England stumped
Simon Barnes
ONCE again, England has been amazed at how much victory in one-day cricket means to the supporters of Pakistan. Last weekend, the match between England and Pakistan was brought to a premature end by a pitch invasion of unabashed Tebbit-test failures, and England conceded the match.
It is all part of cricket's rich pattern. The English have never managed to understand a single one of their international opponents, with the possible exception of New Zealand. England are still struggling to come to terms with the Australian notion that games are there in order to be won.
The West Indies have been misunderstood in a picturesque variety of ways: as a 'naturally' talented mob who needed a white man to lead them, and more recently as 'calypso cricketers' who didn't give a toss. Tony Greig, former England captain, initiated the era of West Indian hegemony when he rashly said, 'If they are on top, they're magnificent. If they are down, they grovel.'
The history of English cricket and South Africa is deeply tangled. The principal misunderstanding was that England thought South Africa was a country of white men. And their servants, of course. But it is the subcontinent that has truly baffled the English. The current cricket team has a hate-filled relationship with Sri Lanka because they refused to play the part of amiable dupes from paradise island.
India, to the English cricketer, is a long lavatory joke. Lord Harris said. 'It is in the matter of patience that I think the Indian will never be equal to the Englishman.' Most countries leave the English cricketer confused; Pakistan leaves him totally dumbfounded. 'Excitable kind of a mob,' said Phil Tufnell, former England spin bowler.
Every English child has the same disconcerting experience of discovering that his best friend's family eat with the wrong kind of forks. But no Englishman has ever truly come to terms with the fact that cricket is as variable as forks and families.
Cricket is an international game and each nation interprets it in a way peculiar to itself. Playing cricket does not make you an honorary Englishman. Au contraire; for
all the Test-playing countries, playing cricket makes you more deeply Pakistani, more deeply West Indian — and, to the Englishman, more deeply incomprehensible.
Pakistanis have always loved the more warlike aspects of cricket. All countries have been guilty of cheating throughout the ages, but the English believe that cheating should be done with discretion. Pakistanis have no such reverence for these conventions: little reverence for any convention they see as purely English.
The greatest matter of all in this crazypaving of incomprehension is the fact that, every time England play, the former masters are taking on the former subjects. That is why beating England has a special zing for every Test-playing nation. England's opposition always have a greater need to beat England than England have to beat them.
In fact, the entire point of international cricket is for England to be beaten, to prove, once, again and then again, that Jack's as good as his master, black men are as good as white, slavery has been abolished and the Empire is dead. People fear for the future of international cricket, but it will survive — and do so gloriously — for as long as the English fail to understand the first thing about the opposition.
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