Down With... Cricket!

Although very few historians know this about me, I spent the first twelve years of my life in a different country. 

True, I then spent the next four decades living in Great Britain, but there are still moments when life in the UK feels... odd. 

My childhood was spent in a mysterious and magical Kingdom known as Atlanta, which Billy Wilder once described as "Siberia, with mint julips."

In fairness, I don't believe I ever personally witnessed a julip, but there was nevertheless a certain degree of culture shock involved when I transitioned to British.

There were of course some obvious cultural differences, like the traffic on the wrong side of the road (you generally figure that one out pretty quickly) or the lack of school shootings, but I don't think I will ever get used to certain other aspects of British life; like the extreme difference between Summer and Winter. What kind of a crazy country is it where it gets dark at 2.30 in the afternoon in some months, while the sun is still up at 10.30 at night in others? Who designed this??

And then, of course, there's Cricket.

When I first arrived in the UK, a number of people attempted to explain Cricket to me, and (in an attempt to foster transatlantic goodwill during a time of Global Crisis) I contrived to appear interested. But the truth was it took me decades of identifying as British before I finally understood the fundamental principals of Cricket.

I know I am breaking my Loyalty Oath by committing this to print, but Cricket was originally created by scientists at Bletchley Park and deployed as a particularly aggressive form of psychological propaganda. The great secret (as if this needed to be stated out loud) is that Cricket is quite obviously preposterous. All that double-talk about overs and ducks and hat-tricks; dorothies and dilscoops has been carefully formulated to make other cultures feel insecure and inferior. Add to this the pretense that this absurd and implausible affair can supposedly last for days at a time, and it's quite frankly astonishing that anyone was ever actually taken in by such a ridiculous fiction.

A lightly fictionalised account of the origins of Cricket is featured in a 1968 episode of Star Trek.

Cricket is the subject of our next film, but this is not a "sports" movie, I promise. At no point in this film is anyone urged to "win one for the Gipper" and no cornfields are paved over to build a field for departed ball players. That would be silly.

The Final Test was directed by Anthony Asquith from a screenplay by Terence Rattigan and, to be fair, it does feature cameos from a parade of Cricketing royalty: Denis Compton; Len Hutton; Godfrey Evans; Cyril Washbrook... even the legendary John Arlott.

(Do I sound like I know who any of these people are? You have to practise this sort of thing when you apply for British Citizenship.)

The film also features some relative unknowns (like Robert Morley and Valentine Dyall) and it serves as a reminder that there was a time in British cultural history when a police telephone box was just a police telephone box.

As you would expect from a Terence Rattigan script, this film is about far more than just Cricket. It manages to address British Identity, Poetry and sexuality; and it is also a lot of fun. 

After six months of Cancel Culture, I thought we deserve some fun for a while!

We will be screening The Final Test at 7.30pm on Thursday, the 15th of June, at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.