London, Sept. 14, 2005. I have failed Norman Tebbit’s infamous cricket test. It happened last weekend when I found myself watching England play Australia in the final test match of “the Ashes”. For those of you — like me — who have never been able to muster even a passing interest in cricket, let me tell you that “the Ashes” is a very big deal. England has just regained them for the first time in 16 years.
“The Ashes” is a biannual contest between England and Australia. The name comes from the fact that Australia were the first foreign team to beat England on home soil, back in 1882. This led an English newspaper to run a mock obituary the following day declaring that English cricket was dead and that its remains had been cremated. And so started a long rivalry. “The Ashes” do physically exist; they are the remains of a burned bail (the horizontal wood on top of the stumps) that are kept behind glass in a tiny urn at Lord’s.
The Ashes series has been going on all summer. There were five Test matches and each match lasts up to five days. The final match — the fifth Test — started last Thursday and ended on Monday evening. Given all the excitement that this match generated, I decided the time had come to at least learn the rules of cricket.
So I spent much of last weekend slumped in front of my TV. It is very civilized; I could drink tea, read a newspaper, take phone calls and still follow the game. It took me a while to understand the rules and I must admit I am still somewhat befuddled by the “lbw” ruling, which apparently means “leg before wicket”, but then again it took me years to understand the off-side rule in football, so I guess it is to be expected.
I started off as a neutral observer, but as the match progressed I found myself rooting for Australia. This came as a bit of a surprise; surely I should have supported England, the country I have lived in since I was ten? Here was my first experience of watching cricket and I had failed the cricket test. Except that in this instance it was not a case of choosing allegiance between the country of my birth and the country of my home, but of finding myself supporting Australia, a country to which I have no links. Why is it that I found myself naturally drawn to support the other side?
At first I was worried that it could be down to something very shallow. Did I simply find the Australian side more appealing? I have to admit I rather liked the stylish green caps that they wore. Or maybe there was something subliminal in the color green? But when I thought it through I realized that it came down to my issues around patriotism.
I have great problems with patriotism in general and the patriotism that surrounds sport in particular. Quite simply I feel excluded and threatened by it. When the day after the match, I saw the crowds in Trafalgar Square waving St. George’s flags and singing Jerusalem, I felt a great sense of alienation. This was a party that could never include me. Patriotism is a concept that I associate with Americans and with a defensive worldview. It defines people according to geography and assigns values based upon it. It is one thing to value your culture and to want the people close to you to do well. It is another to think that your culture is better than other cultures and to discriminate between people based on the accident of their birth. It is one step short of xenophobia.
When it comes to sport, it’s its capacity to polarize people that I find discomfiting.
Years ago I went to Wembley to watch a game between Turkey and England. I was a teenager; it was the first time I had attended a football match. It was a friendly and a poorly attended one at that. All I remember about it was a little man in a coat who manually changed the score every time a goal was scored. They kept him busy that night, England thrashed Turkey. I had felt no compunction in supporting England; it was my home after all but the tide turned in 1998 when Saudi Arabia came to play England in a pre-World Cup friendly.
The embassy had organized buses for the Saudi supporters. We were picked up at the King Fahd Academy in Acton and driven to Wembley in a convoy. Our bus was full of women and young children, all waving banners and singing Arabic songs. As we entered the Wembley complex, the gathering England supporters began to notice us. Probably the majority was friendly, but there was a visible minority who hurled obscenities at us and made offensive gestures. It was the hatred in their eyes that marked me.
Since then the sight of England supporters, their faces painted white and red chanting “Ingerland Ingerland”, always sends a shudder down my spine. It is as if they are pointing a finger at me and saying: “This is our country and you don’t belong here!”
I told an Australian friend that I had found myself supporting Australia during the Ashes match. She understood. She always supports Pakistan when England play them. “It’s the outsider thing”, she told me, “I always identify with the outsider”. I guess after all these years, I still feel an outsider here in Britain.
