Lost in cricket

Time in the middle was precious freedom from the world for Sachin Tendulkar. Though he took guard while fixed in the gaze of a billion-plus acolytes, this was his space, his moment. Writing in the New Statesman, Ed Smith argued that "the batting crease became his sanctuary from fame, somewhere he could escape the soap opera of his life".

I'm not worshipped by adoring fans, nor am I followed by voracious paparazzi, and I do not have a personal security detail. However, I too have come to savour my time at the wicket as refuge from the pressures of modern living. Right now my mobile phone sits in my pocket, loaded with potential life-changing information. At any moment I could receive a text message or a call that could forever alter the status quo. And if my personal drama is snoozing, there is always the global news feed available at the swipe of a finger.

Whether sleeping, working, or walking through city streets or over a country dale, I'm connected - and distracted - by the incessant buzz of technology.

Except on a cricket pitch. Walking out to bat, or running in to bowl, I'm free of the world beyond the boundary rope. No phone. No thought but the game. And on a good day, when the runs are flowing and the rhythm of the stride into the crease releases that late outswinger seemingly without effort, there isn't even language.

Therefore the afternoon spent standing in a sunlit field has become an act of meditation - judging by a couple of recent dropped catches, my team-mates may well agree - in a space as reverential as a shrine or a temple. And for the city dweller fooled into a technocratic dictatorship imposed by their smartphone and laptop, grazing at fine leg or swinging a cleft of willow have become the remaining contacts with nature.

Consider first the bat in your hand, the tight grains of wood that are a measure of the wind and the rain and the sun embedded in a once living thing. With an in-form bowler sending down maidens, the isolated fielder has time to gaze and wander at the fat bumblebee humming his way between the blossoms of cow parsley. Or how about that meadow in the next valley, the way the shadows of passing clouds move across it like countries on an ever-changing map. And if the flash of a red leather sphere does come whizzing over your ears and crashing into the hedgerow, you suddenly find yourself hopping over a rickety fence and pitched from bright sunshine into the musty dark of the undergrowth, kicking around for a varnished animal hide in the shrubs and weeds of the verdant countryside.

Don DeLillo may not be au fait with the vagaries of cricket, but as a dedicated baseball and American football fan he is a masterful novelist with a heartfelt understanding of sport. Although his award-winning tome Underworld is his most famous "sports novel" for rendering the final game in the 1951 World Series between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers in visceral and thrilling detail, it is a section in a minor book, End Zone, about a college football player, that resonates more. In a thickening snowstorm a group of students play an ad hoc game of touch football. Contained entirely in the swirling blizzard, the teams seem to exist only to contest the match, which in itself has no meaning but for the exalted moment experienced by the players. In an interview DeLillo admitted to writing this section in a single draft, as if too compelled by the utter focus of his characters.

This sporting zen is when cricket is its most affecting and effective. From village amateur to Test-playing professional, this state of unthinking flow must be the ultimate high for any player, when the ball is pinging out of the middle of the bat, or the seam fits as if custom-made for the bowler's grip, and the approach into the crease appears flawlessly choreographed. You could even call it form.

When Jonny Bairstow was dropped from the England team he had various coaches tinker with his technique. When that didn't improve his performances, he dropped his coaches. In part, he puts his latest run of scores down to simply enjoying cricket, playing without thinking too much. Winning the Ashes may not be as basic as whacking the ball without thought, but to play truly well one must lose the words of the coach, the press, and the self, and revel in that time at the crease.