Not Cricket! Is the English game really unfit for purpose?

Cricket is the latest victim of the attempt to separate culture from its roots and natural development.

Racism, sexism and elitism are the major charges ranged against the sport in a new report ‘Holding a Mirror Up to Cricket’ released last month.

In self flagellating righteousness, figures from both sport and media have assented to a picture of abuse and marginalization which has shamed and embarrassed the nation.

To those of us who appreciate cricket and its role in English culture without having profound knowledge of the game the violence of the diagnosis is baffling. The pavilion, match teas, Gentlemen V Players are part of the furniture of a national arcadia, its measured and expansive rites filling eternal summer evenings with gentle drama.

Such Edwardian whimsy from confirmed ingénues such as me may be part of the problem. After all sport is a very deceptive metaphor for innocence and even at the turn of the twentieth century forces were emerging that would tarnish the amateurish principles advertised as its code.

What remains important though is the myth. For both its critics and defenders cricket can seem like the purest sporting representation of a lost country, a place in which the twentieth century couldn’t tread, where tradition still outperforms modernity.

Fittingly cricket has previously been the subject of moralizing raillery - Cromwellian divines censored its frivolous distractions and attempted to suppress it in the seventeenth century. After the restoration of 1660 Charles II made it both fashionable and popular because crucially for his entourage it was a pretext for substantial gambling.

By such patronage, cricket joined other activities like horse riding and prize fighting as pursuits shared by both working class and gentry. Not for the last time bourgeois commentators would look askance at this fundamentally conservative alignment.

Fusing money, glamour and professionalism into an uneasy crucible the era established many of the tensions that have endured to the contemporary situation.

Victorian values slowly tempered this raucous and essentially regency entertainment into a more obviously respectable pastime.

Wisely reformers didn’t seek to hamper the popular excitement of the matches but began to use them to explore developments within the empire. In 1868 a team of Aboriginal Australians toured England allowing crowds a unique glimpse of their fellow subjects from another world.

Though it remained rooted in villages and market towns, cricket had become a preeminent imperial bond contrasting with both football and rugby, which though burgeoning were still unfolding on a parochial scale.

Nurtured by global hegemony and public zeal the game reached its zenith - its stars seemingly expressing a probity that captured the moment’s ethic.

Still surviving was the radical division between amateur and professional which gave rise to the ‘shamateur’ best exemplified by W.G. Grace.

Grace, a burly West Country doctor with prodigious batting power, had become by the 1880s an international celebrity. His status as a non-professional precluded him from any kind of salary linked to his presentations. Grace proceeded to solicit perquisites and donations from organisations that profited from his appearance at their events. It was an early indication of the commercial pressures that would impact the questionable chivalry of the sporting gentleman.

Race was not any obstacle to success. Prince Ranjitsinhji of Nawanagar enthralled spectators with his poise and precision and broke all preconceptions by playing for England in 1912. That he was fully absorbed in the pantheon of the day must show the powerful mobility of the game.

Growing urbanisation was a challenge in the twentieth century as many schools lost greens and county roots often became attenuated. Some Marxists saw the game as a losing class struggle and disavowed cricket. More pertinently the aura of certainty that had enveloped society was irrevocably lost and with it some of the backdrop of pre-war enthusiasm.

Reinvigoration came in large part through England’s most celebrated rivalry: The Ashes.

Instituted in 1882, The Ashes is a recurring Test match with Australia that remains the most celebrated cricketing event for both countries.

Many of the greatest recent players have given their most memorable performances in this series. Through television and radio it is perhaps the best approximation of the fervour and appeal of the Victorian epoch.

This then is the prestige that is camouflaging terrible failures in view of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket.

Classism is a prominent criticism, with the suggestion that provincial accents are derided. This seems contestable given the range of players who have excelled for England; Andrew Flintoff, the 2005 Ashes hero, has a rich Lancashire brogue which is a celebrated part of his charm. He is not atypical.

Race is inevitably highlighted as an endemic fault but leaving aside localised tensions there is much success. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims have all represented England, something which cannot be said of any other major team sport. Excluding a utopian project of mandatory inclusion this represents significant openness.

The findings also conclude that the women’s sport receives less attention and funding than the men’s. Sadly for proponents of radical equity the men’s game is simply more commercially potent. No committee based resolution will redress that.

Quite possibly there are good intentions alongside the rancour. Allowing people of all backgrounds to enjoy and exceed at cricket is highly desirable but it’s hard to see this document advancing any positive amendments.

Since Tony Blair’s premiership there has been fear of the local and organic. Artificial standards deriving from dubious academic texts have replaced the incremental and evolutionary as our lodestars for change.

Cricket is the latest victim of the attempt to separate culture from its roots and natural development.

Never perfect, the game has been receptive to some of the best energies of its time over successive centuries in large part because it can encompass both the universal and the idiosyncratic.

Instead of mourning privilege we should explore the reasons why a sport can elicit the same passion on the playing fields of Eton as the back streets of Delhi and celebrate that variety.

I for one hope there is enough sunlight left for one more over.