"Sun, sea, sand ... and sorrow". So ran a banner hung from the stands of Antigua's Sir Vivian Richards stadium by fans of the Indian cricket team, who had hoped to see their much-hyped heroes take to the field that day in the International Cricket Council (ICC's) world cup.
Instead, they were watching Bangladesh - the "minnows" of world cricket, who had defeated India in the qualifying rounds and thus taken their place in the final "super-8" short-list of teams. Such victories are what keep many neutrals interested in sporting contests. If Ireland's astonishing victory over Pakistan is added, you might think this had been a terrific tournament. Yet, on the eve of the final between Australia and Sri Lanka on 28 April, it may go down as the worst world cup ever.
The event has been overshadowed from near the beginning by the mysterious - and so far unexplained - death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer. The length of time that is being taken over the investigation raises suspicions that the findings - particularly if they involve match-fixing - may threaten to consume the sport for a time: something organisers would presumably prefer to happen after, rather than during the competition.
Overbearing security at grounds and high ticket-prices (up to $100 dollars for some seats is more than most Antiguans earn in a week) have deterred many locals from attending matches. This, as well as the gruelling two-month schedule - which has had even devotees of the game praying for deliverance - has led to accusations of incompetence and greed on the part of the ICC, cricket's governing body.
Michael Collins is a doctoral candidate in history at St John's College, Oxford, researching a thesis on the British reception and interpretation of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore from 1912-1941. His wider interests include the history of colonialism, multiculturalism, the impact of empire on British society, postcolonial theory and the social history of cricket
Also by Michael Collins in openDemocracy:
"Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny, Amartya Sen"
(30 October 2006)
Another problem, somewhat beyond the control of organising committees, has been the woeful performance of the West Indies team. The faces of West Indian cricketers, which adorn stadiums and publicity material across the Caribbean, have had their collective brows furrowed at the failure of their cricketing heirs to live up to their rich history.
None of these factors is irrelevant in explaining the failure that is the ICC world cup 2007, but there may be wider causes that tell us a little more about the relationship between sport and society.
A game for heroes
Cricket was developed in mid-to-late 18th-century England out of a pre-Victorian marriage between the skills of working men and the practice of gambling so beloved of upper-class idlers. It was the infusion of artisan and aristocratic recreation with middle-class morality that was to make cricket a truly national game in the 19th century. The game in the late 1900s was personified above all by the "colossal" WG Grace. He made his entrance, as CLR James has put it in Beyond A Boundary, "on a stage which all classes in the nation had helped to build, and which was just about ready for the performance W. G. was to give". But it was not simply Grace's skills - honed in his father's Gloucestershire orchard - that made him the most popular hero of his time. What raised him to such heights was that he embodied the rustic defiance of a romanticised, pre-Victorian age threatened with extinction in the industrial era.
To further illustrate the connection between greatness and historical context, take the examples of two famous modern-day cricketers: a West Indian (Vivian Richards) and an Englishman (Ian Botham). Contemporary players have exceeded the run-scoring and wicket-taking feats of these two men, but it is doubtful if any cricketers at the 2007 world cup will outlive either Botham or Richards in the memories of those who love the game. The reason is that each of them captured, in markedly different ways, wider political and social moods. Their heroic status derived not simply from their astonishing skill with bat and ball, but because their approach to the game expressed unity between individual brilliance and the spirit of the age.
Botham was the product of the 1970s revolt against authority and vested interests of all kinds. His iconoclastic behaviour on and off the pitch led him into direct confrontation with the cricketing establishment. He had a brief and disastrous period as captain of the English team, which ended in 1981 with him registering two successive "golden ducks" (scores of 0, having faced just one delivery from the bowler) at Lord's, the "home of cricket" and the citadel of the old guard, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Recalling that day, Botham has spoken of the extent to which he felt judged by the "bastards" at the MCC, who presumably deemed him promoted above his station.
In the subsequent test-match against Australia at Leeds, Botham played one of the most memorable innings in cricket (149 runs "not out" from just 148 deliveries) to single-handedly turn the match in England's favour. It was less his famously "beefy" muscles that won the match - or ignited the public's passion - than his burning, class-fuelled anger. A team-mate suggested that Botham had been "drunk as a skunk" every night during the match. As the historian of cricket Derek Birley wrote in A Social History of English Cricket, "he could have burned down the pavilion and been forgiven".
Though they were good friends, having played together at Somerset in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Vivian Richards was a markedly different character: mild mannered and temperate. He was not the heaviest run-scorer of the 1984 "blackwash" series, which saw the West Indies humiliate England 5-0; yet it was the manner in which he played that counted - the swagger to the crease, the fearless cloth-cap as opposed to the (by now commonplace) protective helmet, the nonchalant chewing of gum. These spoke of complete sporting mastery in both body and mind. This was best exemplified by a sublime 117 in front of an ecstatic West Indian crowd at Birmingham, a city where riots fuelled by ethnic tensions had dominated news headlines in the period.
That day, every time the ball was lofted high into the stands, it seemed that a blow was struck not simply against the hapless English bowlers, but against the history of white domination. I watched the test matches of 1984 as a young boy. The images and the feelings they aroused remain fixed in my consciousness, such that I attribute more weight to one summer of cricket in developing an awareness of the conflicts beyond the confines of my narrow life than to anything I had thus far learned in a classroom.
Inside the bubble
If this is more than nostalgia for what memory can deem more "interesting times", it may reflect the fact that great sport, perhaps like great art, often gains its energy from contradictions in society at large. More prosaically, sport is an important lens through which to view the history of any society. Cricket in particular has provided a stage for men of character (they have so far always been men) to act out dramas that resonated with the people of their day. Crucially, the significant characters of cricket's past - those who captured the popular imagination, beyond the confines of the aficionado - were connected to their social environments. They retained something of the "amateur" as opposed to the "professional".
If there are very few genuinely interesting personalities left in today's game, a great part of the reason is the effect of the cult of "professionalism". At the top level, today's cricketers more than ever exist in a bubble of endless tours, fitness regimes and product endorsements, entirely removed from the social lives of the people who watch them play. I suggest that it is this, more than other immediate causes, which accounts for the failure of the 2007 world cup.
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