Good Banter, Bad Sledging

My previous post on the English crowds booing Ricky Ponting drew some interesting feedback…thanks for the engagement. Some readers suggested that there is no such thing as good banter as opposed to bad sledging. That feedback provides me with a great segue to sledging stories that go back to the deified Dr WG Grace, the original Mr Cricket. I think these anecdotes make the point that on field banter can be funny, and can make the game richer.

- Once, when Dr WG Grace was given out, he refused to walk, and told the bowler “All these people have come to watch me bat, not to watch you bowl”. And the innings continued

- Charles Kortwright, bowling to Dr WG Grace in a county game, had dismissed him four or five times but had had his appeals turned down. Finally he knocked over two of the good doctor’s stumps. As the doctor turned towards the pavilion, Kortwright said “Surely you’re not going, Doctor? There is still one stump standing.”

- More recently, Ian Healy told Arjuna Ranatunga that he couldn’t have a runner for being too fat. And when Arjuna played cautiously off the back foot, Healy asked the bowler to put a Mars bar on the good length spot. Arjuna, the fatty, would surely lunge out of his crease to get the Mars bar

- Another keeper, Rod Marsh, asked the incoming batsman Ian Botham just as he was settling down into his stance: “So Both, how’s your wife? And my kids?”. Botham’s reply, “The wife’s fine, the kids are retarded”

- Merv Hughes had helpful words for Graham Thorpe who was playing and missing: “Read the back of your bat, mate. It has got instructions on it”

Marcus Trescothick, who retired from the international game because of mental health problems, says verbal abuse is “nothing to be worried about”. Justin Langer says sledging is a part of the fun, and that the only time he has seen sledging go beyond fun to being personal was between McGrath and Sarwan. Similarly, the Harbhajan – Symonds – Hayden altercations were no fun at all. A lot of the chat that happens is not funny. There clearly are lines that should never be crossed by either fans or players - like race, personal tragedy or physical handicap.

But in the balance, a game with no chat in the middle will be a poorer game. Trying to legislate away the verbal jousting and scatological self-expression in cricket, trying to turn Headingley into Henley, is just silly.

Boo Ponting - Part 2

I was at Trent Bridge earlier this week for the fifth ODI. I was observing the crowd intently when Ricky Ponting came out to bat. He was booed, loud and clear. But the more decent elements in the crowd were embarrassed enough to try and drown out the booing with cheering.

When Ponting finally walked off the pitch after a masterly match-winning century, the entire house rose to give him a standing ovation. Good show, Trent Bridge.

I believe the Trent Bridge crowd booed England yesterday, in the sixth ODI, for putting up such a limp performance. Interestinger and interestinger...

Raptor Rapture

England’s ancient cathedral spires are finding an exciting new twenty-first century purpose. They are excellent nesting sites for peregrine falcon. Handsome young falcon families are bringing glitz and glamour to cathedrals at Chichester, Derby, Lincoln and Worcester, having taken up residence in the spires.

This great story didn’t just happen. The first falcon couple to take up residence in Chichester cathedral did so in 2001, in a nesting box helpfully provided by the Sussex Ornithological Society. Since then 26 chicks have hatched in Chichester. The Derby falcons seem to be well marketed, getting the community involved in conservation, as evidenced by this video made by local six year olds.

Is there scope for some cross cultural conservation learning here? There are a number of temple gopurams in South India which might serve as a nice home for falcons, or other revered raptors.

Echoes of गरुडा (garuda) and जटायू (jatayu)?

I'm Not There

Just watched I’m Not There, a movie about Bob Dylan’s life. Watch it. When you do,

What will you see my blue eyed sons?
What will you see my darling young ones?
You will see a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
You will hear the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
You will meet one man who was wounded in love,
You will meet another man who was wounded in hatred.
You will know how it feels to be with the princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
You will know how it feels to be on your own, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

And you will struggle throughout the film to figure out what is going on and why, which is entirely appropriate for a movie about Dylan.

I’m Not There features six avatars of Bob Dylan, played by six different actors, set in different places and periods, beautifully shot in six different styles. The six actors playing Dylan don’t look like Dylan. The one who looks most like Dylan is Cate Blanchett, playing the stoned superstar who hangs out with the Beatles in London in 1966. Another avatar is a little black boy who travels around America in empty railway wagons, accompanied by his guitar, singing songs about the Depression. A third avatar features a folk singer singing political protest songs along with his Joan Baez-like girl friend. There really could have been many more avatars; there is no room for one featuring a middle class Jewish kid growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota.

The soundtrack is great. You will hear more than a trace of skipping reels of rhyme. Like Dylan songs, the movie floats along on a current of metaphor and imagery. It takes you on a trip upon a magic swirling ship, through the smoke rings of your mind, down the foggy ruins of time. Each scene feels rich with layered meaning, every shirt or jacket, every chance encounter and every throwaway phrase feels like an oblique reference to the god behind the avatars. I am glad I watched this film on DVD rather than at the movies. I had to pause multiple times to google up references. Is that girl meant to be Suze Rotolo? Or Sara Lownds? Both, it turns out.

