A rose is a rose is a rose - update

More than two years ago, I wrote about the rose bush that my mother gave me.
It was a positive story about the survival of a rose bush down the years and the generations.  When I wrote about it, the bush was in full bloom outside my front door.
Sadly, my optimism was mis-placed.   Last winter, the rose bush, for no apparent reason, died.  My brother's cutting didn't survive, neither did one I gave to my daughter.  This seemed like the end of the line.  I even went to the house where my mother and father used to live in Hockley Heath to see if "their" bush still survived but there was no sign of it.
My last hope was my next door neighbour, who lives mainly in France, near the Swiss border.  I had given her a cutting.  Sure enough, she was able to confirm that it  had survived.  Better still, she arrived back in Bristol last week with the cutting in a pot and has given it back to me.
My job now is to nurture it to full health and growth and then if possible to take some cuttings.
And so the story goes on  Wish me green-fingered success!

The legacy of Phillip Hughes

The death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes was a tragic accident that has touched millions of people (cricketers and others) around the world. This has been most vividly symbolised by the cricket bats put out on doorsteps and in public places by those wanting to honour the memory of someone that most of us never really knew. He was just a name on a scorecard or an image on a television screen.

Now that his funeral has taken place, maybe we can begin to take stock and reflect on the possible long-term consequences of this tragedy. I am not thinking in particular about helmets and bouncers. No doubt the helmet manufacturers will look at improvements that might have prevented the fatal consequences of that blow to the neck. But there is a trade-off between safety and mobility. Being safe from the rarity of a blow to the neck is of little use if the batsman has insufficient neck movement to twist and turn. As for bouncers, they have been part of the game ever since Australian fast bowler Ernest Jones sent a ball through W.G. Grace's beard. “Sorry, doc, she slipped,” he is alleged to have said.

No, my thoughts concern the whole way in which players conduct themselves on the field. Over the last quarter of a century, it has become the norm, in international cricket at least, for players routinely to swear at, abuse,mock and threaten their opponents. The kind of behaviour and language that might cause you or I to be arrested if we indulged in it on a night out on the town has been celebrated and praised as being evidence of a manly competitive spirit on the cricket field. The same Australians who are now mourning Phillip Hughes were largely responsible for initiating this approach. Steve Waugh coined the euphemistic phrase “mental disintegration” to describe the purpose of the behaviour. Successive captains continued to endorse the practice by their words and their deeds. The term sledging came into being to describe everything from the occasional (supposedly) witty remark to the crudest personal verbal attacks. In America, they call it trash-talking, which gets closer to describing a set of behaviours intended to demean the receiver but that also taints the deliverer.

How did we get to this point? Probably because it's in our nature as human beings. Australian psychologist Dorothy Rowe got it right in her profoundly wise book Friendsand Enemies. We need enemies because we can project onto them all those attributes we find unacceptable in ourselves. Our enemy binds our group (or team) together. The anger and aggression which might tear our team apart we can turn on our enemy. In order to make this work for us, we have, to a greater or lesser extent, to dehumanise the enemy. The less that we see our enemies fully as fellow human beings, the easier it is, on the cricket field, to humiliate and abuse them – or, on the world stage, to kill them.

Sometimes, events occur that change our narrow view of friends and enemies, of “us and them”. Sadly, it often has to be a tragedy like the death of Phillip Hughes that achieves this. Undoubtedly, within the world of cricket in the last week, there has been, in the short term at least, a major attitude shift, most clearly demonstrated by the words and actions of the Australian captain, Michael Clarke. This is the man who told tail-end England batsman James Anderson to “look out for a ****ing broken arm” at the start of the last Ashes series and who has, since he was appointed as Australian captain, orchestrated, condoned and encouraged the sledging efforts of his team.

Clarke's response to the death of his teammate has been moving for all to behold. He has grown in stature day by day and, in the process, has redefined for himself and others what it means to be a real man. We know now that it can include opening your heart for the world to see, shedding public tears and expressing deep emotions.

In his funeral oration, Michael Clarke said of his fallen comrade:

“His spirit has brought us closer together..... He always wanted to bring people together and he always wanted to celebrate his love for the game and its people.

Is this what we call the spirit of cricket?.....The bonds that lead to cricketers from around the world putting their bats out, that saw people who didn't even know Phillip lay flowers and that brought every cricketing nation on earth to make its own heartfelt tribute.....

This is what makes our game the greatest game in the world.

Phillips's spirit, which is now part of our game forever, will act as the custodian of the sport we all love.

We must listen to it. We must cherish it. We must learn from it. We must dig in and get through to tea. And we must play on.”

Hard though it must have been for Michael Clarke to stand up and say those words, the real challenge lies ahead when deeds take over from words. There surely must be no more threats of broken arms, no more of James Anderson calling MS Dhoni a “f***ing fat c***” and no more of Dhoni threatening to “squeeze the life out of” the England bowler.

So here is the challenge. If we want to live out the fine words spoken by Michael Clarke, those of us who play the game, who write about the game, who umpire the game , who watch the game, need to re-set our standards, to raise our sights and, in our own actions and in our reactions to others, reject the idea that being aggressively boorish is the best way to play the game.

Can the world of cricket rise to the challenge? It won't be easy because a whole macho culture has developed that will refuse to disappear overnight. But if enough people stand up to be counted, maybe – just maybe - a change can come to pass. This thing can be done if, as Michael Clarke says, we listen to the spirit of the game as expressed through the life of Phillip Hughes. We will need to take it one step at a time. We must dig in and get through to tea. And we must play on.