The Survival Of Rules And Traditions

What strange things survive in this world. Take Wisden's five cricketers of the year, the annual announcement of which still manages to generate column inches and debate. The rules remain as they always have been. A cricketer of the year cannot have been a previous cricketer of the year. It's an endearing principle but distinctly potty.

In fact, don't just take the five cricketers (for the record, Ben Duckett, Misbah-ul-Haq, Toby Roland-Jones, Chris Woakes and Younis Khan), take Wisden full stop. It is like a great aunt indulged at Christmas, who stubbornly insists on imbibing ginger wine that had gone out of fashion even before Christmases acquired a veneer of contemporary oenological sophistication. Year after year, auntie is wheeled out simply because she is auntie.

Which is not to decry either Wisden or great aunts, just that the former is a relic of days gone by. It occupies a past together with the FA Cup Final, a reminder of how there was once only one live football match per year on the telly (save perhaps the odd international) and of how once a year the previous year's cricket would be revealed for all to dissect and digest. Page after page after page of scorecards replete with their short reports. All our yesterdays of what must have been tortuous and chilly June days in Chesterfield as E. Smith of Derbyshire bowled maiden over after maiden over to J. van Geloven of Leicestershire, as the visitors ground out a snail-like 180 in the six hours (when lunch was always at half one and tea was taken at ten past four). 

There is, nevertheless, a sense of reassurance. The anachronistic can cling to its past even in the present day. Tweaks mean that Wisden is no longer a yellow-backed housebrick-sized homage to empire that had long faded. It is now a yellow-backed housebrick-sized tribute to the empire having struck back, IPL, Big Bash and all. But with Cricinfo available at the click of a mouse, its inherent backdated-ness accords it more the function of coffee-table adornment than one-time cricketing avidity.

Still, traditions die hard, even more recent ones and those founded not on mouse clicks or tablet touches. Rather like the five cricketers, these have their rules, those which grant them a superior status. Cricket websites' best-of-the-year cricketers, even sports personalities of the year and, horror of horror, Eurovision song contestants have succumbed to the totality of technologies in removing or reducing the carefully weighed deliberations of judges, abiding with the letter of the rules (well, maybe not in the case of Eurovision). The great unwashed in cyber and text lands cannot be trusted to do likewise.

I offer a Mallorcan example, that of Fornalutx. To the confusion of many, most of them in Pollensa it seems, Fornalutx isn't the only prettiest village on the island. The fact is that Fornalutx is the only prettiest village. That's because the association which determines prettiest villages says so. It despatched clipboard-bearing judges to rummage under dry stones, ramble through orange groves and to reconnoitre the village's cleaning system in confirming prettiness. It is unique to Mallorca, and nary an inhabitant of social networks was allowed anywhere near the judges, lest they be contaminated by popular prejudice. The great confusion arose because Pollensa had appeared on one of those blessed website things, the ones where any old Tom, Dick or Harry can register his vote. Moreover, it more or less borrowed the prettiest accolade in extending the nominations beyond just villages. The prettiest villages' association probably needs to think about a registered trademark, if it hasn't already.

There is of course another way in which Wisden is a survivor. Its sheer physical presence. You simply can't avoid it, so large is it. Indeed, such is its bulk that it can be used to keep any door open and withstand up to a force eight gale ramming into the door. While other giants of the print media may have gone the way of all Wikipedias or just Google, Wisden's voracious appetite for paper keeps entire industries afloat.

It is this, the physical nature of the hard copy, that can seem the most curious manifestation of Wisden of the current day. Yet it is anything but curious. Tangibility, holding something which isn't a device and that has the essence of presence, accounts for a great deal, even today. So is also the case with much of what Mallorca churns out for tourism. The island may be poorly served by digital applications (those from official, governmental sources) but it is still weighed under by the amount of paper. Apps and so on abound, but promotional publications are far from being in retreat.

