It’s dark. If you squint, somewhere in the orange dusk light, there is a snarling fast bowler. No cowardly batter is coming out. They pretend it is beneath them, but in truth, it’s fear. This is a horrible place, and their chances of success are low. So they want a human shield.
They send out a bowler, who has already done their work for the day. They have blood under their toenails, microfractures of their spine, and their knee is already swelling to twice its size. Yet they are strapping up again, this time in protection. Their skills are running in and bowling. They have little to do with batting, even in the best conditions.
Here they are asked to do something they are not made for, and they do it almost unthinkingly.
There is no proof it works; in fact, they have seen the opposite. But they believe in the concept, so they put their body and wicket on the line for the greater good.
The Nightwatch position is silly and anachronistic. Yet, we do it because we want to help however we can. That in sacrificing, we can build something more. That the many is more important than the one.
Cricket is a selfish team sport, and yet even in that, we have this moment.
And all I am saying is that if there was an alien invasion, this kind of weird cricket shit would be really handy.
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For too long in my life, I have been planning for an alien invasion and trying to work out how cricket could help.
Maybe what started it was Raphael vs Casey Jones in the first Ninja Turtles movie. Or perhaps Shaun and his friend with the cricket bat taking on zombies? In Signs they used a bat (albeit a different one) to take on the visiting aliens. Actually, it was probably none of them; I’ve always been obsessed by things like this. I wrote a script about an alien invasion of a club cricket changeroom.
I don’t want to come across as one of those people who believes in aliens because a US President released a bunch of blurry photos to stop people talking about his paedophile friend. I have no idea if aliens are real, but I find it weird in a world where we all have smartphones, we don’t have any pictures.
None of that matters here, because we are assuming that some carbon-based life forms have attacked Earth, and that we as cricketers will have to help save this planet.
So I’ve come up with a very non-conclusive list of things that I think cricket could bring to the party in such an event.
Running between the wickets
Okay, this will seem odd. But most people can run, well some can, others do that weird pointy elbow thing. But running with things on is what only long-distance runners do with those skinny little backpacks.
Batters run with all sorts of stuff on them. Big heavy helmet that makes a weird, tinny sound when you’re moving, chest and arm pads, thigh and inner thigh, plus gloves, leg guards and of course a bat. And we can do that for hours.
Our greatest batters have the ability to move things around an inner-city inter-species battlefield. Short targeted runs, for hours on end. With the occasional tea break.
Fielding Angles
Old men spend years poring over old battle plans in books, which is mostly two sides lined up against each other in NFL or rugby style. We would have a clear technological disadvantage against any alien incursion (I shudder to think how many of us die listening to ChatGPT.)
This won’t do, so what we need is people who see things in 3D. Which is what captaining on a cricket ground is all about. Finding their hitting zones, blocking off their best shots.
This might sound like pro-human hyperbole, but good luck to the aliens against an in-out field.
Throwing arms
There are other sports like javelin that could help more with pure power throws. But cricket is unique in that you have to do all sorts of different throws. Underhand, backhand, mid-range, and long.
I assume that at one point the aliens, having studied our culture, will have seen movies from the 1990s and drop some kind of non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generator to make all our puny tech even less important.
So throwing shit will become important.
Batters’ eyes
Steve Smith can see a haemorrhoid on a gnat’s arse at 1000 yards. Before eating his breakfast, Sachin Tendulkar puts on dark shades so he doesn’t see what people are eating in neighbouring towns. And Jacques Kallis’s eyes are so good that he can see the earth is not flat.
These are incredible scouts.
They will be able to see things that the rest of us cannot.
Sledging
This could be controversial, because we don’t know of the language capabilities of these aliens (that absolutely do not exist). But I believe that in a world of smart glasses that translate for you, the aliens will probably have something to try and understand what we are saying.
Now, this will prove a negative in most ways, but the one way to turn this to our advantage is through sledging. Chirping. Mental disintegration. Whatever it is.
At its best, sledging can upset the opposition’s thought process. And it usually works better on those who are not brought up with it.
A few well-timed “I’ve eaten better crabs than you” could be an essential part of our defence.
Draws
Most sports are played until a team wins. That means at a certain point, a team knows they can only lose from here. Cricket has draws. Which means you can be beaten all the way through, and still not lose.
The Peloponnesian War kind of stopped when both sides realised no one could win. The Korean War is a modern example of this. Sometimes you fight, and neither side wins.
