Google a Googly

Oxford University Parks Cricket Pavillion

I've had a lot of questions about the novel that I’ve just started writing, NOT CRICKET (renamed A MATCH FOR EVE). The first question was: how can an American woman write a book on cricket?

I’m not really writing a book on cricket (it is NOT CRICKET.) My novel is about two generations of American women at Oxford University for junior year abroad. Cricket is popular world wide and ever so charmingly English, but Americans just don’t get it. What a perfect metaphor for the cultural divide!

I love to play around with words. The expression “that’s not cricket” means not playing by the rules of gentlemanly conduct, and my novel revolves around a moral dilemma. The central male character is captain of his college cricket team at Oxford.

The rules of cricket are way too complex to explain in a novel. The last thing I want to do is bore the reader who is looking for a good story or the cricket expert who already knows more than I do.

There will be some cricket in the narrative, but on the level that even an American woman would find interesting. Guys look awfully good in cricket whites, and then there are the champagne and strawberries.

Since its inception in 1787, cricket has evolved. Back in the 1980’s (the first time period of my novel) college and university teams would have played in cricket whites. In the 2000’s (the second period of my novel) the lads are sporting bright colored nylon and spandex: pink, black and red!

Cricket reds? It just doesn’t ring true. The same was so for the Oxford vs. Cambridge Universities match in shades of blue nylon. It’s a mirror of cultural convergence, but the differences remain below the surface.

Cricket is good fun to watch on a sunny summer day. I’d have watched more matches only it was the rainiest spring/summer ever, or so people said. The English always say the weather is worse than normal. Games get rained out all the time. Can you imagine keeping those cricket whites white?

I like the college matches (like intramural sports) because they are played fast in just a couple of hours. A professional cricket match can last days. Yes, days. Five days is normal. Can you believe it?

So how did I become interested in cricket? When I was 15 my family visited England. My father had gone to business school with Sir T. We were invited to a cricket match at their sons’ school. We sipped champagne and nibbled strawberries while one handsome son in his whites tried to explain the game as his older brother played. The son was also an avid reader, and we had a fun conversation about literature. Another day we toured around gorgeous Oxford University.

My mother claims I imprinted on Englishmen that vacation like one of Konrad Lorenz’s goslings. Six years later at college I fell madly in love. That would be with my English husband Henry, an avid cricket fan.

We have a cricket bat in our umbrella stand. Maybe that’s not so strange, but the umbrella stand is in a mudroom in Maine, USA. The practice came in handy during our two sabbaticals in the U.K. Our daughter is quite good at cricket, even by English standards. She played during P.E. at her state school when we were living in Oxford last year.

My son’s wood-working project at the Abingdon School was to make a cricket ball carrier. His model was the fastest and built with the least expensive material. It ran on rubber band power. How’s that for Yankee ingenuity?

Henry’s great grandfather, Stephen Wildman Cattley, played professional cricket for Surrey. Stephen’s claim to fame was once catching out the cricket legend W.G. Grace. The heirloom ball was engraved for Stephen’s skill in the 1879 match against Kent. Stephen’s brother also played for Surrey.

Henry bought me a good short book What is a Googly? Rob Eastaway specifically wrote the book for his confused American friends or for “cricket widows” (ie clueless wives of cricket players.) It has become my well-underlined manual.

Cricket is full of odd terms, one of which is the googly. Eastaway defines it as “a ‘trick’ ball bowled by a leg spin bowler which spins the opposite way to the way the batsman is expecting.” Huh? That one I needed to see demonstrated by Henry. Bottom line: it’s a tricky ball to hit.

Actually all cricket balls are hard to hit: the ball is hard, bowled fast and bounces unpredictably on the grass. Even worse, the fieldsmen catch it bare-handed. The game requires nerve, skill and bravery. Aren’t you a little hooked?

I’m not the first one to recognize the symbolic beauty of cricket in representing the gap between Americans and cricket-playing nations. Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland looks at the opposite situation of my narrative. His book centers on immigrant men playing cricket in the USA. His protagonist, Hans, have moved to NYC from London and is the only white man playing cricket that season.

