Headingley Reflections – Beyond Boundaries
I’ll talk about three areas here, all inter-related.
Watching the Western Stand, it struck me that the Hogarthian vision of The Times’ Thunderer is scarcely more than jolly japes in prep school dorms. Midnight feasts, ragging of other houses and schools, hiding Screwbottom Jnr’s spectacles, building a periscope from pop bottles to peer up Matron’s drawers – is there much difference between that and plastic beer glass snakes? Except the upper classes perhaps got away with more, a lot more, read any Jeeves story by P G Wodehouse and you’ll find Bingo Little and his chums, Gussie Finknottle etc, of the Drones Club – says it all – regularly purloin copper’s helmets, JP’s hats and Wooster’s sang-froid. Prep school and Western Stand share this in common – confinement.
Ten years ago at the England South Africa Headingley Test at the end of the game you could walk onto the pitch, and we did, to make a crowd for the tv coverage as well as taking a dekko at the wicket. You wandered in, weren’t body-searched – one of the blokes remembered me from Edgbaston – could bring in any sort of booze, and more or less do as you pleased. Today you are stewarded, shepherded from one space to another, in very exact, predetermined and restricted fashion. Not much difference to how herds come and go to a modern, safe, efficient and hygenic livestock market. Maybe we have to. It’s a global society with global threats – foot and mouth, terrorism. Maybe we’ve become accustomed, feel safer being searched than not. One thing for sure is confinement leads to rebellion, about as axiomatically as rebellion leads to confinement. Given the length of incarceration, the potential amount of intoxication and tribal tradition, the atmosphere’s good.
It’s not just a matter of control. http://www.theashesfestivalinleeds.com offered more to spectators and the city alike. Yorkshire County Cricket Club have realised that their audience isn’t just the spectators but the city and all of Yorkshire. I reckon Cardiff and Leeds have been best at engaging with the wider world with Leeds just shading it. There’s the real shame that the test was over almost before it began, though the chasm in the revenue stream, if streams can have chasms, must hurt mightily. It was worth coming to Leeds just for the city’s Ashes Festival.
It’s about history too. Tomorrow Yorkshire play Lancashire in the perennial Roses game. http://www.yorkshireccc.com/archive/yorkshire_v_lancashire_lvcc_2009/index.html The original Tudor War of the Roses was by modern standards a relatively tame affair. The Battle of Bosworth Field lasted two hours – more or less England’s first innings – and ploughmen in adjoining fields didn’t even bother to stop and watch or run away. Since the start of this Ashes Series more British servicemen have died in Afghanistan than the ECB has contracted players; more have died than from Swine flu. Is it a necessary war, a just war? You have to decide.
Deeds empty games, wars empty lives. Both confine their players to battle… http://www.yorkshireccc.com/archive/yorkshire_v_lancashire_lvcc_2009/index.html is also unveiling a blue plaque at Burley for Hedley Verity. He gave his life for his country in Sicily 1943, and the word ‘Engerland’ almost certainly never passed his lips. War of the Roses, WWII are history. All wars are once over, but beforehand decisions need to be made, not merely by government, not by the military from GOC to the spottiest squadie, but by you, for those spotty squadies are dying for you and your country, Engerland. Hogarth didn’t do war. Plastic beer glass snakes or rocket propelled grenades? You have a choice.
To help make up your mind:-
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