Keiran King: The dying art of watching cricket

Keiran King, Gleaner Columnist

The world's No. 1 sport takes centre stage next week in Brazil,
but No. 2 only relinquished it last week in Bangalore. The Indian Premier League
ended on Sunday, and the maharajah of cricket tournaments again brought the
largest stars, crowds, brands and pay cheques in the game.  A host of imitators have sprouted across the
former British Empire, including our Caribbean Premier League, hoping to
capitalise on the novelty appeal of three-hour fixtures. Today’s top talent,
like Chris Gayle, criss-cross the globe from one domestic T20 league to the
next, racking up salaries inconceivable to the stars of even a decade ago, like
Brian Lara. To the casual observer, the game of cricket is doing very, very
well, thanks for asking.

Lost somewhere at the back of this noisy, glitzy, profitable
parade is the elderly grandfather of the game — Test cricket. The five-day
original is hopelessly anachronistic in an age of television, Twitter and
twenty-over matches.

On international tours, two or three Tests are thrown in
seemingly out of habit or obligation, with audience and players slogging
through it like vegetables at dinner, anxious for ODI meat and T20 dessert. But
this is no elegy for white flannel. Test cricket’s obituary has been in
constant rewrite ever since its birth in Australia in the 1880s. In truth,
the money now flooding the pitch is as much tonic as toxin for the long-form
game, subsidising empty stadiums and leisurely play.

The real lament is for what happens beyond the boundary rope,
in the stands. The art of watching cricket is dying. That might sound silly,
with record turnouts everywhere from Sabina Park, Kingston, to Sahara Park,
Cape Town, and a satellite audience that keeps growing. But the Faustian
bonanza of T20 attendance has been a trade of quality for quantity, and in the
exchange much has been lost.

For openers, the average patron at a Twenty20 match doesn’t
have a clue what’s going on. Every sport has its quirks and corners known only
to the initiated, like the offside rule in football or club selection in
golf.  But cricket is nigh impenetrable to
an amateur, stuffed to high heaven with English jargon. A leg-spin specialist
can come around the wicket from the north end and bowl a short delivery on the
offside, which the one-down batsman late-cuts between second slip and gully,
beating third man for four, marked down as five runs because it was a no-ball.
That’s a routine moment, but one lost on most who find themselves at the
stadium nowadays.

A crash course in positions and principles is just the
beginning, however. Twenty20 feels like a carnival — not the opulent samba of
Brazil or iridescent soca of Trinidad but the generic, crassly manufactured
Jamaica Carnival. The gameplay amounts to the cricketing equivalent of a home run derby, so to juice the excitement,
organisers provide a smorgasbord of cheerleaders, giveaways, pyrotechnics and
noisy distractions from the actual match. The effect, from the bleachers, is a
lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This is anathema to true cricket-watching, whose rhythm is
minutes and perhaps hours of restless quiet, sharply punctuated by the crack of
the bat, the cartwheel of the stump, the roar of the crowd. The echo of these
sounds live inside you forever — any diehard fan has only to close her eyes and
hear them, and suddenly a whole innings rushes back in glorious
synesthesia. 

Those who attend Test cricket are a dysfunctional family,
joined in the certain knowledge that we have to live with each other for the
better part of five days. The morning drunk, issuing mellifluous, superfluous
coaching advice as he traverses the walkways, is treated with a respect he
finds nowhere else in life. The legendary ex-player finds himself subject to
diatribes and open disregard for his achievements. This egalitarianism is
promoted by the architecture — rows and rows of identical seats — a levelling
of the playing field outside the playing field. But it takes time to seep into
your bones.

Cricket has never been about cricket. To watch the game was to
subsume oneself in the fabric of West Indian life — to see complete strangers
break bread, best friends break apart, and grown men break down. It was about
waiting and waiting and waiting for what you want, and sometimes not getting
it. The modern game, all wham-bam-Spidercam, is about cheap instant
gratification. That’s why Test matches may survive yet. Sooner or later,
everyone wants their life — and their cricket — to mean something.

Keiran King is a writer and producer. His column appears every
Wednesday.  Find him on Twitter
@keiranwking. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and yell@keiranking.com