Travel troubles

Vic Marks' report in The Observer of a Roses encounter in the C&G Trophy semi-finals begins like a postcard sent from a disastrous package holiday. Yorkshire's bus arrived late to pick them up from Old Trafford, not arriving in Southampton until after midnight. The driver was then more than half-an-hour late removing the team from its hotel to the Rose Bowl, because the tachygraph did not permit him to drive earlier, and promptly marooned the team in a notorious bottleneck. Stalled half a mile from the ground, the team finally elected to walk, though they still had to await the arrival of their kit. Not at their best, the team were soundly beaten. "For the Tykes it must have been a long journey home," concludes the droll Marks, "and I have my doubts whether Byas organised the traditional handing around of the cap in order to give the driver a tip."

Getting around these days is far easier than it was. Look back a century and a quarter to Australia's first Test tour of England, and the travelling took almost as much time as the cricket. Tom Horan's diary cites one memorable journey from Dewsbury to Belfast. The team left at 7.15pm Friday on the night mail to Chester, where they boarded the Wild Irishman to Holyhead at 3am Saturday. The paddle steamer took them across the Irish Sea, a train from Leinster to Kingston, and a jaunting car bore them from there to Belfast, where they arrived at 9am Sunday. The advent of more reliable rail timetables, and eventually the opening of the motorways meant that problems arose only in emergency: during the 1926 General Strike, for example, the Australian team was ferried from London to Southampton for their game against Hampshire in five cabs. Yorkshire's misadventures, however, are a gentle reminder that every team must get to where they're going before we can have any game, and, generally, of how little goes wrong.

Delving a little deeper into my Wisden Cricketer today, I find that Paul Coupar's review of a book that I have written ends with a conjecture that can only be described as bizarre. His description of me as 'not a reporter' but 'an intellectual writing about a physical game' is probably just well-meaning ignorance; his claim that I use 'Sunday-best words' such as 'uxorious' says more about the reviewer than the subject. But he then concludes: 'This seems to be an Aussie thing: the writing in some of their museums does it too. Maybe it stems from insecurity, using posh words in overcompensation for the clichéd image of the unsophisticated Bruce and Sheila round the barbie. If so, the great outsider is perhaps more Australian than he seems.' Mmmm. Deep.

This is such bone-headed psychologising as to be more intriguing than insulting. 'Uxorious' a 'Sunday-best word'. Come again? The writing in some of their museums'? Certainly a cunning means by which to interrogate and dismiss an entire culture. `The clichéd image of the unsophisticated Bruce and Sheila round the barbie'? That's a trope worth recycling, too - although perhaps it's a case of Coupar overcompensating for the clichéd image of the hoity-toity tea-drinking English nancy boy. If Coupar found a four-syllable word in a book by an Irish writer, would he think it was a response to insecurity arising from the popularity of Irish jokes?

The review intrigued me, however, mainly because it appeared across the page from a comparison by Matthew Engel of C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary and Mike Marqusee's Anyone But England - two cerebral books about cricket that somehow do not seem to have been motivated by the need to respond to clichéd images of West Indians or Marxists. According to Engel, `only James could mention Kant, Eliot, Gibbon and Gubby Allen on the same double-page spread without sounding phony'. Why 'only James' could do this is left unanswered, and why it does not sound phony demands, I think, a great deal more explanation. In any case, it is surely a world of strange double standards where the use of 'uxorious' betrays one writer's barely-concealed antipodean insecurities, but the elision of Kant, Eliot, Gibbon and Gubby Allen confirms another's true erudition. What might this tell us about the business for cricket writers of hefting half a brain around?

James' is often advanced as the most 'intellectual' of cricket books. Beyond a Boundary sits atop a lofty pedestal in cricket's literature, and enjoys special dispensations. No cricket book wears its learning more heavily; no cricket gets away with pretending that so many of its contestable judgements are eternal verities. Personally, I love it. There are passages I know by heart, others to which I have gone back again and again because they are so inspiring. There are also, however, passages that tell us more of James than of cricket: it is a hugely uneven book, even unwieldy, an artefact of both a defunct ideology and the short-lived movement for West Indian federation. And if you think 'uxorious' is Sunday best, some of the language in Beyond a Boundary is almost high church. For the possessor of such a demonstrably fine mind, James the writer was at times willfully opaque: try reading Notes on Dialectics or World Revolution and see how far you get.

