The embattled batsman: Cricket’s tragic design

All games are conflicts and confrontations between two persons or teams, which are equally poised and have equal numbers. The conflicts are moderated and sublimated into a game played in time and space. In most games, two players or teams play against each other. But in cricket a single player fights an entire team at any given moment of time. Baseball also has the same design, but the game is considered by many as an offshoot of cricket.

In all other games, there are equal numbers of players active in the play at every moment. They play out their allotted time, except in situations when a player has to go out of the game because of injury or for disciplinary reasons. The contending teams have 11 players each, but at a given moment of play, a single player has to fight against the might of all members of the rival team. Cricket is also the only game in which the rival teams do different actions at a given time. While the batsman bats, the rival team bowls or fields. Unlike in other games, there is no fixed and assured tenure of play for the batsman. The batsman may stay on the crease for a few seconds or can, in theory, stay there for hours or days.

The entire rival team surrounds and besieges the batsman, attacks him and tries to get him out and end his tenure at the crease. The batsman has to heroically fight the rival team single-handedly. This is like a tragic hero fighting the world and going down. The hero, however mighty and skilled he may be, would be overwhelmed, and some flaw in his skill set, which could be considered his character, would turn out to be his undoing. However good a batsman is, he is bound to have a weakness or play a bad shot sooner or later and will get out. 

This makes the structure of cricket very similar to the structure of the Elizabethan tragedy, which also emerged in England at the time when cricket was taking shape. Cricket originated in England and is said to have been played in a primitive form before the Elizabethan period, which is the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The period covers the second part of the 16th century and the early part of the 17th century, when playwrights such as Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe lived and wrote their plays. English literature, especially drama in the form of tragedy, flourished during this period. Shakespeare’s great tragedies and Marlowe’s Dr Faustus were written during this time. The common feature of these plays, and what distinguished them from classical tragedies and other works, was the domination of a hero of great stature who is brought down in life by a flaw in his character. While in classical tragedy, particularly in its Greek version, the hero is struck down by Fate, in Elizabethan tragedy he is brought down by the world, which hits him at a weak point. King Lear, Macbeth and Dr Faustus fell because of a flaw in their character, fighting the world and its circumstances. This is very much like a batsman exiting his game, which is his life. The batsman who gets out cannot return to the game in the same innings, and his exit means his death. He is symbolically killed by the rival team, as the tragic hero is killed or forced to take his own life on the stage. There is an element of ritual killing in this.

The Elizabethan period was a time of major changes in England, when life and thinking underwent an upheaval. The English Reformation had just happened, with King Henry VIII rebelling against the Pope and separating the Church from the Catholic Church, declaring himself to be the head of the Church of England. The Reformation, as it did in other parts of Europe, changed the worldview of the people of England. The Reformation itself was a result of the Renaissance, which had swept Europe, making revolutionary changes in people’s worldview, impacting the relation of the individual to the world. One important change was the emergence of individualism, which accepted the identity and importance of the individual as an entity that stood out from society, distinct from the individual who was a part of society in the earlier worldview. The idea of the individual, who cannot be considered as just a cog in the society’s wheel, has persisted in Europe since then.

It has been claimed that the Renaissance, which created this sense of individualism, led to the rise of many movements in all areas of life. It led to the emergence of democracy in politics, capitalism in economics, Reformation in religion and romanticism in literature. Elizabethan drama has been seen as a part of the process. The argument of this article is that it led to the emergence of cricket in sports. That is why both cricket and Elizabethan drama have the same structure of an individual battling the world. That was the result of the new individualism asserting itself as a counter against society. This helps to see cricket in a new light.

The earliest reference to cricket in history was in 1611 when two persons were fined in Sussex for not attending church on a Sunday because they were playing cricket. There were other references also around that time. This was also the high time of Elizabethan drama. Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616. Marlowe lived from 1564 to 1593. The Elizabethan tragedy which they gave shape to and the game of cricket that rose then had the same stage of human life, shaped by forces of the Renaissance that blew from the continent.

Cricket has changed much since then in format, rules and every other aspect. But its essential nature remains the same to this day. That nature is about the life of a single player fighting against a whole team and is often felled by his own weakness, like the characters who performed on the great Elizabethan tragic stage, aspiring, defying, fighting and going down.

Modern football also originated in England around the same time or immediately after that. The structure of football is similar to the structure of cricket. Like cricket, the traditional football format is 11 versus 11, but unlike in cricket, the 11 members of a football team actually play against each other, and the goalkeeper, like a batsman protecting his stumps, stands between the rival team and the goal. The batsman of cricket becomes the goalkeeper in football. The batsman’s functions are split between the goalkeeper and the team in football. A team strives to breach the defences of the rival batsman in cricket. Similarly in football, the aim is to put the ball past the opposing goalkeeper. The aim is the same: violation of the stumps or the goalpost.

In the beginning the stumps in cricket were like the present-day goalpost with two posts and a bar, and the third stump was added only later on. Ultimately it is the solitary goalkeeper who is the last line of defence in football, and it is similar to the situation in cricket. The individuals who fought the society separately and serially in cricket are simultaneously in play in football, leaving the ultimate defence and responsibility to the goalkeeper. The goalkeeper does not have to exit, and failure is not fatal as in cricket. That is a benign way of treating the theme of the individual versus the society. That makes football a different expression of the idea of the individual against the society. It is cricket without the blood of the batsman.

Hockey evolved in England much later, but it followed the football model with much the same roles for the goalkeeper and the players. That could also be seen as another version of cricket.

Games are dreams dreamt by societies to deal with situations and new ideas. The dreaming takes many forms, such as games and social institutions and customs. They are also cultural expressions of the times when they originated. Elizabethan tragedy was the literary expression of an idea the age was grappling with, and cricket was its expression in sports. Football and hockey were variations of the theme, and similar scenarios could be seen in these games as life and times found their expression in sport. In cricket the situation of the individual pitted against society is sought to be addressed very starkly, involving even the killing of the individual. In football and hockey, a more moderate resolution is attempted without killing the individual. Different forms of resolution are attempted in the three different games, but the issue that is sought to be resolved is the same. The spirit of the age shaped itself first as drama on the stage, then as the game of cricket on the playground, live and more real than the drama. It then expressed itself as two other games, football and hockey, different in details but essentially enacting the same human theme.

The ritual killing of the batsman in cricket, the hybrid nature of the game, which is both an individual game and a team game, the existence of two time schemes in it, the serial nature of the game as against simultaneous play in other games, the evolution of rules and formats, the idea of cricket as a gentlemen’s game and the change in the roles of players in football which probably it more popular need to be discussed separately. 

(The writer is a former associate editor and editorial advisor of Deccan Herald)