TRAVEL writer Bill Bryson was surprised to find cricket was so popular when he visited this country just before the turn of the century.
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“The mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all,” he wrote in his bestselling Down Under. “It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament.”
He was quite certain, he wrote, that if “the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other”.
ALSO MAKING NEWS IN BATHURST:
If Bryson was shocked by the game’s popularity in the lead-up to the year 2000, he would be flabbergasted by its continued popularity in 2018 in the era of Facebook, Amazon, Uber and streaming services.
A game of quiet contemplation like cricket, that can last for days without producing a result, wouldn’t seem to have any place in our world of instant satisfaction and scattergun diversions, but it remains Australians’ principal summer pursuit.
Seeing the region’s cricketers battling it out on Bathurst’s ovals is a sign that the warmer months have arrived and the city has settled into a more relaxed rhythm.
The sport, like many sports in our more sedentary age, is facing challenges.
The demand on parents – who have to give up whole days, rather than just the couple of hours required by league or union – is high.
As well, Australia’s ball tampering scandal in South Africa earlier this year drained followers’ reserves of goodwill and left a number of questions about who knew what.
But cricket will keep on – not just because of its long tradition in this country, but because it offers something that other sports do not.
It offers an unparalleled test of patience and concentration; a battle between the ears as well as between the sporting boundaries.
It is a game to still a whirling mind – a rare commodity in an era in which nothing is still for long.
Bryson reckoned, when he wrote Down Under, that there was nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn’t fix in a hurry.
We’re not prepared to concede that point just yet. But we do agree that the game can look a bit slow to the uninitiated. That’s part of its considerable charm.