The cricket in Netherland is used metaphorically to demonstrate the sense of being “the other.” Chuck Ramkissoon from Trinadad umpires cricket matches on Staten Island (NYC), “You want a taste of how it feels to be a black man in this country? Put on the white clothes of the cricketeer. Put on white to feel black.”

The novel takes place in the months after 9/11 and centers on disillusionment. Although events in Netherland are contemporary, the language and structure O’Neill employs to tell his story draw more from late 19th century literature. The prose is beautiful if wordy, and the plot is as convoluted as a Henry James novel.

I’m a native New Yorker, and still O’Neill, an immigrant himself, revealed a side of my city I never knew existed. I was surprised to find another novel connecting Americans to cricket since I started researching mine over a year ago. Released in May 2008, Netherland has sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, hitting the NYT bestseller list. Americans can be interested in cricket if the story is good.

Anyway, don’t take just my word for it. Here’s my husband Henry on Netherland:

Netherland, I should admit up front, is almost written for me, with the plot revolving around a European banker who moves from London to New York and loves cricket. O’Neill captures many of the sentiments, new joys and estrangements that I’m familiar with. What makes the book special, though, is the use of cricket to explore ideas of belonging, identity and nationhood.

The transplant Hans looks back proudly at his boyhood skills as a batsman. But the elegant ground shots which worked so well on manicured European pitches quickly come to grief in the tangled weeds of derelict New York outfields. Yet he can’t quite bring himself to slog the ball high on the volley -- a scything batting style dismissed by English commentators as “haymaking” -- even as he realises his old approach is failing him in the New World. His resolution of this dilemma is one of the more enjoyable high points.

Meanwhile, Chuck Ramkissoon is determined that he will make Americans accept cricket rather than abandon cricket to be accepted by Americans. From his insistence that cricket has a longer American heritage than baseball to his dream of creating a first-class stadium in the city, it’s a glorious conceit - part Gatsby, part Ahab - and O’Neill makes you hope and believe that Chuck will pull it off.

I loved Netherland, although I should warn you that reading it is at times like watching Yorkshire batting great Geoffrey Boycott defending a difficult wicket: you know there’s a master craftsman at work, but does it have to be so SLOW?

Anyway, it’s great for ex-pat cricket fans like me and my good friend Michael, seen here in Maine fascinating each other but boring our friends on the vital topic of whether England or the West Indies suck worse.

Blog Watch: Anil P. is a cricket fan so we’ve been thinking about him today. Visit Windy Skies where Anil blogged about the terrible floods and famine in his part of India.

Oxford Rituals

Come exam weeks , you’ll see students in academic gowns treading cobblestones past ivory towers. It doesn’t feel like Oxford has changed in centuries until you look closer.

Undergraduates read (ie study) only one subject, with the exception of some new hybrids like PPE (politics, philosophy and economics.) There are qualifying exams at the end of the first year and weekly tutorial papers. However, the only thing that counts towards the final degree are the exams sat at the end of 3 years in 10 subfields.

If that weren’t enough pressure, the students are required to wear 19th century kit known as subfusc for exams. Young men must wear: a white bow tie, shirt, black suit and black shoes under an academic gown. Young women substitute a black tie and can wear either a black skirt or trousers. Don’t say “pants”- that’s underpants in British! On hot days they can at least sit the exam in their shirt sleeves.

A more recent custom is to don a carnation on the lapel. On the first day of exams, which can last 10 days, the flower is virginal white. During the middle days it is pink. On the final day the carnation is red, as if it had been soaking in a red inkwell, slowly reaching saturation, not unlike the student.

Not everyone is on the same examination schedule, so lunchtime in hall is an amusing clash of period dress. At Oriel there were lads in their sports kit elbow to elbow with suited chums. Gowns were hung on pegs to keep tidy. The lunch food was institutional. I had mystery meat on a skewer. Fish? Chicken? Pork? Quite unlike a high table feast. No one seemed to mind as they ate heartily after morning exertions.

