Scarborough Fair – A Return to Reality

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Remember me to one who lives there,
For she once was a true love of mine”

To the cricket fan - and a Yorkshire one at that - Scarborough is not the setting of a Simon and Garfunkel song, or indeed a fading seaside resort, it is one of the remaining vespers of county cricket long forgotten. Yorkshire’s home is Headingly in Leeds, but since 1876 the North Marine Road Ground, a six-hit from the North Sea, has played host to a handful of Yorkshire matches each season. It has seen many great feats: a Bradman hundred, two one-day internationals, and Yorkshires first Championship victory for 33 years in 2001. In early September 2008 I visited Scarborough myself to see Yorkshire play Somerset in what was to be Darren Gough’s final game for his county.

I was in search of the atmosphere and the intricate pleasures of the game forgotten in a summer spent watching Sky Sports. I wanted to be as far away as possible from Premier Leagues and Stanford millions. I wanted to experience cricket as I had been reading about in the time-weathered articles penned by Cardus, Arlott, Kilburn and others.

Kilburn once wrote an entire article solely about Walter Hammonds walk to the wicket, saying of it “in no possible way could Royal progress have been more regal”. Viewing cricket on television obscures this sight as the break in play a wicket provides is deemed an appropriate time to push an advert down the viewer’s throats. Sir Viv Richards walk to the crease was one of the games great sights; masculine posturing to the extreme – and will be commented on until time immemorial. Modern television coverage would miss it.

Navigating the metal turnstiles as I enter the ground (no doubt the same ones my grandfather wandered through in the fifties) a smattering of spectators greet a four with gentle applause. I feel immediately comforted and at ease.

The Twenty20 game is great; it is fun, fast and entertaining, and exactly the injection of adrenaline the game needs to sustain itself. But, and this is crucial, it must not become the be-all of English cricket. There is a cricket far beyond the television: a game played in schools, clubs and back gardens across the country. Here is to be found the last vestiges of the cricket played for the last one hundred and fifty years - here retained and incubated in the safe confines of an East Yorkshire seaside town.

I take a seat on a wooden bench on the edge of the playing area. Former England captain Michael Vaughan stands in front of me - arms tea-cupped waiting for Tim Bresnan to bowl. This is a far cry from his televised departure from the England captaincy. These are not mediated images of him crying or snippets of interviews in which he bares his soul. There are no cameras to be seen; nobody is watching him but me.

In a break between overs he bends down towards a man sat a few paces to my right. He has a quiet word and emerges with a strawberry. Sky television may have multiple camera angles, ten commentators and High Definition television – but it leaves the viewer detached from the humanity which makes the game so compelling. Later, as Ian Blackwell sweeps a ball for four an audible “oh yer bastard” rings out as the ball beats him to the boundary.

On television you cannot appreciate a young Yorkshire bowler in Tim Bresnan running in for a crucial spell, flanked by over 400 Test Wickets worth of experience in Hoggard and Gough at mid-off and mid-on respectively. Watching them clapping encouragement and shouting sage advice: “pitch er up Brezza” was as intriguing as the game itself. Such intricacies are lost in the standard televised view of the bowler and batsman.

In India television and money hold such a grip over the game that reality is lost altogether. After every over a television advert is sent into the living rooms of millions. Late this winter Monty Panesar may have given Tendulkar hell for six balls - making him play and miss out of the rough. The very next ball (or so it will seem) the same batsman seen struggling will be watched driving a bowler for an immaculate four in a Pepsi or Coke commercial. The tension dissipates and the collective intake of breath that took 4 or 5 over’s to develop is let out.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued in the 1960s: “the medium is the message” – the symbiotic relationship between art and technology means the medium through which art is consumed influences its meaning. The relationship between sport and technology is no different. Cricket through television has changed indelibly to become evermore influenced by the medium through which it is consumed. Packer, Sky and Stanford are evidence enough.

“Remember me to one who lives there” sang Simon and Garfunkel. Television has changed the game so much for the better that it would be a tragedy if it destroyed what makes the game so compelling: a young bowler being helped by his elders, a former captain at ease with himself and the collective tension created by a session of rugged ebb and flow. The spectators and the game are one; they interrelate and play off each other. The cricket is not remote in the middle, viewed through the kaleidoscope of images vetted by editors and cameramen.

Hopefully the county championship, a thrilling one this year as last, will survive, as will the intimate out-grounds like Scarborough. If they do not then what makes cricket such a wonderfully absorbing game may be forgotten and reality may be lost to the game forever.