Fucked if I know. But the more I read the more it appears to be about class, race, a yearning for something that might never have existed.....
“If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants their chateaux would have never been burnt.” (p.49)
Hugh de Selincourt's The Cricket Match (1924)
“I am so delighted you’re playing for the village. With all this discontent that’s about nowadays, it is so good for them all. I am sure we ought all to mix with the people far more than we do.”
“Go on mother, laughed her son. “You’re becoming a regular Bolshie, we all know that. […] I like playing for the village better than playing for the Martlets, say. It may not be such good cricket, but I swear it’s a better game.” (p.5)
"Meanwhile Sid disposed of two large slices of bread and dripping at the corner of the kitchen table, and drank two mugs of tea, after which he set out on the three-mile walk to his work, cad to a bricklayer." (p.24)
“Night descended peacefully upon the village of Tillingford. Rich and poor, old and young, were seeking sleep” (p.212).
Mike Marqusee, Anyone But England: Cricket and the National Malaise (1994):
"The Cricket Match is the work of a clever Tory propagandist, albeit of the one-nation variety so despised by Margaret Thatcher" (p29).
CC, in an essay he found on his hard drive, 2002:
"The Cricket Match actually has plenty to say on World War One, in much the same way Monet's Lilies do".
Neville Cardus, An Autobiography (1949):
“I saw the blossom come upon orchards in Gloucestershire, […] I saw midsummer in full blaze at Canterbury, […] I saw the autumn leaves falling at Eastbourne....It is not fanciful, I think, to say that a national game is influenced by the spirit and atmosphere of the period. [After 1920] as disillusion increased and the nation’s life contracted and the catchword “safety first” became familiar […] cricket itself lost confidence and character. when Lancashire was wealthy “and the mills were busy most days and nights, cricket at Old Trafford was luxuriant, with MacLaren […] squandering runs […] It was as soon as […] mill after mill closed that Lancashire cricket obtained its reputation for suspicious thriftiness” (p.59).
“Aye,” said Roy Kilner, “it’s a rum ‘un is t’Yarkshire and Lankysheer match. T’two teams meets in t’dressin’ room on t’Bank Holiday; and then we never speaks agean for three days – except to appeal.” (p.69).
Marcus Berkmann in Rain Men:
"…To the vast majority of non-participants, the mere mention of the words “village” and “cricket” instantly conjures up a sepia-toned rustic idyll, full of burly blacksmiths and wily off-spinning parsons, and chaps with pipes called Jack […] Robin redbreasts tweet from the branches of 200-year old oaks, while floppy-eared rabbits scamper cutely through the undergrowth.
The truth […] is rather less palatable. Never […] have I seen a floppy-eared bunny rabbit scamper anywhere, unless it’s under the wheel of a passing lorry. Robin redbreasts search in vain for branches of 200-year-old oaks from which to tweet, as Farmer Giles plc has had them all cut down. The last burly blacksmith died in 1967. The jolly landlord waters down his Skol." (p30).
Mike Marqusee again:
"The village green, certainly as a meeting point of different classes and generations, hardly exists, having been replaced by the limitless suburbia of “commuter villages” in which car parks take precedence over cricket fields. But the myth of the village green and the cricket played on it is not only a lie about the present. It is an even bigger lie about the past" (p30).
Stephen Fry, The Liar (1991):
This fantasy of England that old men took with them to their death-beds, this England without factories and sewers and council houses, this England of leather and wood and flannel, this England circumscribed by a white boundary and laws that said that each team shall field eleven men and each man shall bat […] it was like [an ex-lover’s] beauty, […] a momentary vision glimpsed for a second in an adolescent dream, then dispersed like steam into the real atmosphere of traffic-jams, serial murderers, prime ministers and Soho rent (p112).
“You won’t cheat will you sir?”
“Cheat? Good heavens. This is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I’m an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. […] Of course I’ll cunting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown, I have immortal longings in me.” (p.121)
Neville Cardus on Ranjitsinhji:
"And then suddenly this visitation of dusky, supple legerdemain happened; a man was seen playing cricket as nobody in England could possibly have played it. The honest length ball was not met by the honest straight bat, but there was a flick of the wrist, and lo! The straight ball was charmed away to the leg boundary. And nobody quite saw or understood how it all happened" (citation lost).
And.......C.L.R. James in Beyond a Boundary (1962):
"But there was racialism! So what? I am the one to complain. I don’t. […] Those exquisites remind me of ribaldry about Kant’s logical imperative: there was racialism in cricket, there is racialism in cricket, there always will be racialism in cricket. But there ought not to be." (p.58)
GM Trevelyan, English Social History (1944):
*
Hugh de Selincourt's The Cricket Match (1924)
“I am so delighted you’re playing for the village. With all this discontent that’s about nowadays, it is so good for them all. I am sure we ought all to mix with the people far more than we do.”
