Okay, this one’s a long one.
When I was 15 years old I found myself with long hair, an eccentric bowling action that still isn’t an aesthetic delight to this day, and occasionally ball in hand for one of the various Northumberland age-group sides that I eventually elected not to trial for again after the summer of 2023. It was the closest I’ve ever come to some level of recognition in the cricketing universe, dreaming some day of honours on the international stage just as so many lads the same age do.
Here we are a mere three years later and a boy of that same age as me back then (which still feels like yesterday, by the way) has been named in India’s senior squad to tour Ireland and England in Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
On one level, that just made me feel ancient. But on another, it really got me thinking about how I could never imagine anyone of that age I ever played with at that level anywhere near the full England international squad.
Now, if you’ve ever used Wikipedia, which if anyone says they refuse to do, they are lying, you’ll know what I mean when I speak of a ‘Wikipedia Rabbithole’.
I need to go down one now to try and make some sense of my argument.
One of the first things I saw on the Wikipedia article for cricket was its nickname, The Gentlemen’s Game. At a glance, that describes a game played in good spirit – I must refuse to make this article about the spirit of cricket because there’s just no point – though I’m nerdy enough to have done A-level PE and understand the connotations of such a moniker.
The late Professor Freeman as early as the ninth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica described an “order of ‘gentlemen’ as a separate class… forming as something new” – in other terms, a demonym reserved for those of high class that conduct themselves by a non-rigid set of societal rules to sustain such a status. Think Anthony in the Bridgerton series.
The ninth edition of Brittanica came out incrementally over a stretch of history that now dates back to up to 151 years ago, only after the first Industrial Revolution was a thing of the past. Paper 3 content on OCR A-level PE did a good job, at least for me, of picking apart the class system’s impact on cricket from just after the medieval period, through both British Industrial Revolutions, the 20th century and into the modern day.
151 years ago was just over 20 years into the Second Revolution. A time where factories opened up literally everywhere and started enlisting their players to play professional sport to keep workers fit and healthy and boost morale.
The most prominent example of this is of course football, with factories such as that in Newton Heath (eventually Manchester United) being the roots of modern-day titans of the game. Cricket was no exemption to this, and many early County Championship players were previously factory workers, as well as coal miners and farmers. The Revolution practically invented professional sport in the United Kingdom as common practice.
But prior to about 1850, being paid to play a child’s game in the eyes of these ‘gentlemen’ was at best looked down upon and at worst seen as societal unworthiness manifest.
The game of cricket during this period and well before was dominated by the class that could afford travel to and from games, kit, and the like. So not the serfs of the mid-16th century when cricket was first referenced definitively in the South East of England.
Those of a working class who did play cricket had to wash the gentlemen’s kit and were generally restricted to being what club cricketers nowadays call being “fresh-aired” – not batting or bowling for an entire game. Happened to Adil Rashid in a Test match against India back in 2018, bless him.
What else was happening from the mid-16th century onwards to within the lifetimes of many people still alive today, I hear you ask?
The, uh, Sizeable Portion of Planet Earth Claimed By The United Kingdom In That Period?
The British Empire.
These gentlemen introduced cricket to wherever the British went, particularly the West Indies, South Asia, Oceania, and the southern tip of Africa. In keeping with trends seen in other sports, these teams ended up beating the British at their own damn game.
Let me go back to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. This ACTUAL CHILD took one look at the greatest Indian fast bowler of all time (move aside Kapil Dev) in Jasprit Bumrah and launched him for six over the leg side without even moving his feet. How utterly ridiculous is that?
Could 15-year-old me have done that? Hell no!
Could any 15-year-old that I’ve played with or against at any level of English cricket do that?
*insert any word worse than hell here* no!!
Why is this, I found myself asking on Sunday afternoon?
Now, one thing is the sheer amount of people in India. I’ve been, and it’s A LOT of people. Everywhere and wherever one goes. In a country full of so many people with a desire to master the game of cricket, this remarkable ability at an age where one can’t buy a can of Monster from Tesco is perhaps inevitable at some point in history through simple law of averages.
Another is the removal of gentlemen from the picture.
