Thursday, July 15, 2010

What's That Beyond the Cathedral End?

I am currently inhabiting a strange netherworld, a gap if you will between times. Specifically it is the gap between when the tv guide says the cricket is going to start and the time when they actually start playing cricket. This shadowy void is a terrifying place, twisted shadows lurch, hunch forward and provide commentary on a game that hasn't begun yet. The previous days play is brutally, even sadistically, dissected and its entrails flung about for the amusement of the fell beings looming over microphones. In mocking contrast to the ghastliness the camera pans around the empty ground, a stretch of healthy living green that will soon grow white splotches as of some disease when the cricketers are finally unshackled and herded into the light. One crazed, fecular being after another babbles words of seeming reason into the microphone, the whole gathering into a mindless cacophony of sound that boggles the mind and causes the ears to bleed.

You might think from the above that I'm not really a fan of cricket commentary but actually I love it. There is a craftsmanship to cricket commentary that really isn't possible in other sports. Sure tennis and football commentators are semi articulate imbeciles spurting inanities and banalities in about equal number but these games are fast and the commentators have to think quickly to keep up. This is not easy when thinking at all is likely to cause the dust in their heads to catch fire. Cricket on the other hand is a languid, elegant game. It takes a long time for anything to happen and when it does it can be fruitfully discussed for hours. It is worth remembering when cricket commentators say something stupid, outrageous, self evident or just plain crazy that unlike their colleagues in most sports they have actually had time to think. The sort of gargling lunacies that football commentators come up with on the spur of the moment are from cricket commentators the result of leisured and reflective thought. I love cricket commentary. There is something about hearing a solemn and articulate man saying something outrageously stupid in a polite and reasonably well educated voice that amuses me.

The gold standard of course is to come up with something that can beat this effort from an occasion when English batsman Peter Willey was facing the bowling of West Indian Michael Holding. The quote from the commentator... "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey" You couldn't script that stuff. If you tried nobody would believe it. Australian efforts aren't quite so good but I still remember watching a game where the commentator said, "And beyond the cathedral end you can see the..." and he stopped there for a second as he realised exactly how stupid what he was about say would sound but had no choice but to continue "err the cathedral".

I'm not a crazy sports fan but I quite like watching it when I have a moment and I frequently wonder why such fantastic displays of physical virtuosity have to be narrated by people who can't string a sentence together. I wouldn't change it though, not for the world. Cricket is interesting but the commentary makes it hysterical. If it weren't for football commentary all you would hear are the players screaming obscenities at each other. Seriously the football is on at 7.30 on a Friday night and you will hear the word "fuck" broadcast more often than in a French art film (or woeful American sex comedy) that airs at midnight. No wonder footballers are role models for our kids.

I would like to write more but I think the preview is over and actual cricket is about to start. Australia is playing Pakistan and due to minor death issues they are playing at Lords. Technically this is a home game for Pakistan, possibly they should have played it in Bradford.

1 comment:

  1. I once had dinner with Richie Benaud and Henry Blofeld (as the latter was going out with a friend of my mother's). Highly amusing. The great 'Johnners' also had a huge following. One should really watch the game on TV and listen to the commentary on radio.

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