Most exams are sat at Examination Schools in silent, cavernous rooms. I could feel the tension in the air when I peeked my head in on my way to a history lecture. It’s a grand 19th century sandstone building with an enormous two story foyer. The halls sport black and white checkered floors and colorful walls leading to stone steps. The whimsical feeling is misleading.

These third year exams count for everything and are administered by the university, not the separate colleges. Very few students graduate with a First Degree. Most get a Second, and the worst get a Third or fail. There are nicknames. A Lower Second (2-2) is called a “Bishop Desmond.” A Third is called a "Richard."

The joking spins out of control after the final exam. A student’s mates greets him/her with balloons, silly hats and necklaces as they exit. They are covered in treacle so that tossed flour will stick to their gowns. A plate of pastry cream or shaving cream is shoved in the face. Traditionally the student was sprayed with champagne, but the police have been cracking down on that. I still spotted students chugging champagne bottles on side streets.

This elaborate Oxford ritual is called “trashing.” Plenty of drinking and celebration follows at the pub or in the dorm rooms.

Out punting on a Saturday, I spotted a trashed student in his filthy gowns by the river. At the urging from his bank-side mates and more students in a punt, the lad dove in and swam out for a glass of wine. He was offered the entire bottle but declined in a posh accent, “Christ Church ball tonight.”

Every other year the colleges hold a Commemoration Ball, a white tie affair that starts in the evening for dinner and lasts all night. At dawn there is a violin serenade with champagne and a greasy full English breakfast in hall.

I went to a similar ball at Cambridge University back when my sister-in-law was there. We ladies wore floor length ball gowns and danced all night under the stars. Well, we didn’t actually see the stars, but they must have been there twinkling over the dense fog.

The final ritual is Oxford’s graduation ceremony held in the Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren. It’s too small to fit everyone, so the students graduate on separate days. I attended the honorary degree ceremony, called Encaenia, meaning "festival of renewal" in Greek. A bit of a misnomer as most of the ceremony was conducted in Latin!


The ceremony opened with a trumpet fanfare, and then black robed officials with white hair and long silver staffs escourted the honorands inside. The University Chancellor sat upon that golden throne conferring degrees.

The ancient language could not keep up with modern times. The introductory speech for Sheila Evans Widnall, former US Secretary of the Air Force, waxed poetic about Icarus and such.

The only honorand I recognized was Thomas Nagel, a philosopher of mind who once asked “What is it like to be a bat?” Thanks to a translation sheet, I now know how to say bat in Latin: vespertilio.

Another Encaenia ritual was to thank (in English) the donors – that was dull! The speaker livened up his speech with jibes against rival Cambridge University, the “daughter school.” Then all the dons in their academic gown processed outside into the rain.

I enjoyed seeing the Encaenia spectacle but was sorry to miss fellow Oxford blogger John Kelly give a new media presentation at Reuters. Since I couldn’t be two places at once, my husband, Henry, will take over the blog from here. Our daughter snapped this photo of the Kelly family before they flew home to Washington D.C.

One of the real delights of this year has been getting to know the Kelly family. John is a columnist at The Washington Post who spent the past year as a Fellow of The Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism researching the red-hot topic of citizen journalism. He presented his findings last week.

Citizen journalism hit the front-pages (oh, the post-modern irony of that phrase!) in the aftermath of 9/11, the Tsunami, and the 7/7 bombings. Nifty new technologies like mobile phone cameras and wireless broadband mean that just about anyone can be a reporter, by-passing “old media” journalists who are, John reports, less trusted than even estate agents. User-generated content (UGC), wikipedia, youtube and blogs have created powerful new networks which have turned upside-down the old relationship between reporter and audience.

That’s good news if you think the old media are a complacent elite delivering patronising lectures - isn’t it better to choose what you want at the buffet than have some snooty waiter decide for you? A citizen journalist broke the story of Obama’s “bitter” comment, and bloggers spread the word, leaving the old gatekeepers flat-footed.

