You don’t often hear booing in a cricket ground. But a wall of jeers greeted the Australian pantomime villain David Warner as he walked out to the crease in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston on Thursday. The reception for the opening batsman was even louder as he walked back to the pavilion a few short minutes later, the first of England bowler Stuart Broad’s five wickets.
Warner, Aussie sporting belligerence personified, was never the most popular cricketer among rival nations’ supporters but, having masterminded last year’s “sandpapergate” ball-tampering scandal that saw him and teammates Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith banned from the game in disgrace for 12 months, his reputation is lower than ever.
England’s Barmy Army in the banked seats in the Hollies Stand in Birmingham had composed a few songs in Warner’s honour, although he was hardly batting long enough for them to get to the end of this one, sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall:
He still needs some education,
He still needs some self-control,
No gold sandpaper in his pocket Warner, leave those balls alone
Hey! Warner! leave those balls alone
All in all he’s just another cheat like them all… ”
The fact is, though, however much damage Warner and his partners in crime did to Australian sportsmanship and the image of the international game, cricket supporters can’t stay outraged all day. The afternoon is long, the contest routinely enthralling and there is just too much to enjoy.
They hardly raised a murmur against Bancroft, the young man who had actually administered the sandpaper, and Smith, the former Australian captain, then provided the 25,000 in the ground with an object lesson in one of the great spectator-sport dilemmas: how should you respond to a display of greatness from a supposedly hated member of the opposition?
The stages of Smith’s 144 runs were like a fast-forward primer in theories of the tribal language of crowds. Smith’s first 50 runs were greeted with solid animosity from the home crowd; his vivid century was first booed and then almost immediately applauded, often by the same people. Detractors had wavered and then become converts. By the time the Australian’s innings closed, as the evening sun was on the ground, most of the English crowd were quite happy to give him the rich ovation his brilliance and fortitude deserved.
The drama seemed to offer several little parables. One was that humour is always a more telling weapon than vitriol. (When Smith was on the verge of his 100, the resident trumpet player in the England crowd broke into Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina, a reference to the player’s tearful admission of sandpaper guilt.) Another was the fact that, contrary to prevalent popular belief in this country, proper intensity, either sporting or political, does not have to find its expression in aggression.
The Barmy Army, England’s itinerant cricket ultras (the phrase itself is an oxymoron), never for a moment forget that they are watching a game; they may give the opposition plenty of stick but they don’t see them as a faceless enemy.
The Hollies has a reputation as one of the most voluble stands in the world, particularly as the shadows lengthen and the beer flows, but no rival supporter would ever feel physically intimidated in that company. In fact, many Australian fans in their canary yellow shirts had made the trip especially to be among the England supporters and give a bit back. “What attracted me to it,” one explained, “was that when the English give us shit, they do it in a melodious way, they have great voices, and I wanted to be part of that.”
That spirit off the field in the world’s most venerable sporting rivalry is, despite all the changes to the game and the money now involved in it, still mostly matched by the spirit on it. David Gower, a peerless stylist both as batsman and commentator, and now in his final series for Sky, described Smith’s innings well. “Ah, the Ashes, the Ashes: there is such a history. Give nothing on the field, but make mates off the field,” he said.
He went on to describe how, at Lord’s or Sydney, the England and Australian players had always found time for a beer and a chat in the winners’ dressing room after a match, notwithstanding the fact that Dennis Lillee and Glenn McGrath and the rest had been essaying decapitation of their opponents for most of the day.
At a time when we are increasingly invited to equate the idea of tribal loyalty or patriotism with the kind of segregated chauvinism that still characterises football grounds on match day, it is worth remembering that other forms of collective spirit are still available. This truncated Ashes summer – five Test matches in six weeks – will likely offer plenty of evidence to support the idea that despite wearing different colours and giving no quarter, the teams have much more in common than that which divides them (and that, contrary to the prime minister’s belief, there are no do-or-die moments when you are among friends).
One of the finest cricketing examples of that principle involves Eric Hollies, after whom the Edgbaston stand is named. The former England spinner’s most indelible deed in the game was to bowl out Sir Donald Bradman in his final Test match innings for nought. Bradman, who only required four runs that day in 1948 to finish his career with an unprecedented average of 100, was applauded on to the field and given a rousing three cheers by the entire England team. The England captain, Norman Yardley, tossed the ball to Hollies, with the words: “That is all we give him – now bowl him out.” Hollies obliged, dispatching the Australian hero to an eternal average of 99.94 and another standing ovation.
• Tim Adams is an Observer writer