Not only are we comfortable with a draw, we know how to play for one. Against an advanced civilisation, perhaps going for the draw is our better option.
Follow-on
This is really a subsection of the draw. But the follow-on is an incredible device for teaching large sections of society about the fact that sometimes, if you are going to lose, and that is the only option, it is better to do it quickly, and then fight another day.
I assume we will be doing a lot of following on early in the conflict.
Cricket bats
This is obvious, but there are a lot of cricket bats in the world. I have like ten in my house, actually, probably more than that. Most cricketers have one, and after doing some research, I’ve found estimates suggesting there are three to four times as many cricket bats as baseball bats.
Now, baseball bats are handy, but the issue is they are one-dimensional. There is only one shot. Cricket has a load. We don’t know how many heads these things will have, and where their heart is. We can’t just be playing one shot against them. We need sweeps, pulls and drives, and then we can still use our bat to slog to cow corner in that familiar baseball style.
There are a lot of bats around sheds and spare rooms of this planet, let’s use them to bash in some alien skulls (if they in fact have skulls).
Bowling
It is pain. Every day. For pace bowlers, this is obvious; any group of people who have to drill into their own toenails to release the pressure from blood welling up is a different breed. And spinners pee on their hands to toughen up their callouses.
But also, a bowler’s main skill is hunting. Glenn McGrath has an elephantine memory, which is weird, because of that time he had a photo in front of a dead elephant.
What bowlers are doing is looking for weaknesses in near-perfect batting machines. The aliens will come with technology we don’t understand; sending out Murali and Vernon Philander to work them out seems like as good a plan as any.
Local knowledge of the pitch
Our sport is built on using conditions. Most sports have the same ones continually, but we have to exploit, adapt and change at a moment’s notice. It breeds a different kind of skill set.
Now, I have personally never fought an alien species, but I assume lots of variables come up, so you want the ability to change very quickly. Not to mention that our best defence is understanding our local environment.
Short leg
We sit a person within bat distance of someone who is trying to hit the ball incredibly hard. At any stage, we could have brought in a rule to say that you can’t have someone within half a pitch distance of the batter. Especially as players got stronger and started to hit the ball harder. We could have allowed some kind of full-body armour.
Cricket hasn’t done either. It has kept people in danger, for tactical reasons, for more than 100 years.
I don’t know how squatting near an alien’s bum would help, but I am excited about the opportunities that it affords.
Prediction
It is impossible to face a delivery at 90mph without making predictions. That is what our batters do.
I am going to assume it is impossible for us to take on an alien invading horde, so again, that is what we are asking our batters to do.
We want them to stand very still, study the enemy, the formation, the local terrain and then formulate a plan before the battle starts.
Flight
Most people in the world can throw straight and hard, or at least attempt that. But I would assume the aliens know that and have counters ready.
That is where spinners and their flight come in.
Also, they will be expecting us to be meat-eating man animals. But they will be captivated by the grace and poetic dance routine that a spinner has, before they crane their necks up to realise they have been beaten in flight by a grenade.
Ducking bouncers
Most people don’t want to get hit in the face, but have no idea how to stop it. Our sport has that built in. Dropping to a knee, getting inside the line or limboing under danger, that is what we do.
It is cricket’s rope-a-dope, a way of slowing down the threat without actually doing anything. Also, if a laser is being shot at your head, the ability to weave is probably a plus.
Number Elevens
I have been thinking about this a lot, maybe too much. But I keep coming back to one thing: in a war between people who can travel at lightspeed and sacks of meat who pick their nose, chances are, we are fucked. They will kill and eat us, maybe not in that order.
You know what we are in that situation. Number Elevens.
Most sports have some kind of equal battle between two skilled athletes. Only cricket can have Mike Whitney trying to save a match against Richard Hadlee at the MCG 40 years ago. The best in the world up against the worst. Someone who is completely out of their depth, without the skill or ability to handle themselves. Having to go up against a legend. Cricket has David vs Goliath all the time.
That is us against the aliens. We will be outgunned, outthought, and outplanned.
They are Richard Hadlee; we are Mike Whitney.
But the thing is, some of the greatest triumphs have come from the number eleven just holding on.
Can we beat the imaginary aliens I made up in my head? I am not sure, but can we score Jack Leach’s single? Thanks to cricket, yes we can.
Especially if it's an invasion from the planet Krikkit :P