Ah, the so-called spirit of cricket that I said I wasn’t going to write about, a set of unwritten rules that are actually written and have been the subject of much conflict between and within entire cricketing nations as far back as their official (but yet unofficial) codification. For me, this abstract philosophy is all to do with the perception of the game as in keeping with gentlemens’ own un/official codes of honour.
After all, it’s their own game, apparently.
The idea of the word ‘gentleman’ as defining its own position on the ladder of British society reflects discourses between those that introduced cricket to places such as India and those that took it up in wake of that; the oppressor and the oppressed, in many instances.
After, for example, being dragged by the British into two World Wars driven entirely by affairs happening thousands of miles away, why would any of the countries that the British Empire eventually issued nothing more than an apology to want to replicate their oppresors’ styles of cricket?
This does not merely extend to the British concept of the spirit of cricket. The ‘English way’ of playing the game until what we now know as the modern tactics and trends within matches has through history been one of being patient, and perhaps deliberately boring at times. But to stick with the example of India, and South Asia generally, what was once a growing trend in how younger generations played the game is now a deeply entrenched idea of being fearless, flashy, and unafraid to dare to go where others may not in the quest to score 100 runs or take five wickets.
Let’s go to the other side of the world. We talk of players with ‘Caribbean flair’ such as Viv Richards, Chris Gayle and Andre Russell. It’s not just timing and swagger; it’s a reminder that their people liberated themselves from the old-fashioned, ‘boring’ ways of those they used to call their masters.
It’s interesting to me in this same vein that England’s women won an ODI World Cup before the England men. The success of England’s women earlier in this format than their male counterparts could also be said to have blossomed from breaking free from the chains of the old brand of English cricket that was male-dominated in its roots. Though what started this thought-train was my ever-active brain’s remembering of Ian Smith’s commentary of the 2019 men’s Cricket World Cup final at Lord’s.
“Seven weeks of cricket. 48 games. One ball. Here’s Boult.”
“Guptill’s gotta push for two, they’ve got to go! He’s gonna have to go to the keeper’s end… HE’S GOT IT! ENGLAND HAVE WON THE WORLD CUP, BY THE BAREST OF MARGINS! BY THE BAREST OF ALL MARGINS!” That one.
As a modern-day England fan, where did all the good times go? This I sit and ponder.
I’ve mentioned the law of averages already and I’ll use it again; when you have as many good players and leaders in your side as England did then, you’re statistically more likely than anyone to win a home World Cup by most metrics.
But teams become relics of the past. Players retire, get dropped, some combination of the two… it doesn’t matter. What makes success such as that enjoyed by teams such as India so consistent is the attitude and belief that it doesn’t matter what a few old English men that own a bit of land have to say about the way the game is played both tactically and in terms of the ‘spirit of cricket’. England haven’t fully shaken that to this day.
In the build-up to Eoin Morgan’s appointment to the post of England’s white-ball captain in late 2014, there was a perception around England’s ODI and T20 teams as timid, defensive, and in need of reinvigoration; anything that would help break the side free from the shackles of their own historical making.
They set the target of winning the most coveted prize in the game in 2019 and did it. Fair play.
But much like after the best period in Test cricket in most England fans’ memories that saw another brilliant team climb to number one in the world a decade before, there ended up being a pertinent question. What mountain do we climb now?
A second T20 World Cup title three years later provided something of an answer, and that was followed by a home summer that stunned anybody who had watched England’s Test team play for even 10 minutes in the previous year and reignited hope for English cricket fans that their team had finally caught on to how the rest of the world were playing the game. Again, fair play.
Not the worst eight or so years for English cricket all things considered, albeit never consistent across formats and never without controversy.
But where next after all that?
Truth is, the England men’s side haven’t had any notable success in any format for near enough four years. A moral victory in the home Ashes in 2023 (I’m kidding) did enough to give fans a fair bit to cheer about, but the consensus around what needs to be done to replicate and then sustain that success has ended up being that England need to become more defensive again. Swings and roundabouts.
In a cricketing sense, England of late haven’t gotten that balance right.
So both in tactical and ideological terms, perhaps they should take notes from those they introduced the game of cricket to.
