The David Hockney show currently on at the Tate Britain in London is fascinating as much for the stunning works done over six decades as for the artist’s profound understanding of the history of painting. It allows him to use elements from the masters and give them his own interpretation; the show is as much an acknowledgement of modernism as a history lesson. Well might it have been entitled: The History of Art through the Works of Hockney.
Watching a great performer in sport provides a history lesson too. A Roger Federer in action unveils not only his game but elements of the craft that culminated in his forehand. It is the history of tennis through the games of Federer.
Sachin Tendulkar’s batting had the same quality of the past meeting the present and lighting the path to the future.
“Why do we need to know the history of cricket? Would Virat Kohli have become a better player if he knew all about Vijay Hazare?” This question is often asked by young enthusiasts.
Framed like that, the question is actually meaningless. So is the response: “How will you understand the present if you are not aware of the past?” since understanding the present is not particularly high on the priority list of the questioner.
So what if Virender Sehwag did not know who Vinoo Mankad was, did it keep him from making two triple centuries in Tests and a double in one-day internationals? The other side seems to have all the questions if not the answers.
I once asked such a questioning youngster to play the cover drive. He took his stance and played a shadow-drive to an over-pitched delivery outside the off stump.
“That,” I told him with a great deal of emphasis, “is the way the stroke has been played for decades — you can see in it the majesty of a Walter Hammond, the mischievousness of a V. V. S. Laxman, and understand the manner in which Kohli has interpreted it. Wherever you learnt it — at coaching school, or from watching television — that is the way the stroke has been played historically.”
Growing entity
History is not merely knowing when Hammond played that stroke or indeed if he was the one to have played it better than anybody else. It is acknowledgement of the fact cricket is a growing, evolving entity. History is always with us whether we are conscious of it or not. It is also crucial to know history in order not to repeat mistakes or to have to re-invent the wheel, as it were.
A Ranji has already invented the leg glance; today's players don't have to develop that from first principles. Likewise with Bosanquet's googly.
When the Twenty20 version of the game was invented, one of the first batting techniques to emerge was the inversion of the classical get-to-the-pitch-of-the-ball-and-drive. Now batsmen didn't play bat and pad close together, but instead moved the front foot away from the line of the ball before swinging the bat in an arc. Getting that front foot out of the way created space and opened up scoring opportunities. Today's contemporary tactic is tomorrow's history.
Jack Hobbs has already shown us how to bat on a wet track, Bradman how to use the feet and hit the ball between fielders, Viv Richards how to send the perfect outswinger screaming past midwicket, Prasanna how to bowl the off break as if the ball were being held by a string which he could pull back anytime. We don't need to get there from scratch. The coaching manual is the sum total of our dialogues with history, and young cricketers ignore the wisdom of the past at their own peril. Sehwag not knowing Mankad is not as important as Sehwag's batsmanship being fashioned by the methods of those who went before him.
When the mathematician Ramanujan went to Cambridge at the invitation of G. H. Hardy, the great number theorist, the latter was both appalled and fascinated to discover that the Indian had proved many theorems starting from first principles, unaware that these were already common knowledge in the West having been proved decades earlier. The mathematician's creative span is short (much like the sportsman's), and this represented a huge waste of time that might have been better used to tackle more serious and unsolved problems.
A knowledge of history prevents waste of time and effort. There is little point in attempting to invent the outswinger today. It has been in use for decades now, at least since the American John Barton King bowled it with such control and effectiveness at the turn of the 19th century. Is it necessary to know about the outswinger? Yes. Is it absolutely necessary to know about Barton King? Perhaps not, but it would help understand not just cricket or the outswinger but America's role in the early development of the game, the commencement of international sport in 1844, and so on. And that is reason enough.
