The Beat Surrender

First up, please do be fooled by the apparently cricket based title of the album. This really is a series of songs just about cricket. No, honestly it is.

For those of you who are still there, here’s the low-down on it. But first, a word for our American readers.

I am acutely aware that The Beat Surrender has established a strong readership over the ‘other side of the pond’ with those crazy dudes and indeed dudettes. Well, one of your very own billionaires, John Paul Getty, was responsible for the following quote; ‘baseball is to cricket as checkers is to chess’. Very cerebral is our national summer pastime. This comparison was also expertly made in The Wire (the comparison between chess and checkers – draughts to us Limeys.) What do you mean you haven’t seen The Wire? – watch it now, it ain’t too late.

When two of Avon Barksdale’s foot soldiers are playing checkers with a chess set, D’Angelo explains the beauty and intricacies of chess (and its comparisons to the drug trade), including a memorable description of them ‘little bald headed bitches’, or pawns as they are more commonly known.

Now where were we, ah yes, cricket. Cricket probably complements music better than most sports with Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC among the most famous, along with the BBC cricket music (aka Soul Limbo) and the throbbing Channel Nine sports music which accompanied Kerry Packer fantastically over-hyped coverage from Australia in the 70s and 80s. Anyway, back to the Duckworth-Lewis Method, this album was written by Thomas Walsh and Neil Hannon – he of Divine Comedy fame (both pictured above playing ‘snow cricket’).

We start of with an almost Richard Stilgoe-esque romp simply entitled ‘The Coin Toss’, which is a silly, jaunty minute referring to the ritual which precedes every game of cricket. A very gentlemanly feel it has about it too. Track two of the album is the first single release, the eclectic and mellow ‘Age of Revolution’ – which tunefully charts the latest transformation that has beset the noble art of cricket. This is best illustrated by the lyric ‘Always denied entry, by the English gentry, now we’re driving Bentleys, playing Twenty20’, nice that.

I have to point out that as I review this album, I was feeling especially crickety, having attended a classic in village cricket the day before, at that most famous of grounds, Gildersome CC in West Yorkshire. I was accompanied by the usual suspects for a long innings of drinking, with a brief cameo from the Beat Surrender’s very own Kev in the late afternoon.

It was a classic in the sense that the home side were totally outplayed in a cricketing way, but definitely took the honours in a what turned into a ‘sledge-fest’ – including the home side’s number four batsmen ‘offering out’ the wicket-keeper and the entire slip cordon. As he’d only amassed two runs off around 30 deliveries, there was a pretty attacking field, so this constituted about six of the dominant away side. Outstanding fare.

As nominal home fans, we felt obliged to encourage the clearly inferior home side, by barracking the fielders as best we could. It’s not often you get invited to play for a team based on gobshitery, but we were invited to play in future, possibly even ‘opening the sledging’ for the home side.

This set the tone for Gildersome to make no attempt to achieve the runs required to win, but simply ‘stone-wall’ in order to frustrate the visitors and deny them two bonus points. This achieved nothing towards Gildy’s cause, except a sense of satisfaction in irritating the opposition. A classic English scene, and, yeah, of course everyone had a drink together after.

Next up is ‘Gentlemen and Players’ which celebrates the historic annual fixture between amateurs (the gentlemen) and professional (the players). This pleasing and harmonic track bemoans the fact that the players were often far better, at least until the famous W.G.Grace, who bore a bearded resemblance to Gildersome’s aforementioned Number Four, became a gentleman. There are many stories about Grace’s general unwillingness to accept he was out, and his almost one-man gamesmanship crusade.

There is also a report in a match against Surrey, that the ball lodged in Grace’s shirt after he had played it and he seized the opportunity to complete several runs before the fielders forced him to stop. He disingenuously claimed that he would have been out if he had removed it and, following a discussion, it was agreed that three runs should be awarded.

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