“The English are not a very spiritual people,” said George Bernard Shaw, “so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.” Shaw had Test cricket, rather than modern short-form versions of the game, in mind when he said this. Sport as a religious rite. “Cricket is a process, not a sport; seepage rather than drama; a summer’s dawdle akin to a picnic or garden party,” wrote the English novelist Paul West, attempting to explain cricket to Americans. He was not being entirely fair: Test cricket can contain high drama, its intensity often magnified by the torpor which precedes it. But he had a point: lunch and tea are key rituals, and a sport that is suspended when light drizzle falls will always have its detractors. Groucho Marx was one. After spending a day at Lord’s with two Observer journalists in 1954, the US humorist declared cricket “a wonderful cure for insomnia”.
England and India are at present engaged in an absorbing five-match Test series. England won the first Test with a remarkable performance by young left-arm spinner Tom Hartley, who took nine wickets on his debut. England’s trio of youthful spinners also did well in the second Test, which finished earlier today, but a sublime double-century by India’s new batting sensation, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and irresistible bowling by Jasprit Bumrah ensured that the home side levelled the series.
