Connecting the Spirit of Cricket, Teaching Standards and Ian Drury's Rhythm Stick!

In 1979, shortly after Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick had become a major hit record, Ian Drury was asked by a Dutch journalist what a rhythm stick was. He replied “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand the answer”.?

Leaving aside Drury’s legendary wit and cheeky attitude to journalists (and the establishment in general), that answer had a ring of truth to it that took it far beyond the mere convenience of avoiding a boring conversation on semantics. Drury was drawing on a spirit that defies (but doesn’t quite defeat) definition. The phrase he invented for his biggest hit record is something we feel has meaning. When someone invites us to hit them with their rhythm stick we sense their intent. We don’t need to find an exact form of words to project a set meaning for it.

The memory of that interview came back to me this week when following the debate about Alex Carey’s controversial stumping of Jonny Bairstow during the Lord’s Ashes Test Match. The incident occupied the front pages of many newspapers in both the UK and Australia over the next couple of days, and it excited comment not merely about whether the dismissal was within the Laws of cricket (which it was) but also whether it was within the spirit of cricket - which many people including myself have argued it was not.

Those who argue that the dismissal was within the Laws of cricket and that there is, consequently, nothing more to be said have had to contend with the position cricket represents (possibly uniquely in sport, although golf has a close comparison) that both the Laws and the spirit of cricket share stakes in the governance of the game. The spirt of cricket is trickier to set down in a list of paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, but in this respect it merely mirrors much in life. Most of us - and certainly those of us in regulated activity such as educators, work in fields where traditions and customs carry as much weight as many of the rules we work by, and it is incontestable that schools visions and values constitute important guidelines for their governance that inform codes of ethical behaviour.?

When I saw how many commentators seemed to have missed this connection - and how many were even arguing that the spirit of cricket was irrelevant or somehow of secondary importance, I was reminded of Ian Drury’s comment (the picture below shows me holding my copy of the single - still one of my favourites from my early teenage record-buying days). In cricket as in much else, the spirt of the game is as much a part of the sport’s governance as the Laws that constitute its rulebook. Those who need to ask what the spirit is probably need to step back from the frontline of the debate until they have a better idea.

The game in question is over - and the next Test has already begun (which is why I have waited until now before writing this), but the lingering rancour this incident gave rise to has infected the relations between the two teams, their management and the wider cricketing public. Almost all the commentators on the incident have stuck to the same arguments. The dismissal was legal; whether or not the act was contrary to the spirit of cricket, that spirit is ill-defined; the game is done; Australia won; England lost and so on.?

Many commentators focussed on the fact that the umpires gave Bairstow out. This misses the point. As an umpire myself (albeit nowhere near Test level), I’m aware that the umpires had no choice in this matter. A batter is out when the fielding side appeals and the appeal is legitimate. The Laws cover that much. They do not cover the spirit of cricket argument which is where the consideration belongs that Pat Cummins, the Australian captain, might have withdrawn the appeal and allowed Bairstow to bat on.?

This has many precedents in cricket. The closest I can think of was England captain Mike Denness’s withdrawing the appeal for Tony Grieg’s running out of Alvin Kallicharan at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain in 1974 (https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/tony-greig-infamously-runs-out-alvin-kallicharran-at-port-of-spain-in-1974-92320).

Many commentators have also recalled another, more recent, precedent when India’s M. S. Dhoni recalled England’s Ian Bell in the 2011 summer series in England after the latter was legitimately run out when he left his crease assuming the ball was dead.

Incidents like these are where the spirit of cricket is supposed to guide decision making. It would have been legitimate for both Kallicharran and Bell to be given out and remained out. But the spirit of cricket would have been trashed had either done so.?

There are plenty of examples in life and in work as in sport where the rules provide only a degree of guidance, and where consequently the decision-making that extends from the situation at hand must be completed by applying context-based discretion and judgement (often backed by common sense and cultural sensitivities) from those in the position to do so.?

