Between wickets: Mike Brearley’s latest book traverses 50 years of the sport
Brearley's latest book, On Cricket, traverses 50 years of the sport with palpable intellectual curiosity. It’s the work of a person who delighted in the aesthetics of the sport even when he was competing.
In an international career of five years, Mike Brearley played 39 Tests and 25 One Day Internationals, averaging 23 in the longer format and a little less in the instant variety. These unremarkable figures notwithstanding, Brearley has a permanent place in the game’s history. Arguably among the front-rowers in the pantheon of cricket captains, Brearley captained England in all but eight of the Test matches he played, winning 17 and losing only four, and led them to a second place in the World Cup.
Of course, Brearley was helped by having Bob Willis, Ian Botham and Alan Knott at their prime, but it could also be said that he nurtured their skills along with others such as the young David Gower and Graham Gooch. The former Australian quickie Rodney Hogg once commented that Brearley had a “degree in people”.
Brearley has a degree in philosophy from Cambridge University and had lectured on the subject at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne before becoming an international cricketer. After retiring from the game, he became a professional psychoanalyst and was president of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Truly one of the game’s top minds, his written word is taken seriously. His last book, On Form, was the Times book of the year in 2017.
His latest book, On Cricket, traverses 50 years of the sport with palpable intellectual curiosity. It’s the work of a person who delighted in the aesthetics of the sport even when he was competing. Brearley writes that he couldn’t help but derive pleasure from Greg Chappel’s batting even while he was setting fields to stop the rampaging Australian. At another point, he writes that, “I once stood at extra cover at Cambridge to the great Gary Sobers. Apart from my alarm at the likelihood that he would middle one of his powerful off-drives straight at me, I have a vivid image of that afternoon 50 years ago of the style, power, classicism and the freedom of his arms and hands, and recall it better than I remember most of the pictures I have seen in art galleries”.
In less than 400 pages, Brearley opens up on some of the issues that the game had to confront during his playing days — the ban on South Africa, Kerry Packer, some of the greats with whom he shared the field — Viv Richards, Bishan Singh Bedi, Michael Holding, the rights and wrongs of modern day cricketers — Virat Kohli, for example, and, the general direction in which the game seems to have headed.
The essays are enriched by Brearley’s training as a philosopher and psychoanalyst. His understanding that people are drawn to the game by its aesthetics, or by the mastery of their heroes, is compelling. His words — “We become mini-Federers when we watch Roger play a cross-court forehand, or mini-Warnes when Shane bowls a perfect leg break or mini-Chappels, when we see Greg playing a back-foot stroke of his hips with sumptuous elegance. It’s not that we are under illusion. We know that we are not Federer. But we enter the mind-set. We know they are beyond us, but for a moment we have a sense of its possibility” — would strike a chord with anyone who has played sport, even though that might have been at the most modest level.
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