Barbra Streisand, in a voice absolutely oozing nostalgia and poignancy, sang of how it used to be.
"Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Alan Bergman and his wife Marilyn wrote the lyrics and, among their dozens of hits, The Way We Were by itself justifies their place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The song won the Academy Award for Best Song in 1974 and the Grammy for Song of The Year in 1975, so I’m guessing anyone of a certain age can remember it.
What a profound question the lyrics pose — "was it all so simple then?"
Naturally, that question leads to watching cricket and, indeed, it all seemed so simple in the old days.
In the very old days, you watched by going to the game. If you couldn’t get to the ground, you eagerly awaited the multi-column newspaper coverage the next day.
So was born the literature of cricket. Leading the charge was Neville Cardus and, even though modern revisionists can show that he was not beyond dashing off a report of a day’s play at which he was not even present, his best bits are cherished.
Of course, he was an over-the-top romantic who would find little favour among today’s fans, but who could argue with his "we remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination".
Then came the wireless and the pundits who claimed cricket commentary on the radio would never work. They even printed maps of fielding placements to help the bewildered listeners.
But it worked, never better than when voices made for radio provided a dreamy backdrop to lazy summer days. John Arlott in England; Alan McGilvray in Australia; and Iain Gallaway in New Zealand. Any one of those men could get full houses by simply reading the telephone directory.
Then came television and the only good to come from that weird world is live coverage of cricket and rugby. It practically killed off cricket writing but, oddly, for a while it promoted radio commentaries as viewers, unhappy with what they were getting from the television commentators, muted their television sets and matched what they were watching by turning on the radio commentary.
Purists simply muted. Who, after all, needs someone else rabbiting on about something you can actually see yourself?
With television came technology which questions the need for any umpires at all. These days the Cardus comment on umpires rings less true: "The umpire is like the geyser in the bathroom; we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order."
In more recent times, the sheer cleverness of the technicalities is bewildering.
Once upon a time, everyone watched the same game on the same channel at the same time. Afterwards, bumping into a friend on the street, you could safely ask, "what did you think of Martin Crowe’s innings yesterday?"
But today, you must avoid such an innocent inquiry as your friend may have recorded the whole game and has plans to watch it later — avoiding all newspaper, radio or conversational mentions of the game in the meantime.
I first suffered the embarrassment of this delayed watching a while ago when I met my old friend Mavis, a woman who watches cricket avidly and knows more about the game than I ever will.
"Black Caps lucky to win that one, eh?" was my friendly opening gambit.
"Damn and blast you!" she thundered.
"Why the hell did you tell me that?"
It appeared that she had the game recorded and planned to watch it later. Not much fun when you already know the result.
Since then, I’ve tried to avoid any mention of any sport when I meet Mavis, but she is still wary of me, and even as my "hello, Mavis" is dying away she will be shrieking "don’t tell me! Don’t tell me!"
Mavis eagerly followed the T20 bash abouts between New Zealand and the West Indies and she knew I’d also succumbed to that peculiar form of the game, so I wasn’t surprised when last week she shushed me with: "Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I’ll watch what happened when I get home tonight. I’ll put my feet up, crank up the TV and sit back for an evening of cricket bliss".
"OK, Mavis. I won’t tell you. In fact, I’ll say no more."
We parted on good terms, but I still wonder if I should have mentioned that the game was washed out, abandoned after only six overs.
She’ll probably never speak to me again. Such a rift could never have happened if we were still the way we were.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
