if you can, Jim Laker playing in the modern game. Were he to take 19 wickets in the Old Trafford Test against Australia this summer, would he hitch up his flannels, as he did in 1956, and enjoy a cheese sandwich in a Lichfield pub (unrecognised by his fellow drinkers) on the way back to London that evening? Or would he spend the night knocking back peculiar compounds of spirits, and toddle off the following day to a tattoo parlour to celebrate his unique feat with some body painting?
Bringing matters closer to home, what about Michael Atherton? When he resisted everything that Allan Donald and the other South Africans bowled at him at the Wanderers in 1995/96, during a 10-hour innings that earned his team an honourable draw, did he think: “A few cotton mills embossed on my arm will remind me of Failsworth, where I first took guard”? If he did, he swiftly suppressed the thought.
Once upon a time tattoos were for salty old sea dogs who spent their days out on the briny; jolly jack tars far from the comforts of the harbour. Circus performers were also fond of them. Think of Rory Gallagher’s ‘Tattoo’d Lady’. Now they have become a rite of passage, daubed on male and female bodies alike to mark the various stages of life. A modern Pilgrim’s Progress.
If you are a sportsman they have almost become compulsory. Even so it strained credulity to breaking point when Ben Stokes revealed his latest tattoo recently – or "resently", as he opted to write. After 28 hours of hard work the tattooist’s curtain went up to reveal a family of lions on the allrounder’s back, to accompany the multiple paintings on his arms. The lions, he said, represented his wife and their two children. Now they would all be together, wherever he went.
Is this a tale for Jackanory, or an act of depravity? That surely depends on your age and background. Those brought up in less modish times, when the urge to embark upon personal 'journeys' was less apparent, may consider Stokes to be a bear of little brain. Younger readers may consider his behaviour to be an example of liberation.
Yet if so many sportsmen choose to have tattoos, joining the club is merely becoming, to borrow a phrase from Louis MacNeice, part of the pattern in the lino. Far from being an original act it is just as conventional as having a short back-and-sides in the days of Laker and Peter May. When they are old and grey, and nodding by the fire, some sportsmen, now in the spring of their lives, may feel very foolish.
But, oh, those journeys on which they embarked. As if Stokes were some Ulysses of the greensward! Well, it’s fair to say he dodged Scylla and Charybdis last year at Bristol Crown Court, and there has been no sign so far of Circe. There is plenty of time, though, before he returns to Ithaca.
Stokes is not the only cricketer searching for personal development. Cameron Bancroft, the junior member of the Aussie three drummed out of the game for a year, for ball-tampering, has spoken of his desire while fiddling with said ball “to fit in”. Making a few runs would have helped, one might have thought. Little things like that tend to.
Cameron Bancroft
But he is a casualty of battle, and such folk seek understanding. Bancroft is clearly not a bad lad. He has just been encouraged to sound remorseful.
As for David Warner, who has said the year off brought him closer to his wife and family, a dazzling future beckons when he puts his bat away. Not greatly esteemed for minding his Ps and Qs on the field, the newly enlightened Warner is clearly auditioning for a remake of The Good Life, with himself as Richard Briers. He must think we were born yesterday.
When did cricketers seek enlightenment? The great ones, from Grace to Botham, were always part of a story that had vivid characters, not least themselves, but there was no room for psychobabble. Not in cricket. What has happened to the game, and the people who play it?
This article was published in the February edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game.
To subscribe for just £44.99 per year, click here.
Welcome to www.thecricketer.com - the online home of the world’s oldest cricket magazine. Breaking news, interviews, opinion and cricket goodness from every corner of our beautiful sport, from village green to national arena.