Cricket in ATD

[Joe Allonby]

Everything that I know about cricket comes from BBC Newshour and Douglas
Adams.

Thanks for all of this valuable info. You might be interested to know that
baseball is "timeless" in that a tie game can continual indefinitely, there
is no clock. Also baseball games are played in three or four game "series".
The World Series is the best of seven games.

Peace,
Joe


On 12/9/06, Nick Halliwell <nick.halliwell at btclick.com> wrote:
>
>  Good evening everyone,
>
>
>
> I've just joined this list today as I'm now around 770 pages into *Against
> The Day*. This is the first of Mr Pynchon's books I've read, I'm ashamed
> to say, but I am absolutely captivated and it won't be the last. More than
> anything I'm astonished that Mr Pynchon, an American author, is clearly so
> well-versed in the game of cricket.
>
>
>
> I should probably start by declaring an interest: as an Englishman the
> game of cricket is an important part of my own cultural make-up. It seems to
> crop up very regularly in *ATD* and I'm curious as to how on earth Mr
> Pynchon comes to know so much about our summer game? I mean, I freely
> confess that I know next to nothing about games such as baseball or
> basketball which enjoy no popularity in this country so it has come as a
> considerable surprise – and a delight - to find numerous seemingly
> knowledgeable references scattered throughout the book.
>
>
>
> In the book, when Mr Lewis Basnight first arrives in England, there are
> numerous amusing references to bombing outrages at cricket grounds such as
> Headingly in Leeds (home to Yorkshire County Cricket Club and famously the
> scene of "Botham's Test <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headingly_test>" in
> 1981), and mention is also made of Fenner's<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenner's>,
> the University of Cambridge's cricket ground. I'm sure there's also a
> reference to Dr W.G. Grace, the great Victorian cricketer appearing to a
> character in a dream. Would I be right in thinking this is fairly esoteric
> to an American readership? I think most Englishmen of my generation will
> have come across the name of the Gloucestershire Doctor at some point during
> their childhoods, even though he'd been dead for half a century by the time
> I was born.
>
>
>
> However on p756 I burst into hysterical laughter on reading of a prophet
> called "The Doosra" and knew I was in the hands of a master. I'm sure this
> will have caused much mirth amongst many readers in other cricket-playing
> parts of the world, especially on the Indian subcontinent. A "*doosra<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doosra>
> *" (from Urdu and apparently literally meaning "the second one") is a kind
> of delivery bowled by an off-spinner<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-spinner>.
> There was a great deal of controversy in the cricket world a few years ago
> because of the *doosra* as bowled by the great Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah
> Muralitharan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muralitharan> – certain persons
> deemed his action when bowling this particular delivery, amongst others, to
> be illegal and he was even accused of committing that most heinous of all
> bowling crimes, "chucking" or "throwing" the ball. This led to some somewhat
> surreal scenes: we saw Mr Muralitharan with his arm strapped up so as to be
> forcibly maintained at the "legal" angle to see whether he could still bowl
> his *doosra*, there was all manner of scientific analysis of his action
> and of the angle at which his bowling arm was bent during delivery. I'm
> delighted to report that these scientific tests concluded that this great
> bowler's action was completely licit and he left the nets without a stain
> upon his character (but not without some on his cricket whites, of course).
>
>
>
> I just wondered whether anything is known about Mr Pynchon's connections
> to the game. I can imagine that it might appeal in many ways, being full of
> contradiction and played as much in the head as on the pitch. Indeed, like
> Mr Pynchon's own writing, in my so far fairly limited experience, it is
> initially bewildering but the more one experiences the easier… actually no,
> it just gets more bewildering yet more fascinating. For instance there are
> FOUR possible results of any game of cricket rather than the usual three
> (your team may win, lose, draw or tie the game, the latter two being quite
> distinct from one another).
>
>
>
> Of course a proper cricket match is also rather longer than most other
> sports. The Test version of the game, the one that counts, is played over
> five days, although at the time when *ATD* is set tests were "timeless"
> (another concept which might appeal), in other words the game was played
> until it reached a conclusion or didn't. There are now ridiculously rushed
> versions of the game such as the one-day game, lasting as little as 8 hours,
> and more recently the 20/20 version which barely gives you time to get
> pleasantly, genteelly drunk and unpack your cucumber sandwiches then it's
> over, in the blinking of an afternoon. But it is the five-day Test match
> which offers the greatest scope and fascination, for all human life is
> there. So, as in human life, there may be long periods during which nothing
> very much appears to be happening but if you look a little more closely… You
> may find that actually it's raining or that bad light has indeed stopped
> play and that the players left the field two hours ago but you've been
> asleep, dreaming of England improbably coming back from 2-0 down to retain
> the Ashes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashes> Down Under.
>
>
>
> So I also rather wonder what readers in non-cricketing countries such as
> the author's own native United States are making of all this.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> Nick (another English "N", I'm afraid, although regretfully not as
> pharmaceutically enhanced as the pair in the novel seem to be at most times)
>
>
>
> P.S. References to Wikipedia pages are given as hyperlinks for your
> convenience.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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