Postscript
Thin ice
P. J. Kavanagh
All politicians believe that centre-stage belongs to them, and become uneasy if we dare to look elsewhere. For this reason they long to take over the arts and do so whenever they can. They have also noticed that huge numbers of us enjoy playing and watching silly games so they have taken those over too. When they have failed to ban the games or prevent their nationals taking part they either whip up a too-frenzied national partisanship or try to distract our attention until we are again looking where we should be looking — at them.
There was a bad case of this at Lord's during the last of the one-day matches against the West Indies. Helicopters began to circle the ground, low and noisy. They were sinister, as helicopters always are (some animal-memory of pterodactyls?). Then came a small silver one shadowed by a larger, camouflaged beast, a bodyguard, possibly intended to attract to itself any heat-seeking missile that might be fired at President Reagan, if that's who it was. Such possibilities suggest themselves nowa- days. We walk on thin ice.
My neighbour at the match I took to be some sort of orthodox Jew because he was bearded and wore perched on his head one of those too-small black hats with the brim turned up all round. Throughout the game he read a magazine called the Accountant
or played, very fast, on a pocket calculator. He was not calculating anything because no figures showed on his little screen. Then he got up, said goodbye, carefully placed his briefcase on the seat, and left. It was some time before I thought it odd he should have said goodbye and left his case. There were more helicopters now, landing and ascending somewhere nearby, and because of the poisonous impression they had been making all afternoon I began to wonder whether the suitcase contained a bomb. I tried to remember what I had glimpsed inside the suitcase when he had opened it but could only remember some Pritt glue and the remains of exotic-looking sandwiches. Clearly, it was better to be blown up than be caught making an embar- rassing fuss, so I settled to watch the cricket.
Some of the crowd, mostly West Indi- ans, had encroached onto the grass over the boundary board and policemen, care- fully genial, were trying to move them back. With equal geniality they refused to budge, and the policemen gave up. They ought to have moved — David Gower, the England captain, asked for them to be moved — because they could impede the fielders and so change the course of the game. This seemed unlikely, the way Vi- vian Richards was batting (hitting the ball over their heads) but it could happen, on purpose, and then there will be trouble, probably racial trouble. We walk on thin ice.
My neighbour returned and resumed the Accountant. All the Jews I know love cricket, possibly because they enjoy ritual, as I do, co-inheritor of the Judaic tradition. But the ritual is seldom completed now because, before the winning hit, the crowd is on the pitch. As soon as he scored the deciding boundary Vivian Richards grabbed a stump (as souvenir? for self- protection?) and, with the rest of the players, charged head-down for the pavi- lion, fearful of injury from the crowd's congratulations.
I was high on the upper balcony of the pavilion and for the first time, looking down on thousands of upturned faces, could imagine what it must have been like to be Hitler, or Mussolini. Awful. Down there they were chanting and ecstatic but the mood of any crowd can be changed. On the balcony below us the players, receiving their medals and prizes, seemed appalled also, were clumsy and abashed, but pri- vately very friendly with the opposing team. This was in contrast to the parti- sanship of the crowd. I looked down on the white thatch of Denis Compton, the hero of this ground so often, and doubted whether the crowd knew who he was, though he spoke stoutly into the mic- rophone through their din. I looked down on the flaxen curls of David Gower, the 'golden boy', and saw, like a bird's nest in the midst of the surrounding gold, a pink spot of baldness. We all walk on thinning ice, with thinning hair. Meanwhile we had better try to be kind to each other.
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