For the rest of us who aren't obsessed with the deeds of Bloggs of Loamshire, there is much less room to manoeuvre than might be imagined. In these prolier-than-thou days, everything must be aimed at a steadily sinking middle-brow. The aim is a kind of ironic laddishness. Mention of anything that happened before the 1970s is pure anorakism, and anyone looking like they're getting ideas above their station must be dragged back into line lest it make the punters uncomfortable. It's a form of conservatism every bit as hidebound and class-conscious as that which prevailed 40 years ago when the Swantonasaurus ruled the earth, and more pernicious because it is subtler, matier, and its inverted snobbery permits the pretence of inclusiveness. Let's face it: in the bad old days forty years ago, Beyond a Boundary could be released to great acclaim. I doubt now whether it would even be published. Certainly if it was, it would need extensive reworking. You can hear the chat in the publishing house now, can't you? 'What does this mean? 'The owl of Minerva flies at midnight?' I don't understand. If you're a birdwatcher, we should have it in the blurb: it's frightfully popular these days, y'know, and it positions you as 'a man of the people'. I'm worried about using your initials too. I mean, it's a bit forbidding, isn't it? How about we call you by your first name? Cyril is so much friendlier, don't you think? And Cyril, baby, can we lose 'uxorious'? It makes the reviewers soooo uncomfortable.'

Whoever devised the Wisden Cricketer poll for commentary's dream team deserves an elephant stamp. Over few aspects of cricket is disagreement more commonplace - and rightly so. If someone invited themselves to your home, you'd probably form a strong view; a commentator who invites himself to your ear deserves to run a similar critical gauntlet. Nor is the unchanging partiality for Richie Benaud much of a surprise, precisely because, I think, he does behave like a civilised guest in one's home, knocking politely, wiping his feet, seldom wasting your time and never overstaying his welcome.

One of the amazing aspects of Benaud is that, in spite of his unvarying popularity, no commentator seems to pay closer attention to his craft. He has no particular motifs, no special catchphrases, relying simply on a lifetime's knowledge, applied pertinently and phrased accessibly: he places himself at the service of the game, rather than vice versa. Benaud the commentator also seldom refers to his experiences as a player, which has the effect of making him seem almost ageless, and expresses amusement when admirers enquire innocently whether he was a player: he would rank among Test cricket's elite leg-spinners and captains, of course, had he never uttered or written a word about the game.

The reasons for this are not far to seek. Benaud learned the trade a long time ago, before the age when commentators were expected to be personalities too. It is now almost fifty years since, after an Ashes tour, Benaud undertook a BBC television training course, studying the commentary styles of the likes of Henry Longhurst, Peter O'Sullevan and Dan Maskell in order to understand sport 'from the commentator's point of view'. He then accepted BBC invitations to England in 1960 as a radio commentator and in 1963 as a television commentator, between times writing the books Way of Cricket (1960),Tale of Two Tests (1962), Spin Me A Spinner (1963) and columns in Sydney's Sun and London's News of the World. He stills writes for the latter, looking at times a little like a pianist in a bordello.

Television, of course, has proved Benaud's metier. It suits his sharp captain's intuition and succinct expression. He is authoritative but not pedantic, dignified but not pompous, and never speaks unless he has something to say. Alan Ross said of Benaud the captain that he managed to give the impression that everything was part of a master plan; the same thing, I think, is true of Benaud the commentator, who deals in grand strategies undetectable to ordinary mortals. The only thing that has changed about him has been the accent. The vowels are rounder than in the 1970s and the delivery a little more deliberate; but despite being so popular that humourists strive to imitate him, he is so distinctive that none has ever quite got him right. And perhaps no one ever will.

The annual scarecrow festival held by the Dales village of Kettlewell, a splendid way to idle an afternoon, nicely blends tradition and topicality. The cast of Little Britain make an appearance, as do George Bush and David Blunkett (plus infant with feeding bottle). I prefer to have my photo taken in front of a bat-wielding five-foot stuffed kangaroo, evidently failing to defend a set of shattered stumps, over which hovered bails suspended in mid air by wire. The psychological battle continues.

