SPECTATOR SPORT
No trivial matter
Simon Barnes
CHARLES Williams chose Charles de Gaulle as his first biographical subject. No one has denied that de Gaulle had some- thing more than a walk-on part in the histo- ry of the 20th century. Williams chose Don Bradman for his second biography. Is Brad- man a terrible descent into the babbling dreams of the Williams youth as it was lived on the Parks in Oxford? Does the author lose perspective (though perhaps this would be only to be expected from a former first-class cricketer, for all his subsequent political eminence)?
But it is the Williams thesis that Brad- man is a pivotal figure in the making of modern Australia, and his book is an attempt 'to put Bradman's achievements into the context of an Australia feeling her way gradually towards something that the world would recognise as nationhood'.
To grant a sporting figure any signifi- cance outside the world of children's games is still something of a courageous act. It took a West Indian, C.L.R. James, to place W.G. Grace in the social history of Victori- an England: 'He extended our conception of human capacity.' To write about sport in such terms is to dwell on the cusp of the ridiculous. A serious writer is expected to laugh off sport as being beneath contempt. And while such a view is logical, it repre- sents a terrible failure of the imagination. Sport, you see, has the power to seize the imagination: of individuals, of classes, of nations, of races, of the world. And nothing so powerful can be wholly trivial.
Three cricketing examples will spell that out. The relationship between India and Pakistan is largely expressed by its dramati- sation on the cricket field; for the people of Caribbean roots, the West Indies' domina- tion of the Eighties was the perfect summa- tion of Steve Biko's concept of black con- sciousness; and the modern history of South Africa cannot be written without sport.
But sport is still at its heart absurd. Williams can argue, seriously and at length, about Bradman and the making of modern Australia, and perhaps in 50-odd years some equally serious-minded biographer will be writing about his successor — the athlete who became the most significant figure in the making of post-modern Australia.
And his subject might well be Shane Warne. Warne is certainly the most gifted Australian cricketer since Bradman, the first since him to capture the national imag- ination so completely.
As with all serious sporting biographies, it will be difficult to find the man behind his own posturing and the myth-making of both media and audience. And it will always be on the cusp of the absurd because the biog- rapher will have to tackle, with a reasonably straight face, the national preoccupation with the third finger of Warne's right hand. Warne is a leg-spinner. As his record grows, he might be seen as the best bowler of all time, just as Bradman was the finest batter.
Warne is a sporting phenomenon with bleached hair and trendy sun-glasses — per- haps the first Australian hero with claims to being a truly international figure. He is youthful, rebellious and unstintingly gener- ous with his gift. And yet his finger hurts.
The finger he spins the ball with. He has had surgery on it and months of physiother- apy. Will the magic finger ever be the same again? It seems that the fate of the nation depends on the single, still slightly sore digit. It is absurd. It doesn't matter at all and yet it matters terribly. Should the finger fail to do its stuff, Warne will become one sport's quotidian tale of what nearly was.
Should the magic return, as Warne him- self plans to return to Test Match cricket over the course of this weekend, then we may witness not sporting but national history.
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