A day of cricket viewing renews old ties with a childhood game

n the preface to Alex Bellos’ book, Futebol: The Brazilian Way Of Life, the bearded philosopher Socrates wrote: “Football is a sport made from spontaneity and discernment, luxury and freedom, and one that, I believe, is part of our most primitive genome, like dance.”

Of course, Americans might say this about baseball, Kiwis about rugby, Canadians about ice hockey. A sport engraved into our childhood; a sport that’s not an addiction but a companion; a sport whose rhythms and pauses are like a dance for us.

Ask yourself then, why you love football? Or tennis?

It’s almost a mysterious connection, which other people will not always get. What do you people see in cricket, my Singaporean friends ask me. I can’t explain, except point to days like Tuesday when Australia and India wrestle beautifully and appallingly in Bengaluru.

This is the cricket person’s dance. The Test match day. A slow dance where the partners — batsman and bowler — don’t touch or even like each other much. Test cricket — five days — is too long they say for an Instagram world, but mocking it is like kicking Leo Tolstoy out of a public library because War and Peace is 587,287 words. Not all of us have short attention spans.

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