Watched a father and son batting and bowling on Roberts Park in the Yorkshire village of Saltaire this afternoon. Dad was a rather hulking figure who banged his bat in the blockhole hard; junior wore adult pads that came up to his navel. When he bowled, the lad had a bit of chasing to do, which he did with a purposeful plod, although it began after a while to look like a case for Child Welfare. Against the run of play, however, Dad hit around a straight one. Collapse, as they say, of stout party. It only takes a ball to dismiss any batsman, whether it's a Test match or the village green.

I was reminded of a story related by my friend Howard Hanley, a nuclear physicist from Sussex with a passion for Milton's Paradise Lost, who umpires in the association in which my club plays back in Melbourne. Howard's father was an outstanding sportsman, with cricket a speciality, who imbued his son with an abiding love of the game. One day, Howard as a young adult was playing a game of beach cricket in which his father was also involved. To his astonishment, his father dropped a catch. Howard could not remember his father dropping a catch, ever, and experienced an epiphany: his father, he realised, was mortal after all, and would die one day. He wasn't sure that his father, hugely proud of his athletic prowess, didn't experience the same sensation. As Jack Warner's character in The Final Test says, cricket has a way of making you feel "so ruddy useless and old". While I'm resigned to being the former, I'm not looking forward to the latter.

From Bradley in Yorkshire, where I am enjoying a short furlough, it is hard to get a feeling for how the thrills and spills of the Ashes are being experienced down under. I can report, however, one academic outcome of the sleepless nights that the Third Test induced. Hours after the breathless finish at Old Trafford, my girlfriend had to rise to compose a nations and states quiz for students in her university politics course. She was so tired she could think of only nine questions; for a tenth, she asked: 'Who won the cricket last night? a) Ernest Gellner b) Eric Hobsbawm c) Germany d) nobody e) none of the above. She accepted d or e as correct, but preferred the latter on grounds that cricket won. Something else on which we agree.

Noel Coward once said that he could handle the despair; it was the hope he couldn't stand. Spectators at Old Trafford today knew what he meant. For both sides, the hope was almost unbearable, the glimmers of victory for England, the possibility of sanctuary for Australia. Could we bear to sit through another agonising finish? Was the potential disillusionment worth the candle? Actually, it turns out we're gluttons for punishment. Australia held on: for their captain's innings alone, they deserved to. But everyone left feeling as though they'd seen something special, and ready for more.

In all the years I've played, watched, written about, read of and loved cricket, the Ashes has been about games and series I was not at, or even could only read about. I remember 1981 well, but I was not there: I was at school, trying to stay awake in lessons after watching the action overnight. I never really thought I would witness a series in the traditions I knew of. Disappointment must lurk round the corner, because, after the best Test in at least a week, there's a good chance that history is being reborn.

The leading indicator of the series has been the battle between Gilchrist and Flintoff. They are the most explosive cricketers in their respective XIs: one great all-rounder, one making a case to be considered one. It's the challenger, though, who is getting the upper hand, and continued to do so today. When Michael Vaughan came to offer him a break this afternoon, Flintoff airily waved him aside, so intent on his task that he barely even made eye contact with his captain. Yeah yeah, Vaughny - later ...

Most bowlers of the last few years bowling at Gilchrist have been glad of a break. Flintoff wanted Gilchrist. Gilchrist was his man. Gilchrist has been struggling to assert himself all season, unused to being anyone's quarry, and went hard at Flintoff's away curve again. Giles lurched to his right at gully to take the catch. It was vivid, red-blooded Test cricket - just like the stuff I used to read about.

Flintoff isn't the first bowler to tackle Gilchrist from round the wicket. Four years ago at Trent Bridge, I recall Darren Gough making a great hue and cry about changing from over the wicket, then being thrice rifled through covers; Michael Atherton looked like Blackadder studying the inevitable result of another of Baldrick's cunning plans. But the shorter Gough tended to slide into Gilchrist's hitting zone, where Flintoff's vertiginous bounce creates a third dimension to the change of direction, while his reverse swing adds an element of danger to vertical bat shots. Above all, Flintoff is not trying to contain Gilchrist but to attack him. It's the series writ small. The fate of the series depends on such exchanges either continuing to go England's way, or reverting to the type of the last fifteen years.