STRINGHAM, when at school in Anthony Powell’s great work, A Dance to the Music of Time, sits down on the stairs and simply refuses to move, on the grounds that so many unpleasant things had happened to him that day that it was clearly impossible to continue to struggle against fate. I felt much the same myself, yesterday, and so did the England cricket team.
We all get days when every setback is the inevitable consequence of the previous setback, and the inevitable precursor to the next.
England yesterday reminded me of the saddest, bravest, most pathetic sight in sport: that of the plucky British female figure skater who finishes a promising 23rd. The BBC kindly shows us her routine: a fall on the first big triple, and up she scrambles in her no-longer-pristine blue sequins, catches up with the tacky music with ice in her knickers and gets to the next big jump and — but no, look away, she will surely fall again — continues pluckily, doggedly, dreadfully to the very end: where she will wave and curtsey and smile before at last escaping the cameras and crying her eyes out.
England looked like that skater for much of yesterday as the previous day’s batting collapse was followed by the inevitable bowling collapse. It was just a day in which nothing seemed to go right: when you miss the axel, you know you’re going to miss the salchow. England bowled with ice in their knickers and the Pakistan batsmen scored the perfect sixes. And all the England team could do, locked in the demands of sport, was to keep buggering on.
All professional athletes will talk endlessly about the way to deal with such days: staying positive, keeping focused, getting your body language right. And you wonder: do they really think that? Or do they dive in vain at the latest terrific shot off the latest rank bad ball and find a treacherous voice whispering in their ears: this is a bloody silly way to make a living. And then they put Paul Collingwood on to bowl. Before long it will be Kevin Pietersen: then we’re really in trouble.
Advertisement
It was a day of shadows: bad light, clouds scudding over the gas holders, intermittent displays of synchronised umbrella-waving, a strange cloud of bad vibes preventing all mobile phones from functioning (bloody hilarious for journalists, that), all England players (especially Stephen Harmison) walking around under a personal black cloud like Charlie Brown, and the biggest shadow of all cast by a date.
Not the fruit, but the kind of date you find in a calendar. To be precise, November 23. That, as every England player out there flailing about against a Pakistan side that was finding its sea legs rather too late in the voyage, is the day the first Test match against Australia starts in Brisbane. England are losing against Pakistan today because they are too busy thinking about winning against Australia tomorrow.
Who can blame them? They have won the present series, so what they are playing for is not the present but the future: to set up marker performances, to ensure their participation in the Ashes when it kicks off. It’s a bit like Louise’s lover in the Bob Dylan song: so entwined with Louise, but his mind all filled with visions of Johanna. Visions of Warnie, visions of Ponting, Gilchrist, McGrath.
Hard to do justice to Louise when you’ve got Johanna on your mind.
Perhaps it was a tactical error to win the previous Test, perhaps it would have been better to have something to prove as a team rather than as individuals. If all the injured England players are fit again, how many of today’s team will feel certain of their places in Brisbane? Yesterday’s proceedings had the feeling of the last few left at a party, standing about in the kitchen and sharing the remains of the Watneys Party Seven.
Advertisement
It’s been a very difficult time. The English weather has shifted gears on them, the sunbaked pitches have changed character, the Pakistan bowlers exploited conditions with more pep than they have shown all summer and then the Pakistan batters played superbly against an out-of-sorts four-man attack. The conditions and the opposition are unrecognisable.
So the England players, so eager to leave for Australia with a final, fabulous Test-match performance, have found themselves going through the sort of day that shakes your confidence in yourself and in all those around you. Setback followed setback as night does day.
Alas, a professional athlete doesn’t have the option of sitting on the stairs until fate changes station. You have to carry on skating, despite the snowscape of your bum. You must look for things to console you. And there were some marvellous tarts for tea. I was reminded of Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, who claimed to have bought a cake mix “suitable for one large flan or 12 little tarts. So I thought, well, I have the England women’s cricket team coming for tea . . .”