Most sportsmen — in fact, most performers — understand the concept of “being in the zone”. It is an expression balancing on the verge of cliché.
Here’s the footballing great, Pele, speaking of the “strange calmness” he experienced during the 1958 World Cup final against Sweden. “It was a type of euphoria; I felt I could run all day without tiring, that I could dribble through any of their team or all of them, that I could almost pass through them physically. I felt I could not be hurt. I have felt confident many times (before) without that strange feeling of invincibility.’’
Here’s the novelist Don DeLillo: “It’s a state of automatic writing, and it represents the paradox that’s at the centre of a writer’s consciousness. First you look for discipline and control. But there’s a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. It’s a kind of rapture…”
“One is raised beyond the prosaic or the everyday to an orgasmic or spiritual level.” This last quote is from Mike Brearley, former England captain, in his new book On Form .
Cricket, one would imagine, is best deconstructed by someone who has played at the highest level, or a psychoanalyst or perhaps a philosopher. So what happens when someone who is all three writes a book? Will the mixture get too rich? Do different parts of this unique personality get in one another’s way or do they enhance the insights these bring?
“Cricket helped me to be psychologically more aware,” says Brearley, this unique personality in his unique book. The warning comes early, however: “There is no simple narrative logic to this book.”
It is neither prescriptive nor fully descriptive. It is like a guided tour through the realms of psychoanalysis as it bears upon cricket. But unlike on a guided tour, you are left to your own devices — you take a path or ignore it, you meander, you spend time in certain areas, you may even lose your way, for the wonderful thing is, not all these paths actually lead to a destination.
Losing our way, says Brearley, is an opportunity for serendipity, and ends the book with the delightful instruction: Get lost! It is nearly on a par with my favourite final sentence in a book: Enough. The one-word finish to Patrick French’s biography of V.S. Naipaul.
Perhaps guided tour is a false analogy. Brearley seems to be wilfully avoiding any attempt at joining the dots, leaving it to the reader to do so. It is impossible to know whether your final pattern agrees with his for you may have joined the dots differently. This is either charming or irritating, depending on how you approach it.
The essence of On Form is digression. Brearley is being deliberately discursive, and if he didn’t already have a reputation as one of the finest captains in the game and probably its greatest thinker today, you might even be tempted to think he was showing off.
But wait! Brearley read classics and moral sciences at Cambridge, was briefly a lecturer in philosophy before (following his retirement from cricket) becoming a practising therapist. So when he evokes Wittgenstein or Descartes or Hume, Huizinga, or the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who wrote about ‘flow’, synonymous with ‘zone’), Sartre’s mauvaise fois (bad faith) is definitely not involved.
Writers, actors, movie directors, even a tree-cutter from India all have lessons for us; cricketers too. There is Greg Chappell, who talks about focus: “The conscious mind can be involved with the big picture stuff such as strategy, but once the bowler approaches, one must trust the subconscious and the years of training to do the rest.”
Technique is vital. As Brearley says, with good technique you can forget technique.
The philosopher David Papineau pointed out in Knowing the Score that there is little time for conscious decisions in batting. The ball moves too fast, everything has to be instinctive. And instinct is developed through practising technique. And sticking to it under pressure. The body and mind have to be in harmony.
So what of form? Brearley recalls England player and coach Tiger Smith asking him, “Do you think frowning helps you hit the ball harder?” Years later, Brearley inspected a batting glove of Ian Botham and discovered its fingers were almost unmarked by the bat. Relaxation is key. As is enjoyment.
Brearley shines a light on cricket (even if he suspects it is not all about form), on his profession, and above all, on himself. On Form is a quasi-autobiography. Forty years ago, when Brearley wrote his first book, co-author Dudley Doust commented on his temperament that made him look at ideas from different angles. Brearley’s autobiography should be called On the Other Hand , Doust suggested. Brearley sees both sides of that too.
On Form can be read in many ways. For the average victim of television commentary who has had it drilled into his head that ‘form is temporary, class permanent’, it is a door to a challenging new world full of the unexpected.
