SPECTATOR SPORT
Bickering at
the wicket
Simon Barnes
RIME Benaud called cricket 'the most controversial of games' and he is not wrong, for there is a deep history that lies both in and behind the conflicts of cricket. Colonialism is a far bigger deal than occa- sional bouts of warfare, and, besides, cricket has always been a central part of Empire. Cricket was an instrument of both subjection and conciliation. The game developed as a confusion of opposition and friendship. The most bitter disagreement of all lies between England and Pakistan: a dispute in Which the history, the hurts and the mutual incomprehension go centuries deep. Eng- land visit Pakistan for the first time in 13 years this autumn, , The flavour of the unending story of anger and bewilderment can be found in the browse of the season, A Century of Great Cricket Quotes (Robson Books), put together by David Hopps. All cricketing life is here; but perhaps the best of it comes in the vivid, unending dispute between England and Pakistan. The British media have always been bewildered by Pakistan, whether it's Henry Blofeld's 'Gosh, it's difficult to identify these chaps', or the Daily Mirror referring to the team as `cricket's Colonel Gaddafi'. England's last trip to Pakistan caused a diplomatic incident, in which the England captain, Mike Gatting, had a finger-prod- ding, on-pitch row with the Pakistani umpire, Shakoor Rana, who had set the tone by calling Gatting (Hopps's asterisks) 'a f******, cheating c***'.
The Test match stopped while Gatting had an Achilles-like sulk, refusing to apolo- gise. He was eventually ordered to do so under the highest possible pressure. 'I will find it very hard to get the motivation to play another match in Pakistan,' he said.
English cricketing people have always sought to be fair-minded about Pakistanis: 'I buy my newspapers from them,' said Trevor Bailey, the commentator, and you can't say fairer than that. Mind you, Michael Atherton, then England captain, said, when repeatedly addressed at a press conference by the representative of the Pakistan Press Association, 'Will someone remove this buffoon?'
Which isn't much better than Ian Both- am's celebrated remarks that Pakistan is a great place to send your mother-in-law and that its teams are 'like 11 women'. 'Excitable kind of mob,' said Philip Tufnell. Bill Athey summed up the players' view of the 1987 tour: 'The sooner we're out of this country the better.' The players, coming home in disgrace, were awarded a very public f1,000-a-man hardship bonus by the Test and County Cricket Board.
The more you browse through this book, the more it seems that the problems of cricket, like the problems of people and of peoples, are intractable, insoluble, endless- ly repeating: always a different thing to row about, always the same row, neither thinks that what the other does is quite cricket.
But the Great Game continues in the autumn. 'The history of Pakistani cricket is one of nepotism, inefficiency, corruption and constant bickering': this, of course, from Imran Khan, former Pakistan captain and one of the world's great cricketers. Hopps will be able to fill another book from England's adventures this autumn.
Previous page
