Enjoy the opium of cricket at its classiest, Mzansi

“Cricket, eh?” Groucho Marx sounded sceptical as, according to The Observer of June 27, 1954, he moved “fast like a shark through the shoals of porters and pageboys” in a London hotel lobby and bundled himself — fedora, moustache, cigar and all, along with a “lady secretary” and two reporters — into a taxi bound for Lord’s.

The funniest man in the world was duly ferried to the game’s most serious place to watch a match between MCC and Cambridge. After spending a few minutes in Q stand he had formed a zinging opinion: “What a wonderful cure for insomnia. If you can’t sleep here you really need an analyst.”

From there Marx was ushered into the Pavilion itself. Was the “lady secretary” allowed into a place that, for the first 100 years of its existence, admitted no women except the British queen during play, permitted entry? The Observer didn’t say. But it did reveal Marx’s answer when he asked if he was in England on holiday: “I was until I saw this game.”

Not a fan, then. Though as he and the reporters parted ways he did bark an instruction for them to “cable me the result of the game”.

Another Marx, Karl, watched cricket and decided — according to sociologist Ben Carrington — that “a revolution in England was improbable”. Why? Because “if the masses could be so easily subdued by such a resolutely sedate game with its mores of bourgeois Englishness dripping from every rule and expression, then all was lost for the socialist cause”.

So aluta continua, comrades. But the utterly unrelated Marx men did agree, albeit about 100 years apart, that cricket was too slow by half. Proper cricket, that is. The kind played in whites, using a red ball — usually — over several days, and nevermind if neither side wins.

That’s the only flavour of the game that was around for the Marxs to see. What would they have made of the World Cup, or T20? Groucho might have been more interested. Karl would have added cricket to his reasons why capitalism makes us weak, stupid and nasty, which it does.

Too deep for a summery Sunday morning? Maybe, but there’s method in my Marxism. SA, as you will know, are engaged in a Test series against Sri Lanka.

Whichever team wins, whoever does what, whoever doesn’t do what, take due care to enjoy the slow, sure, steady lunchtea-close rhythm of these few days.

The sun comes out and so do the players. It goes down and there go the players, until the next day. There is sense and sensibility to go with the drama and intrigue.

Nobody called Duckworth or Lewis is part of the equation, deliveries that veer reasonably down the leg side aren’t called wide, bouncers are welcome, by the fielding team and their supporters, anyway, and a power play is what happens when you spot a gap at the bar and advance smartly to fill it.

Not that many have had to execute that plan at Kingsmead, the venue for the first Test, where the bars have been as empty as the stands. St George’s Park, where the series will move on Thursday, is likely to be similarly sparsely occupied.

This is a pity but understandable. Put up unexciting opposition during working hours at grounds that struggle to attract sizeable crowds unless the Barmy Army is in town, and not many seats will be graced by bums.

But if you have the opportunity and the inclination to see the cricket up close and personal, do take it. You won’t need to queue to buy a beer and a boerie roll, and the politics of the parking lot will be unusually civilised.

Besides, you won’t see the like of these days again. At least, not until the hurly-burly of the World Cup in England is done and cricket regains its sanity for four more years.

For now, we have the opium of cricket at its classiest.