What on earth are they playing at? This was the exasperated reaction of some cricket fans when the England team adopted an unconventional approach in the first test match of this summer’s Ashes series. They ended their first innings—a “declaration”—before they had to, perhaps giving up the opportunity to post a much bigger score. Their batsmen played some extravagant, possibly reckless, maybe unwise shots. The captain, Ben Stokes, deployed some extraordinary field settings in an attempt to bamboozle his opponents.
And the result? A narrow but thrilling Australian win, by two wickets, with the outcome in doubt until the very last minute (cricketing jargon will be kept to a minimum in this piece out of consideration for non-fans).
Stokes was resolute in defeat. “We are not a results-driven team,” he said. “Any game you play in sport, you always want to be the winner. But not putting the result at the top of everything that we think about actually really helps us play free-spirited cricket. When I think what it’s done for the series and the game it’s hard to be too disappointed.” The second test starts on 28th June at Lord’s.
Not “a results-driven team”? This, on the face of it, is an astonishing thing to say. We are talking about elite, competitive sport here. For some, England versus Australia at cricket is the highest form of sporting competition there is: an almost religious event.
And this is a professional sport, too. There is a lot of money at stake, in terms of salaries, careers, advertising and sponsorship deals, and all the rest. But this England team is apparently playing for the fun of it. Enjoyment is a bigger priority than victory. It is an unlikely flowering, in the summer of 2023, of something quite old-fashioned: the amateur spirit.
Amateur is a charged term. It is not usually considered a compliment to be called “amateurish”. The prospect of witnessing (or enduring) an evening of “am dram” (amateur dramatics) in a church hall somewhere does not always make the heart beat faster.
But it is worth going back to the essence and roots of the concept of amateurism. Doing something for the love of it, rather than just or primarily for cash, is an attractive idea. One of the reasons managers are experiencing so much difficulty in persuading people to return to the office after Covid is that, too often, the workplace is simply not much fun. “Work begins when you don’t like what you’re doing,” as the American writer Joseph Campbell said.
Earnest, joyless professionalism may be efficient. But it wins only minds, and few hearts. We have seen this in sport before. The late Seve Ballesteros, a golfer who took an improvised and spontaneous approach to the game, was much loved, probably more so than the admired but colourless Nick Faldo. Ballesteros brought drama and something of the amateur spirit to the game even while he competed for huge prizes.
There is also a significant downside to consider here. In Britain we probably have too much of a soft spot for amateurism, improvisation and muddling through. Why else did so many people tolerate the idea of having Boris Johnson as prime minister for so long? He cleverly played on the British weakness for amateurism by inventing a comic and seemingly harmless persona, which fooled some of the people for some of the time, and which continues to fool a few people even now.
There is a positive and important side to professionalism which we should welcome: competence, seriousness and expertise. This is valuable, and we have to be alert to those who undermine or abuse it (as I wrote here in the context of the unlamented Dominic Raab).
We should have respect for craft and skill where they exist, and reject hopeful amateurism that is inadequate to the task in hand. The poet John Cooper Clarke was once asked where he got his inspiration from and he replied: “Inspiration is for amateurs—I’ve got a living to make!”
Ben Stokes, the England cricket captain, is one sense a throwback to the days of “gentlemen and players”, when cricket was still an amateur game with a limited role for dreaded professional “players” (at some cricket grounds they even used to enter the playing field from different gates).
But Stokes is also modern. He has been open about his own mental health challenges. One reason he emphasises enjoyment is that he wants to avoid having a grim and depressing experience while playing sport. It is supposed to be a game, after all. The former England football manager, Bobby Robson, used to talk about preferring to see smiles on his players’ faces. But players in any competitive, high stakes sport who seem to be enjoying themselves are sometimes viewed with suspicion, or considered to be unreliable. Not serious enough. Unprofessional.
The trick, then, lies in knowing when to do the hard work, and when you can simply have fun. We need, as some have said, to have a play ethic to go alongside a work ethic. When it comes to sport, and perhaps other parts of life, I think the amateur spirit has a lot to offer. And as for the Ashes: well, may the best and happiest team win.
