If Only Monty Were A Religious Experience

Last week, The Guardian ran a feature where they got their arts critics and their sports writers to swap roles and do the others' job for a day. So, to cover the horse racing, they sent a dance critic; to write about the opera, they had a rugby analyst, etc.

To cover the cricket they sent Caroline Sullivan, an American rock critic, who attended the first day of the 2nd Test match between England and New Zealand at Old Trafford and came out with the same puzzled, nonplussed feeling that seems to afflict anyone who watches cricket for the first time:

Today's game is considered special because it's umpire Darrell Hair's first match since he controversially accused a Pakistani player of cheating in 2006. I keep an eye on him to see if he does anything interesting, but no -- he just stands a few feet back from the pitch and looks bored.

Ah, but what's this? He's waving an arm, and both teams troop off the pitch. Apparently, the light has become too dim for play to continue, and we're going to have to wait until things brighten up. An hour later -- it's 5pm, and we've been here six hours -- we're still waiting. But instead of throwing bottles, as the crowd would be doing if this were a gig, spectators are placidly reading magazines and drinking tea. And they say English stoicism no longer exists.

Other than her comparison of a long, tedious day at the cricket to a Tindersticks concert, there wasn't too much of note in her review (nor in any of the other ones, for that matter.) In fact, the most interesting thing about the whole exercise was to see how far some of the writers would push their forced analogies just to make a point. (The prize might go to the theatre critic who managed to compare an overweight, 47-year-old darts player's struggles to the peripateia of the doomed heroes in classical tragedies.)

I guess it should be no big surprise that The Guardian's idea turned out to be better in theory than in practice. The job of putting the action on the field into a different context and of bringing new perspectives to the analysis of the game should really belong to the specialist sports writers themselves -- that is, in essence, what they're being paid for. It takes a spectacularly good writer -- and/or an outstanding intellect -- to come in from a different field and cover a sport in a novel and insightful way.

(Like, for instance, David Foster Wallace's brilliant piece on Roger Federer for the New York Times a couple of years ago. I'd give a nut and a couple of inches to write something half as good as that someday.)

Comments

[Conor Kissane]

Hey, just wanted to thank you for bringing that article by DFW on Federer to my attention. You're right: it is brilliant! i think anything by Wallace is worth reading...Interesting concept by the Guardian. Like you say though, I don't understand the obsession with forced comparisons. They would've been more enlightening without them..

[abhi]

I remember reading that article and also a later update on factual error in the same article.
The point described in the article didn't happen as stated. It was not so romantic .The exchange of strokes as written was tweaked to suit the tone of article.
In any case, it was a minor quibble in this excellent article and apart from that, an interesting question on the freedom a Journalist should have while reporting.

[cricketwithballs.com]

Funny you should be bringing this up now, at the moment Nick Cave is fucking with the press in Melbourne saying he wants a 50 foot high statue of himself in the country town he was born. He is clearly taking the piss and has even gone as far as to say Snoop Dogg has said he would attend the opening. For some reason the Melbourne press are taking it seriously, and yesterday they went to new levels when a finance writer decided to mention how much he hates Nick Cave and how bad the Birthday party were.

[D.S. Henry]

Conor -- You should read DFW's collections of essays and journalistic pieces (A Supposedly Fun Thing and Consider the Lobster), if you haven't already. I prefer them to his fiction.

Abhi -- I noticed the correction too, but I'm pretty sure I've seen Federer play shots like that hundreds of times before. It's odd that Wallace would get such a prominent part of the piece wrong, though.

JRod -- Is Nick Cave still sporting that creepy bandito moustache? It didn't work for Jack White or Bob Dylan; I don't know why he thinks it'll work for him.

[lefty j]

I'd love to see Bill Simmons tackle the cricket. That piece he did on the EPL, and trying to find a team to root (based on what he could find out about the teams) was classic. Imagine he did one of them for the IPL...