During Lent I have been tasked with, amongst other things, not purchasing any more cricket books. Apparently, enough is enough.
My collection is currently standing at 73. Most of these books, though not all, are books about cricket and its role in society or its historical interest. Cricket has had its entertainers and has some interesting autobiographies, but quite a few of these are unfortunately rather trite, not to mention populist.
However, books such as Field of Shadows, South Africa – The Years of Isolation, Cricket and Conquest, The Changing Face of Cricket, More than a Game – to list but a few – tell us so much about events that transcend sport that they are worth reading irrespective of one’s interest in the game.
Cricket, and specifically cricket books are for me a form of escape; I buy them on impulse, I devour them, and I know it could become a rather narrow knowledge base. Maybe it is just that, but cricket writing has opened up hundreds of topics for me: be they the problems of racial prejudice; national pride; representations of a nation; ethics; jurisprudence; anti-colonialism; the problems of social structures, the slums in London and Australia or the way the game has taken people off the streets and given them purpose in life.
So, why stop buying more books? Well, among other things Lent demands something of us by way of focus. This is a small simple way in which I can do something to focus more: to listen and take time, to savour and enjoy the books I have without rushing on to the very next thing all the time.
I won’t be reading God’s Fast Bowler just because it is Lent, or indeed any other book that might present a connection with Christianity. But I will be reading Cricket and Conquest because it demands attention and thought. It is a book about the social history of South Africa from 1795 until 1914. Just like Cardinal Sarah’s book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, it deserves slow, diligent reading. Just as a test match can take five days and the joy of the contest is enlarged by slow consideration – the wonderful aesthetic of a beautiful cover drive, punctuated by an audacious, quick and snarling bouncer – so, too, should time spent in prayer and learning during Lent be about slowly preparing, focusing and anticipating the joy of Easter. We are not to simply rush through it, looking to the Easter Egg at the end, but sit deeply in prayer and self-examination in this season of penitence.
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