“Go on mother, laughed her son. “You’re becoming a regular Bolshie, we all know that. […] I like playing for the village better than playing for the Martlets, say. It may not be such good cricket, but I swear it’s a better game.” (p.5)
"Meanwhile Sid disposed of two large slices of bread and dripping at the corner of the kitchen table, and drank two mugs of tea, after which he set out on the three-mile walk to his work, cad to a bricklayer." (p.24)
“Night descended peacefully upon the village of Tillingford. Rich and poor, old and young, were seeking sleep” (p.212).
*
Mike Marqusee, Anyone But England: Cricket and the National Malaise (1994):
"The Cricket Match is the work of a clever Tory propagandist, albeit of the one-nation variety so despised by Margaret Thatcher" (p29).
*
CC, in an essay he found on his hard drive, 2002:
"The Cricket Match actually has plenty to say on World War One, in much the same way Monet's Lilies do".
*
Neville Cardus, An Autobiography (1949):
“I saw the blossom come upon orchards in Gloucestershire, […] I saw midsummer in full blaze at Canterbury, […] I saw the autumn leaves falling at Eastbourne....It is not fanciful, I think, to say that a national game is influenced by the spirit and atmosphere of the period. [After 1920] as disillusion increased and the nation’s life contracted and the catchword “safety first” became familiar […] cricket itself lost confidence and character. when Lancashire was wealthy “and the mills were busy most days and nights, cricket at Old Trafford was luxuriant, with MacLaren […] squandering runs […] It was as soon as […] mill after mill closed that Lancashire cricket obtained its reputation for suspicious thriftiness” (p.59).
“Aye,” said Roy Kilner, “it’s a rum ‘un is t’Yarkshire and Lankysheer match. T’two teams meets in t’dressin’ room on t’Bank Holiday; and then we never speaks agean for three days – except to appeal.” (p.69).
*
Marcus Berkmann in Rain Men:
"…To the vast majority of non-participants, the mere mention of the words “village” and “cricket” instantly conjures up a sepia-toned rustic idyll, full of burly blacksmiths and wily off-spinning parsons, and chaps with pipes called Jack […] Robin redbreasts tweet from the branches of 200-year old oaks, while floppy-eared rabbits scamper cutely through the undergrowth.
The truth […] is rather less palatable. Never […] have I seen a floppy-eared bunny rabbit scamper anywhere, unless it’s under the wheel of a passing lorry. Robin redbreasts search in vain for branches of 200-year-old oaks from which to tweet, as Farmer Giles plc has had them all cut down. The last burly blacksmith died in 1967. The jolly landlord waters down his Skol." (p30).
*
Mike Marqusee again:
"The village green, certainly as a meeting point of different classes and generations, hardly exists, having been replaced by the limitless suburbia of “commuter villages” in which car parks take precedence over cricket fields. But the myth of the village green and the cricket played on it is not only a lie about the present. It is an even bigger lie about the past" (p30).
*
Stephen Fry, The Liar (1991):
This fantasy of England that old men took with them to their death-beds, this England without factories and sewers and council houses, this England of leather and wood and flannel, this England circumscribed by a white boundary and laws that said that each team shall field eleven men and each man shall bat […] it was like [an ex-lover’s] beauty, […] a momentary vision glimpsed for a second in an adolescent dream, then dispersed like steam into the real atmosphere of traffic-jams, serial murderers, prime ministers and Soho rent (p112).
“You won’t cheat will you sir?”
“Cheat? Good heavens. This is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I’m an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. […] Of course I’ll cunting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown, I have immortal longings in me.” (p.121)
*
Oh, and also....
Neville Cardus on Ranjitsinhji:
"And then suddenly this visitation of dusky, supple legerdemain happened; a man was seen playing cricket as nobody in England could possibly have played it. The honest length ball was not met by the honest straight bat, but there was a flick of the wrist, and lo! The straight ball was charmed away to the leg boundary. And nobody quite saw or understood how it all happened" (citation lost).
And.......C.L.R. James in Beyond a Boundary (1962):
"But there was racialism! So what? I am the one to complain. I don’t. […] Those exquisites remind me of ribaldry about Kant’s logical imperative: there was racialism in cricket, there is racialism in cricket, there always will be racialism in cricket. But there ought not to be." (p.58)
No comments:
Post a Comment