Why is this? The answer is easy. Tradition, reassurance, tangibility; all to be cherished.

The Dust Of The Mallorcan Almanack

Is it the fate of old books that they should ever and only be dusty? Is their purpose solely one of being the last resting place of dried food particles, dead skin, mould spores, pollen, fabric fibres and the house dust mite? Generally, it is, until that moment when one is wrenched from under the weight of this powdery detritus that is then blown away with a force normally reserved for a stubborn cake candle and is allowed to settle on a companion novel, compendium or almanack.

Ah yes, almanack, a word that could have been invented with dust in mind, a repository in page form of a year gone by or of a year to come, a work of reference which, as with all works of reference, is designed to accommodate an ashen layer of house garbage in tiny form. Even the titles of almanacks come with an in-built antiquity that presupposes the gathering of dust. "Old Moore's". Or "Wisden".

If there were to ever be a census of shelf space devoted to collected works, prominent among them would be Shakespeare, Dickens and "Wisden". For many of its one hundred and fifty years, it was cricket's first and last word, the sport's own "Oxford English Dictionary". It was the indispensable source of information for those times when you were suddenly struck by not having total recall of the State Bank of India's match against the Ceylon Board President's Under-27 XI in September 1968. The dust would be scattered, down would come the 1969 edition and, of course, the bank had won by an innings and 29 runs.

But now, it is the last word in a different sense. By the time its word is uttered, it is outdated. In this year's "Wisden", the editor, Lawrence Booth, takes the England and Wales Cricket Board to task for reasons already long in their discussion and dissection by forums and social media. Its slavish attention to scorecard detail and to the statistical archived obsessions of cricket has long since been replaced by Cricinfo and its real-time updating. Its stumbling towards modernity has permitted some recognition of sub-continental usurping, but it hankers for the days when the Marylebone Cricket Club not only drew up the rules of cricket, it also ran it.

Yet it retains an aesthetic pleasure. It has a sturdy, comforting presence in contrast to the immediacy but also disposability of web and digital rivals. Its status as an almanack affords it an authority of endurance and continuity. As spring arrives along with optimism, it appears each April. It is the start of the season.

Venerability of this type can be applied to Mallorca, where the timing of its season is coincidental, where statistical obsession is as pervasive and as meaningless to anyone but the propagandist, where the rules were written, where the first and last words on tourism were once uttered, where an industry in its mass form was founded and from where it was exported and shared with others who were to become rivals and who were to reinvent the rules.

When Kerry Packer shocked the world of cricket in the 1970s with his World Series, "Wisden" was apoplectic. The old order was being shattered. Its timing was also coincidental. The startling rise of Mallorca and its assumption of tourism hegemony faltered in the mid-70s. The oil crisis was its own shock. It was one from which the island would learn, they said. The rules did need to be amended. More control was needed. Less reliance upon foreign tour operators was required. But once there was recovery from the shock, the urgency of renewal was lost. Things could carry on as they were. For "Wisden" and its Anglo-centric view of the world, this was true of the post-Packer era. it hadn't been as much of a shock as had been thought.

However, this complacency was deceiving. Changes were coming. Cricket was being consumed by greater brutality. The Caribbean led the way. Over there, away from the games on the beach or on the rock-hard pitches of Jamaica, a touristic brutalism was being unleashed. It was Sandals, not Club Med, which really made the all-inclusive.

This brutality was met with Australian aggression and cock-suredness and also, the biggest shock of all, an assertiveness previously unknown on the sub-continent. It fostered what there is now. The quirkiness of the State Bank of India has been replaced by the World Bank of cricket - the Indian Premier League. "Wisden" is still apoplectic.

In the same way, Mallorca was confronted with ever-increasing challenges to its authority, from those destinations to which it had exported and which rewrote the rules of quality and of resorts. And they now do so in a touristic real-time of web and mobile sharing. There is no need for an almanack. The book is constantly being rewritten.