My own field of education provides a good example in the Teachers’ Standards. The Teachers’ Standards are intended to constitute structured guidance about what teachers are expected to do to fulfil their duties. Most of these are obvious - teachers must promote good progress and outcomes by pupils, demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge, manage behaviour effectively ensure a good and safe learning environment and so forth. These are the sort of standards that can fairly easily be illustrated by sub-paragraphs that expand on the theme (for example, promoting good progress and outcomes is facilitated by a teacher being aware of the pupils’ capabilities and their prior knowledge, and planning their teaching to build on these).

However, Part Two of the Teachers’ Standards addresses a more nebulous arena of human activity - personal and professional conduct. Here the focus is on ethical behaviour - the stuff of staff codes of conduct and school visions and values. It’s harder to tie down in neat lists of rules, and instead the section is framed in sentences that appeal to school leaders’ sense of discretion and judgement. For example, there is this subordinate clause to the statement “A teacher is expected to demonstrate consistently high standards of personal and professional conduct”:

Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by: treating pupils with dignity, building relationships rooted in mutual respect, and at all times observing proper boundaries appropriate to a teacher’s professional position.

Few school leaders I have met in my career would disagree with any of that. But applying it objectively in real world case after real world case calls for a very high level of judgement and wisdom.

So it is too with cricket umpires and captains. After all, C. L. R. James’ famous question “what does he know of cricket who only cricket knows?” is the very preface of the spirit of cricket that so many commentators have misread or tried to dismiss over the past week.?

Imagine how the outcry would have played out had the English team, instead of applauding the courage and commitment of the injured Nathan Lyon as he limped out from the Lord’s pavilion to bat on the evening before the Carey-Bairstow incident, had appealed for him to be timed out. The Laws of cricket are very clear. The incoming batter has only three minutes from the fall of the last wicket to be ready to face his or her first delivery. It would have been unrealistic to expect Lyon to make that deadline in his injured condition, yet no such appeal was made - or even conceived. It would have been unthinkably contrary to the spirit of cricket. Lyon’s courageous performance with the bat that session was cheered by the English crowd as much as the Australians. His one boundary in that laudable innings was warmly appreciated and applauded from all sides of the ground.?

A few of the more excitable commentators have tried to claim that the spirit of cricket is an English invention that projects stereotypical colonial-era values on a world that has outgrown them. These opinions I will leave deservedly unanswered - except to say that the values enshrined in the spirit of cricket are far from the property of one nation or one culture. M. S. Dhoni’s sporting reinstatement of Ian Bell in 2011 was appreciated across the cricketing world. Greg and Trevor Chappell’s infamous underarm ball in 1981 to prevent Brian McKechnie scoring a winning six was condemned across the cricketing world. No one said of either incident that the praise or condemnation was rooted in a cultural context (unless one considers cricket a culture).

It should be acknowledged that last week at Lord’s the Australia team won an exciting match that probably did not hinge on any single incident. There were outstanding performances from a number of players on both sides in the course of the five days. But that makes it all the more a pity that the match is bound to be remembered for this one incident. What might have been an exciting series is now almost bound to be snuffed out before it is halfway over. Only one team has ever come back from being two down in the Ashes - and none of the players from that series in the 1930’s are still alive.?

Nonetheless, in acknowledging Australia’s superb performances against one of the best English teams of recent years, we are entitled to ask whether winning the Ashes is worth burying the spirit of cricket. It is a precious aspect of the game that needs to survive despite the apparent popularity of the claims that it does not exist. Those of us who coach, umpire, score and otherwise support the game at a grass roots level see evidence that the spirit of cricket is very much alive across the cricketing world.?

And that world is expanding rapidly in the 21st century! Who, twenty years ago, would have predicted the astonishing success of cricket in Scotland, Ireland, Afghanistan, the USA and the Netherlands? We’re now seeing cricket, as Ian Drury might say “In the deserts of Sudan, and the gardens of Japan, from Milan to Yucatan…”

It is, however, the duty of those who occupy higher profile roles in the game to nurture that spirit. It is as fragile as it is precious. And we lose it at our peril.