http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051204/focus/focus4.html
Published: Sunday | December 4, 2005

THE JOY of watching babies and little children is that they find everything so new, so interesting. The world for them is an inexhaustible delight of endless novelty.

At times, you feel almost envious and think of Wordsworth's words: 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!'

Of course, at other moments Thomas Gray comes to mind

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

The world pales as you get older, or so I increasingly find it.

Many things that once brought joy now engender boredom or indifference. Especially music, I notice.

How many songs that once inspired rapturous enthusiasm now seem at best, mildly amusing? Nice yes. Enjoyable yes. But not really worth getting all excited about.

The same with food. Once, I might have driven a long way for say, truly good jerk pork. Now, anything that's nearby and pleasant tasting and will fill the belly, will do. Laziness, old age - call it what you will - but such is life.

PROVIDING SOME PLEASURE

So I'm increasingly grateful for that steadily diminishing list of things that still give me genuinely spontaneous pleasure.

Chief among these of course is the company of an attractive, intelligent and spirited female.

"God created woman" said Nietzsche "And boredom did indeed cease from that moment."

Yes, sex when there are real feelings on both sides may be the most sublime of human experiences. But it's not the be all and end all that it was in my 20s or even 30s.

It's female laughter I really treasure now, the loveliest sound in the world. Naturally it's most delightful post-orgasmic. But it's surpassingly wonderful, even at the lunch or dinner table.

"An intellectual" quipped H.L. Mencken "is a man who has found something more interesting than women."

Well, I hope never to reach that stage, but remain firmly convinced that books are God's second greatest creation. Many say the printed word is on the way out, that's it's a TV and DVD world. Well maybe.

Once such warnings might have made me feel dinosauric, but now I view those who don't read with pity. Sure it's possible to live contentedly without great books just as it's possible to live happily without sex.

But those who haven't experienced them don't know what they are missing. For me, the searing pleasures of Dostoevsky have only been exceeded by the embraces of loved women, and maybe not by that much.

CRICKET, LOVELY CRICKET

Well of women and books there can be no doubts. But sometimes I find myself questioning that third great love of my - well advancing might be the best way to put it - age, namely cricket.

After all, it's only a ball game played mostly by moderately educated young men and the results really don't matter much in the long run. But then, what does?

As John Maynard Keynes remarked, in the long run we are all dead. So I've stopped listening to these little voices that tell me I'm wasting my time and started giving myself more ungrudgingly to the pleasures of Brian Lara.

Now Lara certainly has his critics. But maybe his great crime has been to be saddled with the worst West Indies team since the days of George Headley.

Indeed, other than Headley and Bradman, no batsman has scored a higher percentage of his team's runs. At any rate he's probably no better or worse a human being than say Viv Richards. But what does it matter?

Any clown can play the gentleman.

But who could time a ball so sweetly or flick a wrist so strong so 'featly'?

This much I am sure of - Brian Lara is a true artist.

Art is entertainment that lasts, or at least entertainment that lives in the mind. And I wager that for grace and dexterity and controlled movement, Lara is as great an artist as Nijinsky ever was - though since all who saw Nijinsky dance are dead we can never know -- and Nijinsky never faced 95-mile-an-hour missiles while doing his pirouettes.

And I will take to my grave the glorious memory of the three centuries I have watched him make at Sabina Park.

In fact, outside of women and family, that 213 on March 14 1999 - which brought West Indies cricket from despair to glory in one day - remains perhaps the most memorable emotional experience of my life.

Again, it feels a little silly to speak like this about a ball game. But I guess to those of my era who were raised on the West Indies with their mother's milk and grew up on a constant diet of radio commentary, cricket is truly - as Thomas Hughes put it in Tom Brown's Schooldays Part II - more than a game.

And after five nil in South Africa and 51 all out at Queen's Park Oval and starting on 37 for 4, West Indies cricket seemed on the verge of death.

And although it really should not have, since no-one's physical well being was at stake, it really felt in my heart of hearts like looming tragedy as play started that Sunday.

But in six unforgettable hours Lara changed the mood from despair to hope to unadulterated joy. I've never experienced anything like it before and probably never will again. His next match winning 153 not-out came close, but I only saw that on TV.

AESTHETIC DISPLAY

But Lara's 213 was not only in my experience unparalleled real time, real life emotional catharsis, it was an aesthetic display of the highest class.

No ballet could have surpassed it for correctness of movement, elegant body flow, and perfect timing. Going home, I pondered on the improbability of it all. What other endeavour could have produced such a sublime combination of art and drama?

All this came back to me watching his 226 last week that made him the highest run scorer of all time.

It wasn't one of his artistic bests, but it was still full of beautiful moments and also character, coming as it did after three dubious umpiring decisions.

And what makes Lara even more of a pleasure to watch is that he plays entirely in the spirit of the cricket ideal, walking whenever he feels he is out regardless of the umpire's decision - as for instance when on 91 in India in 1994 when no one even appealed.

And though countless times he has been given out unfairly he never complains or even appears to. I have no idea what kind of person he is off the field. But on it he is truly a golden age throwback model for the young.

As for the lost sleep, well 'Enjoy it while you can' I found myself murmuring. For in William Cowper's words:

'Tis a sight to engage me, if any thing can,

To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;

Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,

Have a being less durable even than he.

A DYING GAME

It is not only that Lara, at 36, is the already the oldest Test cricketer and must eventually retire sooner or later. It's that the entire ethos which has made his art so memorable and exciting may be vanishing.

For cricket seems to be dying here. You see football and even basketball games every day, but I couldn't tell the last time I saw boys playing street side cricket.

There are usually more players than spectators at matches, apart from internationals. And even there, interest is lessening. With Brian Lara in full cry against Pakistan earlier this year, the Sabina Park stands were half empty.

Once, almost every radio was turned to cricket when Tests were on. Now at most one in five are tuned in. Tests are not even on public TV anymore, having been consigned to the cable sports channel niche. Fewer and fewer people play the game. Fewer and fewer watch. And fewer and fewer care.

There are many reasons, among them globalisation, cable television, and bad and greedy management. But maybe cricket's time is simply passing.

Attention spans are shorter now. It's the age of continuous action, never a boring minute, 90-minute movies and basketball games, not contemplative 500-page novels or five-day Test matches.

Yes, twenty20 might revive interest in the grand old game. But it will not be the same. It takes time to savour and create lasting reminiscences. As Mahatma Ghandi said, there's more to life than going faster.

Ah well. Time for old clichés. Tout passé, casse, lasse - everything passes, perishes, palls. Except memories.