ARTS

My first eleven

Michael Henderson follows in the steps of Neville Cardus and picks his team of composers

Arecord-breaking Proms season ended last Saturday, and it was a good sea- son too. The programme may not have sat- isfied that soi-disant urban radical, Steve Martland, whose compositions will be whis- tled by paperboys in the street 100 years from now, but thousands of concert-goers went home happy.

The cricket season, on the other hand, excuses itself this weekend as meekly as it sought permission to join us in April. Squeezed by the European Football Cham- pionship, and then by the Olympic Games, it was a thin summer that relied for what distinction it had on Pakistan's brilliance.

Cricket and music have been linked since the days of Neville Cardus, who yoked together his two loves by selecting a com- posers' XI. This year's XI, based on the number of works performed at the Proms, reads in batting order: Stravinsky, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Brahms, Bruckn- er, de Fella, Prokofiev, Ives, Johann Strauss. That hardly constitutes the ideal team. Ives and de Fella wouldn't make it into a fourth XI. For his side, Cardus chose Franck and Delius, who might take runs off county attacks but would struggle painfully against bowlers of Test class. He also found room for Elgar, and ignored Beethoven, so it isn't just England's selectors who make howlers.

Cardus rode his hobby horses, and influ- enced public taste on the gallop. But if you were looking for a team to take on all-com- ers over five days in some celestial field, which men demand inclusion? Taking into account the balance of skills required, not least 'big match temperament', MCC (Meistersinger Cricket Club) could sum- mon the following.

1. Joseph Haydn. As the composer of 104 symphonies he opens the innings by right although, bearing in mind the taste for period-style developed over the past 20 years, he might prefer to use a modern bat. Like Jack Hobbs, 'The Master', who made 197 hundreds, more than 100 of them after the age of 40, Haydn concealed a will of steel behind a mask of civility.

2. Ludwig van Beethoven. Haydn's favourite pupil picks himself. The greatest composer of any age had forceful strokes on both sides of the wicket, and a withering contempt for the second-rate. He could be selfish, though, and there would be prob- lems running between the wickets. Instead of calling in the time-honoured way his partners would have to use sign language.

3. Franz Schubert. If Beethoven is the man to bat for your life, Schubert is the composer anybody with a half-decent ear would wish to watch bat. His life was one glorious outpouring of song and in his incomparable chamber music he proved Cardus right that a century against the clock was more precious than a big double hundred. He would put thousands on the gate.

4. Johannes Brahms. I can hear the com- plaints already. 'Boring old Brahms, he couldn't hit the ball off the square.' In the wrong hands he can still be a bit of a plod- der — witness Radu Lupu's charmless per- formance of the D minor piano concerto at this year's Proms — but this team is not always going to play on true pitches. Brahms would not make 80-ball hundreds but, with his faultless technique, he is undeniably the best bad-wicket player available. A good man in a crisis.

5. Hector Berlioz. Brilliant, and bold to the point of recklessness, this heroic figure would be captain. He would have the respect of his German-speaking team- mates, and as a gifted man of words he could handle the media with some aplomb. There would be no back-sliding with Berlioz in charge and a willingness at all times to meet the challenge, no matter how stiff.

6. Sergel Prokofiev. Every team needs a young man, to keep others on their mettle, and remind them that a team is a living organism that must adapt if it is to prosper. Prokofiev gets the all-rounder's role ahead of Tchaikovsky, partly through his bril- liance — his Fifth Symphony is certainly the equal of any Tchaikovsky wrote — but mainly because his greater experience of foreign conditions, in France and America, makes him the better-rounded player.

7. Antonin Dvorak. A good enough strokeplayer to warrant consideration for his batting alone, and all the better for being underrated, Dvorak is the wicket- keeper. Stumpers are often strange men. One used to put beefsteak in his gloves as padding, to protect his hands. Nobody could be less of a crank than Dvorak, who would probably run errands for the more imperious members of the dressing-room.

8. Richard Strauss. Not quite good enough to take the new ball, he would be the first-change bowler. A confident young man, who could turn his arm to anything consider that magnificent piece of kitsch, Der Rosenkavalier — Strauss would have no trouble in making quick runs when needed. A bit of a bolsh, though, and fond of count- ing his pennies. Berlioz might have to give him a stern talking-to about team spirit.

9. Giuseppe Verdi. One of two clear picks to open the bowling. Big-hearted, as fast bowlers must be, with a repertoire that deepened once he could not rely on sheer pace. Like Dennis Lillee and Malcolm Marshall there was no falling-off towards the end of his working life; instead there was in Falstaff an absorption of all he had ever done. Fast bowlers come in pairs and are often temperamentally opposed. Verdi is Brian Statham to Fred Trueman's

10. Richard Wagner. Well, you can't keep him out, can you? A man of inordi- nate self-regard, who never forgot a slight, and who opened doors that others merrily skipped through. Having spent 30 years polishing his Ring, Wagner would not demur at bowling 30 overs a day into the wind. Afterwards he could enjoy a pint or two in the bar, and tell everybody what a fine performer he was. Not a bit like True- man, really.

11. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. People might imagine Mozart as a charming bats- man but the man who wrote Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tune was not an innocent. He makes this side as a left arm spin bowler who can take the punishment that all slow bowlers are liable to suffer, and still tri- umph. In manner and substance he resem- bles Bishen Singh Bedi, the Sikh who brought enchantment to Indian cricket.

So there it is, the composers' XI to play the Immortals, on a green-top pitch or a dustbowl. Cardus, for the record, included Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, Wagner, and went for Mahler, Elgar, Debussy, Bruckn- er, Sibelius, Franck and Delius. I know which team would bring back the Ashes from Australia.