perhaps the way you make do is through context. you listen to words, or expressions long enough, and you can start placing together when it is appropriate to say the "chickens are coming home to roost" when someone is talking about 9/11.
but there is one expression which despite repeated attempts, no, a vast multitude of attempts, i have failed to understand what exactly it means. i can clearly estimate the sheer importance accorded to it, but what it exactly means remains a mystery to me.
what do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?
these words were written by CLR james. I really haven't read as much of CLR James as much as the tomes i have read about the man. who was he? without delving in to too much detail, James was a preeminent Caribbean socialist scholar who also wrote eloquently about cricket. he managed to write one of the most overused expressions in cricket literature
what do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?
it doesn't count if i use it. the only work of his i - admittedly lazily - came across, was in some reader in some psuedo-leftist lums course. i also read that he wrote something along the following lines (heavily paraphrased reproduction here):
cricket, was always a colonial sport, which much like the process of colonization itself was something that was inevitably imposed. and the native's dilemma is that once he has to accept this reality, or the game, he can never be considered to have excelled in it if he wishes to emulate the colonist, as the colonist would always lay claim to ultimate judgement. the way to express both excellence and resistance towards the colonist was to take their the colonial culture and express it with your own particular stamp of identity upon it - the process allows the native to exert control over the colonists culture, in the process changing it against the will of the latter.
i believe clr james explained that with the help of the following example. the late cut. it was a shot no english player would ever play. it was quite a difficult shot, and much worse, it was an extremely risky one. one could easily lose their wicket playing the shot, and it would often realise no more than a single if third man was in position. and it was a shot batsmen from the west indies would play with panache and repetitive ease. it was in effect their way of expressing their identity through their cricket - so even if they couldn't own the game as their own, they could however make it all their own.
the reason that's possible is that cricket - like art - manages to be representative of the times its conceived within. take for example bodyline. the notorious leg side body threatening bowling was just the most logical way of combatting the juggernaut which was bradman. in an era where humanity would extend its logic and crudely understood sciences to their logical extremities*, the much maligned practices of douglas jardine were exactly what made sense at the time.
*(This was a time of Nazis amongst others employing eugenics, barely a decade away from the use of nuclear weapons against humans, and between wars which introduced trench warfare and carpet bombing of civilian targets. The world was introduced to the wonders of chemical weapons and assembly lines - the brutality of modernity was being wholly unleashed)and the journey of cricket has repeatedly proffered such telling examples of life being replicated on the pitch. take for example the west indian pace battery which would dominate cricket for about 15 years following 1976. that was the year when tony greig had made his infamous comment about intending to make the touring Caribbeans 'grovel' into submission.
the windies prior to this series were a stuttering sort of a team and had been thrashed 5-1 by australia in their previous series. and while the groveling comment made the headlines, the tour changed the way cricket was played.
once again, the bowlers, long the proletariat of cricket, shocked the life out of the fat and lazy batsmen by employing fast, furious, and short pitched bowling. during a time of apartheid and white smugness about their superiority the new style of cricket employed by clive lloyd's men would revolutionize cricket. and in a time of punk and the middle eastern oil crisis, it was the kind of cricket befitting the epoch it was being played in.
the list goes on and on. kerry packer's big money gambit with the world series came at a time when the world was witnessing the old order of welfare and bureaucratic niceties crumble in the face of free markets, cocaine binges, celebrity worship and global television.
which belatedly brings me to the point of this whole ramble. Twenty 20. the version has been around for a while, but it truly became mainstream when the world cup was held last year. coming on the back of the worst global sporting event in history - the 50 over world cup in the West Indies - it really had to do very little to go one step better.
only it became a smashing success.
the tournament saw big upsets, huge crowds, women and children in the stands, cheerleaders on the boundaries, and a glut of exciting finishes. to top it off, the final was probably the most exciting in a cricket world cup since the inaugural edition of the world cup in 1975.
but of course, there was a whole range of purists who derided the mindless hitting, the slogs, the squeezing out of the bowlers, the sheer vulgarity of it all. but those who see it for just that are missing the point.
the anti-t20 bias is almost a filter for identifying stereotypes. it staggers the mind that cricket fans of such intellect can not seem to understand that twenty 20 is not some freak monster designed specifically to rob cricket of whatever hallowed customs it hold true, BUT rather a response to the nature of modern life.
t20 haters come from a time when hard work was synonymous with heavy labor and lifting - welcome to a world of 12 hour work shifts at boring, cookie cutter cubicles
where the idea of excitement will always be closer to a two hour slap dash version of cricket than any other. people these days don't spend hours reading high brow erotic french literature, they download five minute amateur porn off the internet. its just how it is now.
but perhaps what is saddest aspect of this whole affair is that if they (those tradition bound idealists who trash twenty-20) really love the game, how can theya) fail to see the glorious uncertainties of cricket that are thrown up repeatedly in a t20 game?
b) fail to learn that what you love will always survive if you nurture it and liberate it, and will definitely die if you fawn over it and protect it jealously?
----- i had written this piece before the IPL had began. i am finishing it now that its over, and its pretty apparent that cricket would never be the same again. since plenty has been written and said about the IPL, i'll restrict my comments.
but i think the whole event only strengthened my point. cricket, like art, imitates life. and life right now is about gross inequities and small triumphs. about bite sized packets, and fast expirations. fame is not about greatness, but about fifteen minutes. its about in your face brashness, and not about subtlety. its a time when super powers drop cluster bombs on civilians, and yet the most mighty of armies are humbled by home grown guirellas.
the most respected musicians are those who have gold on their teeth and clunky diamonds around their necks. its a world where corporations have more power than entire continents. where a few rich men can rob millions of their homes and get paid grotesque severance packages for the favor. its a world which produces more food than it can consume yet more people die of starvation than ever before. its a world where paris hilton has 16 times the internet attention of the pope.
its a world imploding from the man made catastrophes of climate change and nuclear weapons and overpopulation and bubblegum pop music. nudity no longer shocks, it bores. you can divorce your spouse through sms. episodes are being supplanted by webisodes.
it is not for cricket to serve remedies to this alarming panacea. it is not for cricket to serve as a reminder of how things used to be. it is for cricket to be art, to represent the here and now. it is for cricket to show us who we are, to serve as a mirror to our own selves. to help us understand who we are and how we got here.
so you can go on complaining about the vulgarity, the capitalism, the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. you can balk at the audacity of the strokes, the spectacle of fast bowlers with slower ones, and spinners with faster ones. you can weep at the flash and the colour and the desecration of all you held to be good and great.
wake up and smell the instant coffee.