For 11 days in late March, a few dozen Britons turned to BBC and watched as Awkward swam through pools, lumbered along tracks or stumbled across fields. They call it the Commonwealth Games, a mini-Olympics held only for those countries who stuck it out through the end of the British Empire, such as juggernauts Bermuda, Maldives and St. Kitts and Nevis.
Thirty-nine countries proved their inferiority to grandmother England in this year’s Games — held a few weeks after every Winter Olympics — in Melbourne. The queen’s minions pulled in 110 medals, tops of the 40 medal-winning countries that aren’t Australia. The Aussies, a former British penal colony, donned 221 medals, 84 colored gold.
Yet, despite its unrivaled athletic mediocrity, few things represent Britain as well as Sport. In a land nearly impossible to define, Sport comes the closest to pinning it down. It’s a land based on contradiction — the Anglican Church now opposes divorce, when it owes its existence to Henry VIII’s desire to separate himself from his wives and their bodies from their heads, for example — and Sport conveys this confusion better than all others.
Certainly, it is a lovely, if befuddled, country, and not to embrace this peculiar land, not to laugh as you run off with mates to grab a cheeky beer (a quick one) at the local (pub) — that would be blinkered (narrow-minded; think horses, wearing blinkers).
But their pride makes the French look like a bunch of Ghandhis. A professor of mine told me that the Bible is a work of British literature (“at least the King Jayyymes version, goouuyys”). Rest assured, though, they care much more for the sports they created, like rugby and cricket, than the Bible. They fling themselves headlong into eternal optimism, certain that the British are still rulers of the world, sporting and otherwise.
And for this torturous optimism, like kids with lost puppies or Mets fans, they deserve great sympathy. It’s a tough time to be a sport-supportin’ Briton.
High hopes followed the English rugby team into the Six Nations Tournament (with France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy) this past winter. So did too much time at the pub, apparently. Once-promising England took a thrashing, igniting another series of seemingly weekly whinging (whining) discussions on The State of British Athletics.
They can excuse rugby, though. Nothing means more to England than football (soccer), except Robbie Williams and the Queen. And with recent truckloads of money making their way to the soil, English football has become arguably the top stage in international football.
Now, throw in these insults: the Premiership (England’s top league) is becoming increasingly foreign (the horror!). And, to really chap pants, only one Premiership team made it into the quarterfinals in the European Champions League.
The multi-nationalism ignited a fire in the British, from people in pubs to coaches to people in pubs. West Ham United manager Alan Pardew lashed out at Arsenal’s lead man, Arsene Wenger, alleging Wenger uses too many foreigners. But a dearth of international representation, that’s more unacceptable than talking in Underground trains.
Oh yeah, that one British team who made it past the quarterfinals? And who’s up 1-0 in the semifinals over Villarreal? Arsenal.
But, win or lose, they scream. The enthusiasm prompting men and boys to trample other men — foreign ones, preferably — really is contagious. Sports offer the one place for the British to lose their charming self-consciousness and really get excited about swearing. It’s nice to have a common point. But in a country with such a rich-written tradition, cheers like (sung to ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’), “Glory, Glory Tott’nham Hotspur, Glory, Glory Tottn’ham Hotspur, Glory Glory Tottn’ham Hotspur, The Hotspurs are the best!” seem a bit … off.
But nothing seems more off, more of a loose interpretation of Sport than this one. The main factor in the loss of the British Empire wasn’t the global identity crisis after World War II. It wasn’t the introduction of the Welfare State.
It was cricket.
Presumably, cricket is what the gentry fancy when reading newspapers and nibbling on sweets grows too taxing. It’s the sport equivalent of an oatmeal bath. A friend of mine said that the sport is so popular because it “requires no physical exertion — nothing is more ungentlemanly than physical exertion.”
They wear cardigan sweaters to play. The style of bowling (throwing), where you can’t snap the elbow (like our pitchers) makes as much sense to an American as does saying you’ll be taking the piss out of somebody (only making fun of him, not a hospital procedure). And most of all, the game lacks no distinguishable graduated strategy — strategically, it rivals the Hot Shot basketball games in arcades.
Nobody keen on Cockney would be scoped playing cricket, though. Their thing, in the not-so-posh parts of London — if not football — is becoming basketball, which my editors at The Observer said is just a different version of netball. Which, in the end, is correct, if you take away the cool parts of basketball like athletes and jumping. And the backboard.
Then again, after a night of going arse over elbow at our White Horse pub, I could just be talking bollocks. But anyway, piss off, you Yankee fops — BBC’s showing the darts championship.
Kevin Scheitrum is a former Sports Editor of The Daily Free Press. He is currently studying abroad in London.