"Land it on a sixpence" Cricket and money

Cricket, test cricket, that is, is a game that engenders speculation and philosophy. It takes five days, has lunch and tea breaks and most of the action takes place a long way from you sitting on the boundary. Even if you’re playing, standing in the field gives you time to think. It’s a game of nuance: a bowler manages a maiden over, and the advantage has passed to the bowling team. By the same token, a batsman surviving such an over may have given the advantage to his team. And as such, it also engenders, for mine, the finest sport writing. Not that boxing, football and other faster paced sports haven’t resulted in good writing, but a good cricket book is something special. My favourite contemporary cricket writer is Melbourne-based journalist Gideon Haigh. His books are witty, informed, and driven by a love of the game.

Sphere of influence: writings on cricket and its discontents is a 2010 collection of essays, speeches, and articles Haigh has written for such sources as Cricinfo, The Monthly, The Spectator, Sports Illustrated India and The Age. The major theme of these articles is the rise of the India to the economic centre of international cricket, the ineffectualness of the ICC, and Twenty20 and its effect on the sport. These are all entwined issues.

Twenty20 is a great money-maker for the game, particularly India, where an entrepreneur took an English concept and made it into an Indian powerhouse. Other nations have followed suit, with less success. Twenty20 may yet be a dazzling flash in the pan, but India has bet its future on it, eschewing test cricket which is the ultimate test of a player’s talents and strengths. India has been the No 1 test nation in the world (although the method of determining that, as Haigh says, is obscure and complicated at best) but in its last tour of Australia was an example of diminishing returns.

The other problem with the tidal wave of money now engulfing cricketers is its almost inevitable handmaiden, corruption. Match-fixing was a blight on the game in the 1990s. Now we have spot fixing, no-balls at particular time and so on. Pakistan players were guilty in this instance. Poorly paid, other countries unwilling to tour their troubled country, banned from the riches of the IPL by India, is it any wonder that some of them were happy to take money wherever they could get it? Dodgy administrators and administrations, a powerless and petty ICC, ruthless and powerful gambling interests; is it any wonder the Haigh senses an approaching crisis? He poses a very pertinent question: does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money? He thinks it should be the former, he fears too interested parties are starting to think the latter. And the consequences of that for those who love the game are worrying indeed.

And I see in my own profession signs that there are those who are moving the bottom line from an important consideration to the main consideration. One theatre director, convinced that ‘bums on seats’ should be the major driver, programmed ‘popular’ shows and almost took his theatre company to the wall. A university changed the Department of Arts to the Department of Creative Industries. It said it was a hard-nosed recognition of the nature of arts and the importance of knowing how to make money with it. Somehow, departments of Medicine, Science, Engineering, Law and Architecture, have never considered how to make money using their knowledge, nor recognised that at some point they would need to. To me it was a buzzword approach that signified the ultimate surrender of Art to Money.

If cricket and theatre are simply tools to make money, then we play and watch cricket for the same reason we play and watch theatre. And having done both, to lesser and greater effect, I can tell you we don’t. The play, and the day’s play, still need to remain the thing.

"All my games are real." Chess and politics

War, said Claus von Clausewitz, is politics by other means. The Cold War was war by other means. The USA and the USSR tried to defeat each other by any means short of actively fighting a war against each other. The means ranged from machinations in the UN to wars by proxy to assassinations through to, perhaps oddest of all, chess.

Daniel Johnson is an English journalist and chess amateur. His 2007 book, White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was fought on the chessboard, traces the history of chess as it was used as a tool of politics. For the Soviets, this was a deliberate step. The intellectual nature of the game attracted them to the idea of using it as a way of demonstrating Soviet superiority over the west. (Star Trek uses three-dimensional chess to show Vulcan superiority over human intellect. But I digress.) They threw millions at it, both of money and of hours. Like everything else, it was entirely government controlled from the Grandmasters' championships to local clubs.

And for a long time it worked. The USSR dominated world chess throughout the Cold War. To do this, they relied heavily on non- Russians and Jews, which in the racist, insular, anti-Semitic system that was the USSR rankled with many. But they could overlook that as long as the USSR produced the world champion. And with the exception of Bobby Fischer (himself a Jew, albeit an anti-Semitic one) they did. They rigged competitions, and dominated and bullied the World Chess organisation FIDE to get their way. They lost their dominance for the same reason they lost the Cold War, a ruined economy, a country that was moribund in terms of technology and an oppressed people who finally had enough. Their last champion, and one of the strongest players in history, Gary Kasparov, became a dissident and is currently one of the opposition leaders against the increasingly despotic Putin regime, facing imprisonment or worse. The present world champion is Indian Viswanathan Anand.

Johnson puts this extraordinary campaign in the context of both the history of chess and of the world, with the main focus on 1945-1993. I have little idea of chess beyond the idea of how the pieces move, but I found it fascinating, and easy to follow, even for the chess patzer such as I. It’s a dramatic story with extraordinary characters. Bobby Fischer is not the only madman in the book. Johnson makes a good argument that for Fischer and others like him, it was not chess that made them insane. It was chess that kept them from going insane, and when they abandoned playing, their powerful minds turned on themselves. And certainly the paranoia and neuroses of Fischer was shared by many of the Grandmasters, increasing as the championships become more and more seen as the clash of civilisations.

