Bruce Anderson

The secret kinship of good wine and good cricket

...and a Bordeaux that may live to see another great West Indies side

A high proportion of wine-lovers also enjoy cricket, and vice versa. This might seem natural. Anyone with an aesthetic temperament will surely find his way to two of life’s greatest pleasures. But there may also be a parallel. Wine is made of decomposed grapes. Vignerons conjure sublime flavours out of long-decayed fruit. As you sniff a good red Burgundy, there will always be a scent of the farmyard. Those who make the great pudding wines extract transcendent sweetness from grapes which are already rotting before they are picked.

Cricket is a beautiful and gracious game. I still have a mental picture of a cover drive by Barry Richards. He hardly appeared to move. A gentle half pace forward, a mere flick of the wrists, and the ball was rocketing to the boundary. It was like watching an outstanding fisherman casting. There appears to be no exertion. Fifteen feet of rod and 30 feet of line are just an extension of wrist and hand.

The same is true of the shotgun. An accomplished shot will have his musket at his shoulder at precisely the right moment, as if by effortless spontaneity. Curiously enough, although music might seem more ethereal, it makes more obvious demands on the performers. I will always remember Norbert Brainin bouncing around on his chair as if he were urging on his violin, like a jockey spurring a horse towards the winning-post.

Beauty is truth: in the case of cricket, it is also blood. I cannot recall who was bowling to Barry Richards, but if he had been a quick, the next delivery might well have reared up towards the batsman’s throat at 90 miles an hour. ‘Skulling’ is the joking term used to describe short-pitched bowling. You would have to be a very tough batsman to see the humour.

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