Three Things Thursday: Another Big Book, A Mistake, and Bazball

We have just about a week left here on Cyprus to wrap up our study season at the site of Polis, and it feels as good a time as any do a little three things Thursday.

Thing the First

A colleague of mine received his copy of Peter Brown’s memoirs yesterday: Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton 2023). He made the clever observation that many of Brown’s most influential and important works were quite short. In fact, some were mere articles and others were short, incisive books (which occasionally were little more than essays). It seems rather tragic (or at least disappointing) that he would decide to write an autobiography than runs to 736 pages.

I also wonder why someone who has had such an impact on scholarship and is so visible and well-known felt the need to write a memoir or, better still, to publish one. It seems like the kind of thing that can only get one into trouble.

Thing the Second

I was checking on something in an article that we published about five years ago and noticed that we called this vessel a CRS Jug:

This, my dear friends, is not a jug. It’s a basin. Oops.

Thing the Third

I would guess that most readers of this blog know that last week was the first test of The Ashes: the century old cricket rivalry between England and Australia. This year’s series is enlivened by England’s embrace of Bazball, which I’m still working to understand, but it seems to mean cricket played with unapologetically positive intent. Like many European sports (soccer/futbol, road bowling, golf, boxing, or Quidditch), there is a tradition in cricket of playing for draws or, at very least, playing in such a way to keep one’s options open until circumstances (or the profound lack thereof) force one’s hand. 

Bazball seems to dispense with that (inasmuch as Bazball has a coherent and consistent philosophy) and focus on maximizing the opportunities to win at every moment of the game. Whether this approach is “properly sporting” or will pay dividends against an Australia side that is committed to playing a more deliberate, pensive, and traditional style of test cricket, remains to be seen, but the first test match appears to have been exciting, if nothing else. I’m hesitant to say that England has “Bazballed itself out,” but Australia has asked some hard questions. 

Over the years, I’ve posted a few times on cricket and I think there are more reasons than ever to embrace the leisurely, pre-modern, pace of long-form, test cricket this summer. If nothing else, it’s a pleasant break from the world of no pitch clocks, continuously running time, “Champions Leagues,” and “World Cups” (putting aside the somewhat farcical “World Test Championship” which is both so confusing to be almost meaningless for a casual fan and so new to be largely irrelevant). Instead, there are bragging rights, historical memory, and a tiny trophy-urn of disputed origin. It is what it is and even with the rise of Bazball, test cricket represents the kind of escape that doesn’t care much about whether you’re entertained, (over) stimulated, distracted, or bored.

Here’s some of my writing on cricket that I pulled together for an NDQ post a couple of years ago.