Cool Ed Smith

A fairly frank confession coupled with a health warning. This blog thought long and hard about it, often agonisingly so, before it decided to celebrate the work of someone it regards as a mate. Which makes it a hazardous, even dangerous undertaking. On the basis that running the risk of being accused of nepotism or favouritism is marginally harder on the ego than acknowledging that a younger practitioner has just written you so far under the table you might as well take up speed-knitting, it hereby vows to carry on regardless.

In which case it may as well be blunt. Ed Smith’s newie, What Sport Tells Us About Life, is not just the best book by a Middlesex captain since Mike Brearley’s The Art of Captaincy a couple of decades ago. In my not-obviously-humble opinion it is the best ever written by a professional cricketer. Given that the competition includes Jack Fingleton’s Cricket Crisis and Peter Roebuck’s It Never Rains as well as Brearley’s magnum opus, this is no meagre accolade.

Is it any coincidence that cricket and baseball, the two ballgames that devour the most time, have been responsible for most of the worthiest conglomerations of vowels and consonants expended on sporting matters? Nope. Look at all those long stretches of days and nights we have at our disposal to observe and dissect these particular combatants. In both games, moreover, the action is surrounded by so much inaction, the thrills countered by so many longeurs, that prolonged contemplation - and its lesser sibling, extended navel-gazing - are inevitable. The hits-to-misses ratio is pretty even.

One big difference between these two sports, both of which Smith has written about fruitfully, is that successful baseballers seldom emerge from the hallowed halls of Harvard or Yale, which is probably why I cannot think of a notable one who has retired to the press box. Cricket, on the other hand, has a long and proud history of Oxford and Cambridge graduates who have turned their hands from batting and bowling to typing and waxing eloquent.

Indeed, Michael Atherton’s impending debut as the Times cricket correspondent means that coverage in the three bestselling “quality” national dailies in England this summer will be helmed by three ex-Test men and Oxbridge dons, Mike Selvey (Guardian) and Derek Pringle (Daily Telegraph) being the others. And then, of course, there’s Angus Fraser of the Independent, a bit of an oik in educational terms but still eminently capable of hitting a deadline on the nose and summing up a day’s play knowingly and judiciously. Throw in Vic Marks (Observer) and Roebuck (Sydney Morning Herald), and the only consolation for we ordinary hacks is that The Parks and Fenners are no longer unearthing world-class cricketers.

But back to another Oxbridger, namely Smith, whose writing is as clean, measured and uncluttered as his mind is questioning, broad-ranging and astute. The subtitle of this, his third book, is “Bradman’s average, Zidane’s kiss and other sporting lessons”, which gives some idea of the vast scope of topics tackled. As do the chapter titles, in spades: “The age of the amateur has passed. Worse luck”; “The curse of talent: or, what beauty queens can tell us about sport”; “Is the free market ruining sport?”; “Why luck matters - and admitting it matters even more”; “Cricket, CLR James and Marxism”; “Freud’s playground: what do Michael Jordan, Richard Wagner and Rupert Murdoch have in common?” and my favourite, “When is cheating really cheating?”

If you have read the zillion-selling Freakonomics, you may find yourself assailed by an attack of acute déjà vu. In many ways, this is sport’s answer to that remarkable book in much the same way as its title reflects that marvellous Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell’s 1980s baseball tomes Why Time Begins On Opening Day and How Life Imitates The World Series. In both cases, Smith has adapted an idea and run with it. And body-swerved, looped and feinted. And scored a try at almost every turn.

Given the current cricketing climate, the chapter on cheating seems the most pertinent to mention in detail here. “So it isn’t cheating if you are 100 per cent sure you edged it but don’t walk,” Smith reasons, “but it is cheating if you are 100 per cent sure the ball bounced but you still claim the catch.” I don’t think I’ve ever come across a pithier summary of cricket’s most regrettable double-standard.

“It’s not only a question of ‘Was he breaking the rules?’,” Smith continues, “but also ‘Is that rule sacrosanct?’ It is the unwritten constitution that exerts the stronger grip.” At which point, he launches into the still-prickly subjects of Darrell Hair and ball-tampering, and thence to the heart of the matter, a matter chockfull of cant and hypocrisy.

“To me, the debate was about the nature of the offence. Do we think ball-tampering is really that bad? We know it is banned, we know people do it, we know what the penalty is, and we have just seen the letter of the law applied on the authority of one man’s judgement. But what about the offence itself? Does it exist within purely the legal realm or does it extend into the moral realm? Is it just an everyday kind of cheating (a not really cheating type of cheating) or the full-blown thing itself?

“I come up against ball-tampering opponents quite often. (When the website Cricinfo catalogued the nine players most recently involved in ball-tampering episodes, I’d played with or against eight of them.) So, for the record, I should say that I don’t want ball-tamperers to get away with it, for two obvious reasons: first, laws are there to be policed; secondly, if the opposition stops cheating it’s more likely my side will win. But I don’t think ball-tampering ruins the spirit of the game any more than other illegalities such as throwing your bouncer, deliberately scuffing up the batting surface before bowling last, or running on the pitch to create rough for your spinners. These are all illegal, and yet they have been downgraded by social convention to merely ‘doing what you can get away with’. But Pakistan obviously disagreed. They felt that ball-tampering existed in a special category of illegality. They thought the penalty was an attack on their reputation as a team, even their honour as a nation.”

The conclusion is typical of Smith’s sense of proportion. “Drink-driving has not always existed in a special category of motoring offence … speeding may go the same way. By the same logic … if the ball-tampering rule is enforced often enough, it may become an everyday offence, just like a warning for too much appealing, or on-field ill-discipline. As some crimes are upgraded in our imagination, others are downgraded. Analysing these fluidities and inconsistencies helps us not only to understand how often moral outrage is misplaced. It may also, with some luck, help us to iron out some of the inevitable flaws in our own personal codes of conduct. That is the nature of sport, and the nature of life.”

Even if cricket is the only game in your particular town, and all bias aside, a long plunge into the depths of this singularly ambitious and challenging book is strongly, even urgently, recommended. You’ll find pearls, I promise.