Like a good non-fiction book should, it made me want to learn more about the subject.  And I’m now thinking of trying to learn to play chess properly. And it leads to the broader subject as well. Natan Sharansky was a great player who never become world champion. He did become a cause celebre in the USSR, enduring imprisonment, exile and a decade long separation from his wife because of his religious and political views. After finally being allowed to emigrate to Israel, he pursued a poltical career. He has now written two books (as well as his autobiography) that I feel I must read. One book, The Case for Democracy argues that Western democracy has core values that are strong enough to overcome radical Islam. Another book, Defending Identity, makes the case that strong identity, whether it be religious or nationalistic, can be forces for good and are essential against totalitarian movements. Given the history of the Jews in general, and the Jews and the small countries in the USSR, one begins to see his point.

Emmerson said in every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts. In good writing, we can also recognise the thoughts we have, but have not been quite able to articulate. I have been thinking that in our attempt to be tolerant, pluralistic, non-judgemental, all good qualities, we present a picture to the world that we stand for nothing and care about nothing. And it is this vacuum that fundamentalism and other fanaticisms rush to fill. The other way is to drift into a nihilistic world of the next sensation, the next way to avoid boredom and ennui.

Or to try and put it another way, a functioning society tells a story of where it has come from and where it is going. And members of the society should be in broad agreement with that story. In a healthy society, we will argue, discuss, and try to shift that story one way or the other, but the broad outline must exist. I don’t think we have a story anymore. We must rediscover it.

Wow, how did I get here? From 32 lumps of wood on 64 squares to the future of Western Civilisation as we know it. In a pale safe shadow of the journey of Sharansky and Kasparov I seem to have found a move from chess to politics.

"A great ball player from a long time ago." Ty Cobb

In ‘Field of Dreams’, Shoeless Joe Jackson mentions all the players who want to come back to play, and includes Ty Cobb ‘but none of us could stand the son of a bitch when he was alive so we told him to stick it.’ Ty Cobb also featured in a story in a book I had as a boy about American heroes. As a young player he is told to bunt, but hits a home run instead. He is then fired for disobeying the manager’s orders.  I’ve also seen part of a film called ‘Cobb’ where Cobb is old, bald and looks a lot like Tommy Lee Jones. That was the extent of my knowledge of Ty Cobb.

I was rummaging in a rather large bargain bin called ‘Borders’ and I saw a book called Cobb for not much. Intrigued by one quote on the cover: “[Author Al] Stump has resurrected Cobb in all his terrifying malevolence,” I decided to buy it. Inasmuch as I have ever thought about it, I have a romantic view of baseball. Sure like all professional sports it’s more business than game these days but surely there was a golden, more innocent era, and perhaps Cobb’s ‘terrifying malevolence’ was relative.

Boy, was I wrong.

A lot of modern day sportsmen like to talk about the killer instinct, ruthlessness, wanting it more, compare their games to war, and so on. Cobb got there first and makes them look like – well, young men playing games. His ferocious style of play resulted in multiple leg injuries and open wounds, but he would keep playing even as they bled or grew infected. He would deliberately wound opposition players, barrelling into them if they were between him and the plate or sliding in with sharpened spikes raised and slashing – in a non-contact sport. He beat up spectators, verbally abused and threatened opposition players, and, to be fair, took as much as he handed out. Off-field he was worse, his temper exploding into violence that should have seen him in jail several times. He was also perhaps the greatest player of the game ever. In the inaugural induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame, voted for by sports writers, he gained the 222 of a possible 226 votes, or 98.23%, above other inductees such as Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson. (I judge baseball players on the basis of if I have heard of them or not.)  Yet at his funeral, only three men from professional baseball attended. It was true: great as he was, none of them could stand the son of a bitch.

Not that the rest of the baseball world was innocent. Baseball was a rough and coarse life for most of the players. In teams owned by millionaires, pay was low and conditions dire, creating opportunities for corruption, which culminated in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. And if Cobb injured other players, abused them, psychologically destroyed them, it didn’t stop them (or the crowd, for that matter) trying to do the same to him. He just did it better, more viciously, and with more success.

He was an early champion of players rights, not only getting good pay for himself (which he did) but arguing for better pay for all players, better conditions, and more freedom of movement. And unlike many sportsmen, he was a shrewd businessman too. Among many successful investments and businesses, early shares in Coca-Cola certainly paid off, and he died a wealthy man.

His rage was astounding. We can only speculate on what drove it, in our half-arsed sub-Fruedian way. His mother killed his father in dubious circumstances in his first year of professional baseball, and was found not guilty of manslaughter. He helped her for a few years then later shut her out of his life. His teammates in his rookie year tormented the teenager from the South, less than a generation away from the Civil War, by ways and means that would appal today. He grew up in a society and an era that turned a blind eye to his overt racism. And he was a great player. It’s not only now that sportsmen get away with illegal and immoral behaviour. On the other hand, if people did say no to Cobb, he would never take that for an answer.