Sure, it is fun to watch, especially for someone brought up with Dylan-lore. But how does it work as a movie? There is no obvious narrative tension. None of the avatar sub-plots have knots that need to be resolved.

Does this movie bust the theory, previously posited on this blog, that all great stories are built around somebody wanting something really badly, and having difficulty getting it? I thought it did, until I realized that the movie is not about the avatars but about Dylan himself.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match go start anew...

Dylan did strike another match and start anew, time and again. Leaving behind the orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun. Yet just when the saints should be coming through, he settles into a new pattern, which becomes as limiting as the one he left. Maybe it ain’t over baby blue, until Bobby realizes that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Freddy, meet Mac

Its a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon. Went swimming with the kids in the morning, had upma for lunch. The rest of the family are settling into siestas. I am settling down in front of the telly, to watch Freddy Flintoff come out to bat in his last test innings, and reflecting that Flintoff is cricket's McEnroe.

Both Flintoff and McEnroe were unbelieveably gifted. They've treated us fans to some sheer magic: the Ashes in 2005, the Wimbledon finals in 1980 and 1981. Yet, especially when compared with their natural talent, both are underachievers.

Michael Atherton talks here about Flintoff's disappointing career stats. Flintoff averages 32.06 with the bat and 32.59 with the ball. The decimals show that his batting average is slightly lower than his bowling. To put that in perspective, Imran Khan averaged 37 with the bat and 22 with the ball. Botham averaged 33/28. Among Flintoff's contemporaries, Shaun Pollock comes in at 32/23. Flintoff's bowling average is about the same as Kallis; however, Kallis averages more than 50 with the bat.

Given how good Flintoff can be, especially with the ball, his returns are surprisingly meagre. Like McEnroe's seven grand slam titles.

Yet, the Flintoff we want to remember is not the Flintoff we see in the statistics, but the Flintoff who beat South Africa in 2003, who bowled this over at Edgbaston in 2005. Like the McEnroe in the mind is the one who beat Bjorn Borg in 1981.

So long, Freddy. Thanks for all the fun.

Boo Ponting and Boo Hoo Colly

When Australia won the fourth test in two and a half days, Ricky Ponting went up to the podium to receive the winning captain's magnum of champagne, and he was roundly booed by the Headingley crowd.

The was not the first time Ponting was booed this Ashes series. It started back in Cardiff. It has continued through to Headingley, despite the ECB president Giles Clarke's calls to cease and desist. The Australian captain has ignored the booing.

Nor is this the first time booing has been in the news this summer. Paul Collingwood, the then reigning England captain, spoke in a hurt, injured tone about being booed by a predominantly Indian Lord's crowd during the Twenty20 World Cup. At the subsequent India v. South Africa game at Trent Bridge, there was much sanctimonious commentary (by Jeremy Coney, I think) about how it is nicer to cheer your own team than to boo the other team. Many of my Indian friends and family cringed. Are we really the cricket world's most boorish nation?

Well, the Ashes experience suggests that English fans aren't all that different from the Indian fans. English fans will boo Australia even when England are not playing, as I discovered at the Australia v. Sri Lanka T20 game at Trent Bridge.

Expanding the frame a bit, yes it is undeniably nicer to cheer your own team than to boo the other team. But it is easy to over-steer.

Ultimately, cricket is fun because it is theatre. Banter is a part of the theatre. Like booing a villain at the pantomime is a part of the fun. There is a very fine line between banter and sledging, defined mostly by the spirit in which the words are spoken and received.

Sure, maybe the booing at Headingley and Lord's was not in the right spirit. But the English ODI captain can surely learn a thing or two about stiff upper lips from his Australian counterpart.

Going Dutch...the gezellig way

Gezellig: a useful new word to import into the English language. Or, more importantly, into Anglo-Saxon (or Tamil Brahmin) culture.

Gezellig, pronounced heh-SELL-ick, is apparently at the heart of Dutch culture. It is the spirit which animates Dutch life. It has this sense of people and space coming together in harmony. It can't be translated. It can't be defined. You know it when you see it.

Friends enjoying a picnic on a canal bank, laughing fondly, sharing a bottle of red wine - clearly gezellig. A slob wolfing down fast food as he sprints to a meeting - not so gezellig. A brown cafe in Amsterdam, panelled in wood that has been darkened by generations of smokers - clearly gezellig. A formica-themed dentist's office - not so gezellig. A ramble in the woods with a big shaggy dog - clearly gezellig. Competitive rock-climbling - not un-worthy, but not so gezellig.
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Disclaimer: My knowledge of gezellig is not through first-hand exposure to Dutch culture. I found the word in this free magazine I picked up at the Paris airport.