On the other hand, many fret about the erosion of the old journalistic values of professionalism, objectivity, and fact-checking. Instead of a vibrant cyber-democracy, these folk see a cacophony of ill-informed opinion - a view hilariously captured in this Mitchell and Webb spoof of the the BBC’s "Have Your Say" fixation.



John steered a helpful middle course between these extremes, holding onto the hope that we can figure out a way to get the best of both worlds. He noted that the same technology that allows every Tom, Dick or Harriet to post something bogus also allows anyone to correct it in real time. “Check, then publish” is a good old-media rule, but “publish, then check” has its merits in a networked world.

In any case, the evidence is that most citizens don’t actually want to be journalists - less than 1% of the BBC’s on-line traffic is UGC-related. We’ll always need objective, contextualized reporting and informed analysis. Journalists who can deliver this AND who are savvy to the latest media will be in high demand. Journalists, in short, like John.

We miss you and your family already, John. Keep blogging back in the USA!

Oxford Eights Week

Apologies once again to Sarah’s regular readers! This is Henry, reporting (almost) live from the towpath during Oxford “Eights Week.”

This is the inter-college rowing regatta: 150 crews from the 35 different colleges race each other over 4 days, while a vastly greater number come to watch and/or drink. It’s the only event in the English social calendar to combine speed racing with a full-contact combat sport.

The details are way too complicated to explain here, so you can read about them here. Like so many other Oxford institutions, the rules have evolved bit-by-bit since the 1840s, seemingly designed to be utterly impenetrable to outsiders.

Crews race in line 1 1/2 boat-lengths apart, and the goal is to catch up to the boat ahead of you and hit it (hence “bumps” racing). Contact should be light, but this isn’t always possible at ramming speed. When contact has been acknowledged (the losing cox raising a graceful hand in surrender) both boats stop racing, and swap starting positions the next day.

Curiously, the combination of highly un-maneuverable boats, inexperienced coxes, high speeds and confined spaces doesn’t always end well. Here in the foreground black has bumped the red, so both have stopped, but the crews behind are still racing.

Seconds later, the race is unexpectedly over for everyone in a seven-boat pile-up:

Starting positions are initially determined by where your crew finished last year. Crews which “bump up” on all four days, or who achieve the top spot - “Head of the River” - earn the right to embellish an old oar with the names and deeds of the crew. So the races enshrine tradition, generate their own history, and entrench existing hierarchies all at once. Exactly like the rest of Oxford then…

You can see how the fortunes of different crews wax and wane over the decades with this bumps chart. As you can see, Oriel have dominated the event since the 1970s. Cynicism aside, my former crewmate Bruce and I got a kick watching the Oriel 2nd Eight bump up, musing that our fine performances all those years ago had had a direct, albeit distant, influence on the fortunes of the current crew.

None of these lads were even born last time we raced in the blue and white– back when “Tainted Love” was a song by Soft Cell rather than the Pussy Cat Dolls.

It was great to get back to Oriel and find the traditions alive and well. Great for me, that is. Not so much for the luckless undergraduates I found there. They were subjected to a mind-numbing series of dull stories beginning “Back in my day….” How much do you hate the sad, pathetic old timer who won’t let go? Well, that was me.

First stop was the dorm-room (as the Americans would say) traditionally inhabited by the year’s Captain of Boats. In it are accumulated all the blades, trophies and memorabilia of 30 years of Rowing Dominance. The current occupant was absolutely charming, even though he had a vital race in a few hours and vital exams in a few days. He graciously took time to show us around and even more graciously refrained from beaning me with an oar-handle as I launched into yet another tedious anecdote.

…finally I caught sight of this, all that remains of the Hardy Norseman, the boat in which I learned to cox. At the time it was cutting-edge technology; now it’s a museum-piece. There’s a message there somewhere…

The rest of the boat, I’m guessing, was burned on the paving stones of First Quad after a black-tie “Bump Supper,” historically convened for all the crews of the Head of the River College. At the conclusion of a long, rowdy meal (each crew had its own song and long-winded toasts and congratulations were always in order) we would torch the wooden shell and, linking arms, jump through the flames.