He is a fascinating character. A great player, an appalling man, a neglectful father and abusive husband, yet not without saving graces. To call him psychopathic is too easy, and denies him his moments of empathy. Despite his legendary meanness, he could be generous with money or advice, giving regular money to poor ex-ballplayers that he liked ie who didn’t back down from confrontation, and establishing scholarships for poor students from his home state.

And there is one story that deserves a wider audience. Shoeless Joe Jackson of course was one of the players banned for life after the Black Sox Scandal. Years later, in the middle of nowhere, Cobb was in a store and recognised the man behind the counter, who gave not a sign of recognition in return. Finally, Cobb said “Joe, it’s me Ty. Don’t you know me?” Jackson replied, “Sure I know you. But a lot of them other fellahs, they don’t want to know me.” So while that line in the movie was true, it’s a little sad they had to give to Shoeless Joe to say it.

"There’s something kinda eeurrrgh about a boy who doesn’t like baseball." Summerland by Michael Chabon

Baseball has a place in the American psyche like that of cricket in the English – or the Australian - psyche. Maybe it’s more like the Indian. In any case, baseball represents a purer more innocent America, of freckle-faced children playing scratch games in the parks and yards before Mom calls them home for pot roast and apple pie, which is why scandals like the Black Sox throwing the World Series, or the more recent steroid scandals have the power to shock a jaded population.

Baseball figures heavily in American art, literature and movies; the Blocksox scandal is referenced in The Great Gatsby. Two of the most successful baseball movies I can recall were Field of Dreams and The Natural. The latter film changed the downbeat ending of the original Bernard Malamud novel to a crowd-pleasing upbeat ending, which I and millions of others loved. The former has the reputation of a film that makes men cry. Both films tap into something more than just baseball stories: father-son relationships, chasing a dream, second chances and greater powers beyond our rational world. Field of Dreams makes me cry, but it’s the character played by Burt Lancaster that does it. Lancaster is a small-town doctor who lost his first chance to play the big leagues as a kid, and abandons his mystical second chance to save a little girl’s life. Kevin Costner’s character says to him of his missed opportunity, his five minutes in the Major Leagues, that some men would consider it a tragedy.  Lancaster replies ‘Son, if I had only gotten to be doctor for five minutes, now that would have been a tragedy’. That moment never fails to have me tearing up, even now as I write about it. My Dad, still alive and kicking, was a doctor and is a lifelong cricket fan and player, though he never threatened state or national selection. You would never mistake my Dad for Burt Lancaster, but the spirit of that line is one he would share.

Michael Chabon’s 2002 novel Summerland is an attempt to create a particularly American mythology based on mixing liberal doses of baseball with Native American and Norse mythology, and American folklore (and fakelore) aimed primarily at ‘young adults’.  A boy, the worst baseball player in his little league (I had a lot of sympathy with him), joins forces with a girl from his team, an American baseball-playing fairy, a werefox , a sasquatch, a giant and a wererat  - and others - to save his father and not one but three worlds from the destructive trickster Coyote. Even in that brief synopsis you can see the problem. Chabon tries to cram as much as he can into this long book but for me it never gels. The elements never quite mix and we are left with a lot of nice ideas, good characters and story elements that never coalesce into a satisfying whole. J R R Tolkein criticised C S Lewis for cramming too many mythologies carelessly into Narnia. If you can see the seams in Narnia, you can spot the fraying threads in Summerland.

Another major problem is baseball. A lot of the mythology Chabon creates centres on baseball but the game itself doesn’t have a function. A lot of baseball is played but little is achieved by doing so. At most, the plot depends on sidebets on the game.  I was reminded of Douglas Adams’ Life the Universe and Everything where it is revealed that cricket is a faint race memory of the most destructive war in the history of the universe, the Krikkitt Wars, and the climax of the book is a game of cricket that could destroy the universe.  In Summerland, the destruction of the universe is a sidebet on the final game. There is an incident that brings on the climax, but it’s contrived and unorganic, almost literally deux ex machina. The mythology is supposed to be centred on baseball but the baseball feels tacked on.

And despite Chabon’s lyrical description of the games, you need a fair bit of knowledge before you embark, of terminology, tactics and jargon. It is a mark of the cultural domination of the States that I know who Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth and many other famous baseball players are, despite never watching a game of baseball. But my ignorance of the game is profound. I had to look up ‘designated hitter’ in Wikipedia to understand one of Chabon’s jokes. 

Neil Gaiman created an American mythology in American Gods, finding a spiritual equivalent of the history of the United States through old world and new world gods fighting it out in the American heartland. Gaiman too loves to fill his books with strands from many traditions of myth and legend but the end result is like one of those old picture puzzles, with faces and objects hidden among painstaking woodcuts of trees, mountains and skies. Chabon has given us a collage put together in haste.

1. The book sold well in the States but I doubt it sold well anywhere else. I think if you believed in baseball like Chabon, and shared his knowledge of the game, you would find this book more enjoyable and more satisfying. Yet I loved both The Natural and Field of Dreams. Summerland, however, never gets beyond appealing to the baseball lover to find a wider audience.