Caught in the slips
Benny Green
Last Christmas one of my relatives, well-trained by me in the matter of gifts and emoluments, resisted •the temptation to festoon me with underpants and bottles of deodorant, and presented me instead with a copy of John Masters's novel The Ravi Lancers, which turned out to be so enjoyable a piece of literary professionalism that not even a bout of 'flu could tempt me to put the book down until it was finished.
And I was pleased to note that cricket, although no more than a peripheral theme, insisted from time to time on rearing its once beautiful head. To be frank, this surfacing of cricket on the fictional tide not only delighted but also surprised me, for Masters, although technically British, was long ago lost to the Americans, and emigrants of this type usually end up espousing the barbaric cause of arcane organisations like the Boston Black Feet or the Brooklyn Midgets, with the hysterical fanaticism which only the apostate can know.
Under the circumstances it might appear uncharitable of me to complain of inaccuracies in Masters's text. In fact it is not lack of charity at all but, on the contrary, affection for a writer unashamed to tell a story when he writes, which tempts me to put the record straight. The hero of The Ravi Lancers is one Krishna Ram, a prince whose anglophilia manifests itself not Drily in fighting with a regiment of the line in Flanders, but also studying the arts of battting and bowling. In June 1915, our flannelled princeling comes to London on leave and practises in the nets at the Oval:
Krishna knelt quickly to put on the pads and gloves of the outcoming batsman, ducking his head to hide his embarrassed delight. To be bowled at by Richardson with Jack Hobbs watching! . . . Richardson was still the fastest man in England when he chose . . .
And so on. The reference is to the Surrey and England fast bowler Tom Richardson, who would have found it extremely difficult to bowl at the Oval nets in 1915, as he had died in July 1912.
However, at least Masters knows the elements of the game he is describing; all he has got wrong is the date in an obituary
column. But what of the other writers who, in discussing sports and games in their fictions, reveal inadvertently that the only exercise in which they have ever partaken is jumping to conclusions. The most famous example is of course, Ernest Hemingway's totally nonsensical remark in 'Banal Story' (included in the collection, Men Without Women): " Across the world in distant Australia, the English cricketers were sharpening up their wickets ". Nothing else I know can compare with this for sheer unadulterated fatuity, although in Compton Mackenzie's The West Wind of Love a centreforward kicks off in a rugby match.
Not since Ouida disqualified herself from any serious consideration as a rowing correspondent by composing those memorable words, "All rowed fast, but none rowed as fast as stroke ", has the reading public been inclined to take novelists on trust when it comes to sports and games, but it is interesting that not only do authors slip up, but also that critics never seem to notice. I commend as an example dear to the hearts of all lovers of table tennis the following piece of exotica set in Popotaki's Ping Pong Parlour.
Mr Baldwin removed his coat and rolled the sleeves of his crepe-deChine shirt. Then he took his bat and poised himself expectantly at the end of the table. William served. Love, fifteen; love, thirty; love, forty; game . . .
The passage comes from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, but on reflection it might not after all be proof of Waugh's blissful ignorance of the way they score the points in table tennis, merely a lapse of memory. As an illustration, • I came across the following description in a novel of a snooker table glimpsed in the gloom: The glow of the street lamp outside the window struck the mirror at an angle, bringing out the facets of the brass cue-brackets on the apple-green distempered wall. The fifteen snooker balls lay on a white cloth, inside their wooden triangle, their distinctive colours dissolved by the half-light.
Obviously whoever wrote that passage had no idea that the only balls placed inside the triangular snooker frame are the reds, and that all the other colours roam free on the table. I know that because I have played snooker myself thousands of times. In which case, how do you account for the fact that the quotation comes from one of my own novels? Move over, Ernest.
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