FANTASTIC fun. But then someone’s dress caught fire, and the Department of Health and Safety probably concluded, after a long investigation, that having a hundred drunken teenagers jumping in and out of a blazing fire was neither Healthy nor Safe. Go figure.

Instead, I gather, there is a more sedate dinner in our splendid Dining Hall.

That’s old boy Sir Walter Raleigh looking on, no doubt contemplating a bit of swashbuckling or getting it on with Cate Blanchett.

If the room, the Hall, or the boat-burning seem familiar, it’s because they appear in the cinematic classic Oxford Blues featuring Rob Lowe as the brash go-it-alone Yank who joins the Oriel Boat Club and learns the importance of teamwork and dating Ally Sheedy. Co-stars include Cary Elwes, Julian Sands, and the guy who played Batman’s butler. And me. I appear. As Myself. Patting Rob Lowe on the back after he has been beaten by Julian Sands in a sculling race. You’ll need a big screen, freeze-frame and a magnifying glass, but you can DEFINITELY make me out. Just.

Ah, the memories. But where, you ask, can I get a drink? In my thirst for knowledge, I checked out three boozers. The Head of the River has OK food, OK beer, and great deck overlooking the finish.

At the other end of the course is Iffley Lock.

Five minutes up the hill is a hidden gem: the Prince of Wales. Fantastic food, great beers and, astonishingly, the quintessential rowing cocktail Pimms on tap. Nice one.

Finally, the pub-formerly-known-as-the-Isis-Tavern on the towpath at the start-line is now the Isis Farmhouse, selling tea, coffee and cakes as well as some food. Sarah was not researching for this post, so she is on Elderflower Cordial. She only drinks on the job. Luckily co-researcher, medieval literature expert and keytar heart-throb Professor Aaron Kitch can attest to the mean half of lager. Cheers!

Lads in Scotland

Apologies, regular readers! This is Henry, Sarah’s husband, guest-blogging about the rail trip to Scotland I just made with our 13-year old son. Don’t expect the usual standards of writing, photography or insight, but please bear with me, I’ll do my best!

The West Highlands Railway from Glasgow to Mallaig is simply spectacular. Past Ben Nevis, along the banks of Loch Lomond, through stunning mountain passes until you reach the sea, with the Western Isles of Skye and Mull just across the Sound of Sleat. You might recognise the beaches from Local Hero and the mighty Glenfinnan Viaduct from the Harry Potter movies: this is the view you get from the viaduct. Truly magical.

Mallaig is great, a small, hard-working fishing port and ferry terminus.

We stayed at the Western Highland Hotel. That’s it in the center of the photo above, with Skye in the background. It’s warm, clean and unpretentious with good food, genuinely friendly staff and fantastic views from our bedroom. This is the Isle of Rum.

There are great walks around Mallaig - we circled Loch an Nostarie and the surrounding hills in about 3 hours. As usual, the Lad marched on ahead while I grumbled behind, demanding snacks and constantly asking if we were nearly there yet.

Reward for our climbing was absolutely superb seafood at the Cornerstone Restaurant. Fresh straight from the sea, and then simply prepared, as it should be. Highlights were the the half-pint of steamed prawns and the pan-fried Scallops. We asked where the scallops came from, and were surprised to hear that the chef didn’t know. She’d been onto a lot of the boats that afternoon, she apologised, and forgotten which of the divers had sold her that particular batch.

Next, a daytrip to the tiny village of Inverie on the isolated Knoydart peninsula (silent “k” as in ‘knob’).

The mailboat takes about 45 minutes, then returns 4 hours later to pick you up. We saw a couple of seals (or maybe one energetic seal twice) and a few birds. Slim pickings on the wildlife front.

The locals meet the boat to pick up mail, supplies and, by the looks of things, strangers. (That handsome, rugged-looking dude is me, by the way)

Landed, we hiked through the mist and pouring rain to this centuries-old Christian monument, meeting only deer.

