Masters of the dark arts reveal cricket’s secrets
Sledging is an essential part of game’s armoury and, Alan Tyers explains, it can also be a very entertaining one
The English, a kinky race if ever there was one, have an appetite for pain and humiliation
Cricket, hell-bent on self-harm, persists in telling everybody that nobody likes it and that it must reinvent itself to survive. This folly is even more irritating when you consider that cricket as a sporting brand already has two brilliant selling points. These are the related concepts of mental disintegration and sledging: sources of endless fascination to cricketers, fanatics and casual fans alike.
Lots of people, it sometimes seems, enjoy sledging more than the actual hitting, catching and spectating. On our bookshelf, I can see half a dozen titles about this curious concept, and a cursory internet search yields dozens of “Cricket’s Greatest Sledges Ever” features.
The witticisms are as familiar as the Don’s average.
“Bowl him a piano, see if he can play that.” “Leave our flies alone, Jardine. They’re the only friends you’ve got.”
At any moment, at least one former county player is at a village club somewhere rolling out the after-dinner anecdote about Sir Viv Richards saying: “Now that you know what it looks like, go and fetch it.”
Public demand for these old saws appears inelastic: why can cricket not trust in the fact that people like it and are intrigued by its special mixture of individual duels within a team context, of intense but non-violent conflict?
Then, of course, there is mental disintegration, an Australian term for being better at cricket than somebody else and calling him a Pommy bar steward while you are doing it. The English, a kinky race if ever there was one, have an appetite for pain and humiliation, and cannot get enough of hearing Aussies tell us exactly how they gave us a spanking.
And so it is only right and proper that mental disintegration’s diabolic inventor – the tormentor, Steve Waugh, and his chief enforcer, the evil Glenn Mcgrath – are among those joining Sky Sports Cricket for a series of documentaries about the mental side of the sport.
Starting tomorrow, a thoroughly enjoyable four-parter sees almost every major cricketer one can think of discussing and illuminating just what it is about the mental pressures of the game that make it so difficult and rewarding.
Charles Colvile, given some well-earned time off from his day job of keeping Bob Willis lean, mean and “absolutely disgusted, Charles”, meets Joe Root, James Anderson, Alastair Cook, Waugh and Mcgrath, Mervyn Hughes, Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick, to name but a few.
Ramprakash, an authority on that mysterious gulf between raw talent and actual achievement, gives a fascinating insight into how he went from nerveless teenager with God-given skill to the stressed, paralysed shell he became at the crease.
Cook reveals his quirks and processes, Root and Anderson talk about self-doubt. From Jos Buttler to hypnotist Paul Mckenna, from Tony Adams to Anthony Joshua, the contributors from cricket, other sports and beyond discuss what it is to face pressure and master it, or fail. All come across as thoughtful, human, beguiled by sport as a microcosm of the human condition.
It enforces the feeling that cricket must start to believe in its enduring appeal. For instance, take Steve Smith’s tearful breakdown, which to my mind was the fitting and just third act of the Aussie win-at-all-costs bullying begun by Waugh: fans and non-believers alike were captivated by the bizarre psychodrama.
No other sport can match the game for revealing character, and it is high time the sport stopped mentally disintegrating itself.
Mind Games: The Zone (tomorrow, 9.45pm, Sky Sports Cricket)