Singing just isn't cricket
MICHAEL HENDERSON
The marketing men are at it again. England played the first of the summer's five Test matches against South Africa last week, at Edgbaston, and the players took to the field to the strains of 'Jerusalem'. According to a press release concocted by the England and Wales Cricket Board and npower. the Test sponsors, the spectators were treated to amplification of Blake's words and Parry's setting before the start of play because there was 'a long-held belief that Test matches needed that sense of international occasion'.
Yet, despite this PR offensive, and despite the best efforts of npower to paper the house with hymn sheets, those spectators remained unimpressed; and who, apart from the buffoons who come up with these wheezes, was surprised? At half-ten in the morning people who attend Test matches are busy finding their seats, talking to their neighbours, reading newspapers, passing round Thermos flasks, studying scorecards, and generally preparing for a day's cricket. They are not keen to belt out songs because songs have played no part in the watching of cricket, and never will do. It goes against the character of the game, and if the ECB market researchers cannot see that, they should be put in the stocks and pelted with stones.
These things occur naturally, or not at all. When the Twickenham crowd sang 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' during England's game against Ireland in 1988, it was a joyful response to the team's spirited second-half performance and, in particular, the try-scoring antics of Chris Oti, the black wing. But you can't simply instruct people to sing because you want them to. Rugby supporters have adopted that song because it has become part of the fabric — for want of a better word — of England matches, just as football supporters warble (extremely badly) 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.
But the ECB has not stopped there. It wants to make every Saturday of every Test an 'official fancy-dress day', not realising that, when you seek to impose order on something that by its nature is disorderly, you make yourself look silly. This fancydressing has become a witless parade (woo! a group of French maids, how daring!), but unless Tim Lamb, the chief exec utive of the ECB, is prepared to tog himself up as Little Red Riding Hood and be eaten during the lunch interval by the Wicked Wolf, with Channel 4 in attendance, there's not much point.
As if to prove the PR blunderers wrong, Graeme Smith and Michael Vaughan showed that patriotism is best displayed by deeds rather than words, no matter how behovely. Smith, the touring captain, made 277, the highest score by a South African in Test cricket, and Vaughan, England's captain-in-waiting, scored 156 glorious runs. Really, Test cricket has no need of gimmicks. songsheets or skating vicars. All you need to do is to let the players get on with playing, not talking about hair gel and their favourite films, although it is pleasing to know that James Anderson is such an admirer of Beiguian. 'We used to watch Wild Strawberries in the Burnley dressing-room when rain stopped play,' the Lancashire bowler told Channel 4's Cary Grant — sorry, Mark Nicholas.
Back to Blake, boys. 'He who bends to himself a Joy/ Doth the winged life destroy:/ But he who kisses the Joy as it flies/ Lives in Eternity's sunrise.' Or, should you prefer, The Byrds: `I'm going to catch that horse if I can.' Chestnut Mare', 1970. Now with that song even I might join in.
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