You haven’t lived until you’ve sat in The Old Forge Pub eating a home-made venision burger, drying-out after a soaking hike, and watching the rain lash down outside. It boasts of being Britain’s Most Remote Pub (motto: “Up a Mountain, Down a Beer”), but the homemade veggie soup and hot chocolate were out-of-this-world as well as out-of-the-way. Not to mention the 80-Shilling Ale, which I was obliged to neck by way of pure research. Sorted!

Back then to Edinburgh, where, boys that we are, we headed to the Castle for some History and plenty of Violent Death.

Near the main gate is a plaque commemorating the AD 600 exploits of King Mynyddog’s men as they headed out to defend Din Eidyn (now Edinburgh) from the Angle invaders:

“Buoyed by strong drink, they pledged themselves to die for their lord. And die most of them did...”

Yup, that seems to sum up an awful lot of Scottish history.

My favourite exhibit, though, is this model of Private McBain of the Royal Scots Regiment in action at the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709. His wife, not unreasonably, had left France for Scotland on the eve of the battle, leaving him with their baby. Childcare facilities not being all that they could be in the British Army back then, he stuck the kid in his knapsack and proceeded with the bayoneting. Happily, both survived this early “Take Your Daughter to Work” day.

With us to add cultural and literary insight was my great friend Peter Coviello, professor of English at Bowdoin College and keen ice-fisherman.

The three of us explored Edinburgh’s vibrant artistic heritage, (by way, Pete explained, of antidote to all the slaughtering) which took us to The King’s Theatre to see Alan Bennett’s “Single Spies” starring Nigel Havers. (You might remember him as the champagne-quaffing hurdler in Chariots of Fire.) The two one-act plays explore Britishness through the perspective of the Cambridge-educated, pillars-of-the-establishment aristocrats who were unveiled as soviet spies in the 1960s.

“Britishness” is a tricky and topical subject these days, especially in Scotland. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, from nearby Kilcady, declares himself “Proud to be Scottish and British” but many Scots are calling for independence. Scottish history, like that of any nation, is a confused tangle of conflicts, not only with England but also amongst themselves. Our travels had taken us past many landmarks in that complicated history.

The Act of Union in 1707 merged the two independent countries, soon to be ruled by a German King, and we arrived in Edinburgh 301 years to the day after Scotland’s Parliament dissolved itself. It reconvened in 1999 - picking up exactly where it had left off - in this notoriously expensive building, designed not by a Scot but a Spaniard and looking, to my admittedly untrained eyes, like a cross between a car-park and a cheap beach-resort bar.

Meanwhile Glenfinnan (pictured above) was where Charles Edward Stuart - “Bonny Prince Charlie” - raised his battle-standard in an attempt to reinstate the Stuart monarchy over England, Scotland and Ireland in 1745. But the Divine Right of Kings was no longer a winning campaign platform, and the idea of a Catholic monarchy backed by the French King (Louis XV) was vehemently opposed by Scottish Presbyterians as well as English Protestants.

The Prince’s invasion of England ended in retreat and ultimately disaster. He fled towards Mallaig and was borne “Over the Sea to Skye” and thence to safety. Many of his captured Jacobite supporters were taken to London and executed, “taking the low road” back to the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

The songs, happily, are still beautiful today, long after the bloody politics are (largely) forgotten. And we were cheered to note that there is now a bridge over Loch Alsh, so it is now possible to drive "Over the A87 Bridge to Skye." Not quite so romantic though, eh?

Lest I end on a downer, here are a couple of photos of the garden of my wonderful Scottish brother-in-law’s equally wonderful parents (what’s that: my in-law-in-laws? I never know) with whom we stayed in Edinburgh. They live in a gorgeous A-listed 1850 house, now turned to flats, and their garden is a sunspot formerly used for drying laundry. The yellow Lenten Roses are blooming right now, and the Red Camilia tree is about to burst. Absolutely lovely.

Thanks for reading, and normal service with Sarah will be resumed next week.