Musically this tune is nothing special, it's a brief journey back to some of the boozy trad. jazz sounds of the previous two albums. Lyrically it's brilliant and, unlike some of the comic songs on the last two albums which left me stony faced frankly, this is clever AND funny. Having bamboozled non-UK listeners with "Where Are They Now?", a la Shane Warne vs. Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in '93, Ray clean bowls 'em with this defiantly incomprehensible lyric. Again, I'm not sure this has very much to do with the Preservation concept as it eventually turned out, this is another song that would work with no conceptual framework. Any cricket bore would tell you, by the way, that cricket doesn't have rules it has laws. In case there's any doubt, Ray is a massive cricket fan.
It is really interesting looking at this album more closely, because it really seems like this album almost works like a foreword in a novel. It is almost just setting the scene for the album to follow. Ray is just setting up the back story and the textures of the scene, and the real story is yet to commence, as the village descends into darkness. I think the innocent bystanders being brought to the front early on is important. It may seem like they are not in the story, or major players or whatever, but they are the ones that will be effected by the major characters actions.
Great job, Mark - as ever with this sport, it's the Aussies in charge! When I listened to this album back in the 80s, this was the track that most put me off, and it's the one that most stuck in my head over the years as what I did not want to hear from The Kinks. It's probably single-handedly responsible for me keeping a wide berth from this album for over 30 years. Now of course I can hear what Ray was driving at, and I can appreciate it for the piece of art that it is. As well as the New Orleans jazz feel, I also hear a bit of Yorkshire brass band in there to bring it back home to a place where cricketing is more likely to occur. It's of course very theatrical and most definitely in the show tune category - it's very easy to visualise Ray up on stage in vicar's garb wandering up the crease with the players milling around him. A last chance to savour the idyll of the village green before the ranks of Flash and Black start closing in. BTW - the "bowl a maiden over" line - I think it was intended as a double entrendre both in its cricketing meaning, and in the sense of "pleasing a young lady".
I imagine that "bowl a maiden over" line, nudge nudge wink wink, has been around for as long as cricket has.
Having the demon bowler be a slow bowler is partly because there's more obscure and amusing terminology around spin bowling and partly because they are the tricky mysterious bowlers who can tie batsmen in knots and leave them not knowing whether they're coming or going. Either way, it shows Ray knows his cricket. By the way, the leading England bowler at the time this was written would probably have been 'Deadly' Derek Underwood, who was a spin bowler - though a pretty unorthodox one, he bowled pretty fast!
Cricket I love the sport - especially when it’s a tight contest - and could rattle off all kinds of statistics when I was a kid. I can’t believe the effort Mark made in explaining the game. I once tried to explain it to an American and just gave up after a minute! If only Ray knew as much about cricket. There are some good metaphors in the lyrics but not a great deal of internal consistency with the sport. Plus would the vicar say it’s a British sport? English definitely. I see this as one of those theatrical pieces that would work well on stage. Yet I don’t think they played it in the Preservation live shows. This is back-to-front if it’s from the bowler’s perspective so I think you’re describing it from the view of the batter. Thanks Mark, I’m never going to be able to listen to this song again without imagining Tom Waits singing it! What’s he building in there? A cricket bat
When English people say British they usually mean English anyway. When John Major did his 'British values' speech - or whatever it was - everything he mentioned was English. How many so-called 'quintessentially British' things/ traits/ attitudes aren't English?
I lived in Scotland for a year as a cricket-mad teenager. It’s as if the game didn’t exist. The sports were football (soccer), rugby (XV) and golf.
Funnily enough over the last few months I have been occasionally watching some Cricket, and Aussie Rules on youtube, as it appears I can't get either on the tv in the US .... Disappointed to see I am missing another Ashes series
Actually plenty of people play cricket in Scotland but it doesn't tend to get much coverage. I once read more people play cricket in Scotland than rugby - and it's true that rugby is a pretty niche sport in Scotland.
I think (like ‘Where Are They Now?’) it was only played live at the Drury Lane proto-Preservation show in January 1973. I kind of feel unqualified to talk about this song knowing and caring nothing of cricket and seeing how deeply the central simile of this track affects the people who do. I will say that at times Ray’s vocals are so affected on this that he sounds like an American doing a bad English accent. FWIW as a resident of Scotland’s central belt (admittedly one who has no interest in sports of any kind) my limited observation is that rugby is considerably more popular here than cricket. Boys played rugby at my school, whereas only the cricket adjacent Rounders was played and not cricket itself. That said, my brother in law did play cricket in Glasgow when he was a wee boy.
Who actually plays rugby in Scotland though, outside of Borders hill farmers and posh people in Glasgow and Edinburgh? I played at school, because we were forced to, I'd rather have played cricket but we weren't given the choice. In my experience, the only time most people in Scotland are ever interested in rugby is if they manage to beat England.
Cricket Thanks to our leader for the efforts put into explaining cricket, but I gave up trying to understand long ago. My conviction is that cricket is like medieval philosophy or quantum physics : you may, with great effort, get a fleeting moment of illumination on the subject, but it won't last long. To me, Cricket - the sport and the song - is only a bagful of lexical delight that expresses Englishness in all its stereotyped glory. And I'm a good customer for that. I love this song. I always felt this song was primarily meant to introduce the higher classes, after depicting the tramp, the rock'n'roll nostalgic and their world. With Cricket, we enter a completely different world, with different references. I already mentionned The Duckworth Lewis Method, a project led by Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy) and Thomas Walsh (Pugwash) that extended the logic of this song to album length. I never bothered to look behind the mysteries of the Cricket words, but Mark's explanations lifted part of the veil.
I think you may have your answer there! I’ll shut up now, as as I say I don’t really know what I’m talking about here beyond my very limited first hand experience.
I enjoyed reading that Mark though wondered why there was no wicket keepers or stumpings mentioned. I will let you off on Fly slips, Silly mid on, Leg byes and Allrounders as i don't want to deliver you an off break and see you hit wicket or be Mankad!
I'll have to give that a proper listen. Out of interest, the Duckworth-Lewis method is a system they use to recalibrate scores in a rain effected one day match.
Cricket: I confess I’d have been one of those Americans with eyes glazing over as @Steve62 tried to explain the rules/laws of the game. My head is still spinning after reading Mark’s explanation and, quite frankly, I can’t come close to being able to imagine how someone came up with the original idea. I’ll try to watch that video explanation when I have the chance (as I use the phrase, “a bit of a sticky wicket” on occasion and might as well figure out what I’m talking about). The song itself: Ray’s over the top vocals is what sells the song to me. But I probably won’t be interested in hearing this outside the bounds of the musical. @Fortuleo remarks about setting up the story: yes, it certainly is taking a long time to do so in Act I. (Reminds me of a Dorothy Sayers ‘Lord Peter Wimsey’ novel. A long set-up before things start moving along).
ESPN+ ($6.00/month) has a lot of cricket and Amazon will be offering cricket from New Zealand in a few weeks.
Lol.... I was trying to keep it simple When we get into field positions, it makes you wonder what they put in their tea Gully, point, square leg, silly mid on, long on, deep square leg .... it sounds like a list of weird Pirates
Cricket Perfect example of a song I had no use for back then but have since come to appreciate. This has nothing to do with achieving some understanding of the game of cricket though. More it has to do with my ability to appreciate the sound of traditional jazz, it's incorporation in a pop/rock setting, and most uf all Ray's brilliant application of it, especially vocally.
I just watched the cricket video. “Put simply, the winner of the match is the team with the most runs after both teams have batted.” And it takes five days?!!!
