On C L R James, Art, and a Useful 56.

"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?"

I’m reading C L R James’s Beyond A Boundary. It’s magic. If you have even the most fleeting of interests in cricket or, for that matter, world history, you should tuck into James. Without exception, every single one of the chapters I’ve read so far (and I’m nearly done!) has something illuminating to say about both the game of cricket and the history of mankind. James’ chapters on W.G. Grace – “he brought and made a secure place for pre-industrial England in the iron and steel of the Victorian Age” – are perhaps the pages in which he most cleverly intertwines the inseparable (he believes) narratives of cricket and English social history. Before I started reading I honestly could make neither head nor tail of James’ famous research question – “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” – but, by a process of submersion more than anything else, I’m beginning to understand. Understand it maybe, but I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to read it if you want to glean more.

In one of James’ chapters – “What is art?” – he makes perhaps his boldest claim. “Cricket,” he declares, “is an art. Not a bastard or a poor relation, but a full member of the community.” Now, of course, to compare sport to art is a tired cliché. James’ argument is enthralling, though. The “manifold motions” of great players, he writes, are of such beauty that “there are few picture galleries in the world which effectively reproduce a fraction of them.” Unlike a picture in a gallery however, batting strokes and bowling actions and leaping catches exist only fleetingly as an image and thereafter “become a permanent possession of the spectator which he can renew at will.”*

Whilst reading James’ prose there was but one player in my mind. It was not Lara, Ponting, or Tendular. Nor was it Wasim Akram, Shane Warne, or Andrew Flintoff. Working my way through James’ arguments, I realised that the only player I have ever watched who turns ‘cricket the sport’ into ‘cricket the art’ is the great Pakistani batsman, Mohammad Yousuf.

Having lost the national captaincy in acrimonious circumstances in Australia this winter, temporarily retired from international cricket, and thus missing at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, Yousuf returned to play England at the Oval last week. His first innings 56 was a piece of art in James’ most trumped-up sense. Yousuf did not dominate the bowling – indeed it took him fifteen balls to get off the mark and both James Anderson and Steven Finn had him playing and missing early. He could have been run out twice. Azhar Ali, the young pretender at the other end, looked in far better knick. Yet, there is something different about Yousuf that no-one seems to be able to put their finger on. Simon Hughes, in a video-analysis segment on Channel 5, illustrated how the wily veteran stays still in his stance, moves his feet well, and plays the ball as late as possible. But that’s not it. In a recent article, Hughes credits Yousuf’s "unbreakable" concentration. That’s not it either. The problem is perhaps that Simon Hughes is a sport critic whilst C L R James was an art critic. The way Yousuf plays and the way he holds himself at the crease marks him out as something more than a sportsman. He is so easy, so natural and effortless. For unquantifiable intangible reasons, it doesn’t matter whether he’s easing his way to a double-century – as he did at Lord’s in 2006 – or grinding out a gutsy half-century having not played for six months, when Yousuf walks out to bat he looks like an artist. I’ve never watched another cricketer – nay, another sportsman – for whom that can be said.

On Thursday Yousuf will be returning to the scene of his magnificent double-century in 2006. I’ll be making every effort to watch him bat; to watch the crossing of the thin line between sport and visual art.

* James, who also made the observation that the strokes of great batsmen “are not caught and permanently fixed for us to make repeated visits to them”, failed to foresee youtube.