The ‘Big Match’ syndrome
In a cricket-crazy nation like Sri Lanka, nothing (much) gets crazier than the so-called ‘Big Match’ – the pageant-like hive of social activity that precedes the actual cricketing event, and which takes on a carnival atmosphere in the days leading up to (and even after) the game.
Technically, the paraphernalia surrounding the annual schools’ encounter against their respective cricketing rivals has little – if anything – to do with cricket. However, it is an essential part of not only every schoolboy’s (and some schoolgirls’) educational career, but also captures quite well the ethos of the game of cricket as it is played in the island.
That it encompasses a host of facets from a holy awe approaching the numinous to downright hooliganism has caused a cross section of society to respond to the ‘Big Match Syndrome’ with every reaction from hilarity to horror. Be that as it may, it has served a plethora of purposes. It has united Sri Lankan cricket aficionados across time, space, and essence. It has provided a rite of passage for young manhood – and womanhood. It has offered a great equaliser for students from all walks of life who attend public schools.
Therefore it is worthy of being subject to the scrutiny of the amateur cultural anthropologist – being a custom, ritual, and practice that has passed the test of time. Thus, this article on the ins and outs (no puns intended) of the cricketing syndrome that is the ‘Big Match’.
Points of interest
The plethora of customs, rituals, and practices surrounding this syndrome are represented below, with a brief description of each. Sometimes, they are presented from an observer/learner point of view; otherwise, from the perspective of a participant.
Fun on the streets: Young Royalists in a rush, flags aloft in the pre-Big Match parade while the blue and black Thomian flags fly high on the first day of the match. Pix by Athula Devapriya and Amila Gamage
Flags
The school flag of the scholastic institutions gearing up to meet each other undergoes an explosion of sorts. Flags of the requisite colour are reproduced in every size and shape. These are proudly displayed from cars, school vans, public transport such as buses and trains, at home and abroad. In essence, everywhere one goes… being most visible and vigorously protected where its bearers are likely to encounter ‘the enemy’ (a boy from a rival school).
If and when a chance encounter occurs, there is likely to ensue a mêlée in which the opposing camps attempt to divest their rivals of their flags. This schoolboy prank is termed ‘flicking’ – and the flicking of flags on roads and highways, to say nothing of at the match, is a combative and honourable pastime. The boy who successfully flicks more than his fair share of flags is covered in glory… and often in blood and slime. The more gory, the more the glory.
The ‘Cycle Parade’
This is something of a misnomer. A tradition whose origins are lost in antiquity, the Cycle Parade was originally a rally of schoolboys on bicycles who would proceed from their respective campuses to the cricketing grounds where the cricket match was being held.
Over time and the advancement of motorised technology, the so-called “cycle” parade came to include cars, carts, and chariots of every make, model, and year of manufacture. It has been noted by a wag that there is a wider array of vehicular transport at some schools’ Big Match Cycle Parade than there is at the annual vintage car rally.
In recent times, the authorities have cracked down on unlicensed vehicles and unruly drivers/riders, but the disposition of the powers that be has not entirely managed to rain on the parade of the revellers. Regrettably, many of the participants in this pageant are DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol); and it is in response to such rank irresponsibility that the City Police has of late cracked down hard on the traditional Cycle Parades.
A matter of great interest is the route to be taken by the Cycle Parade, for which a police permit has to be obtained by the Warden/Principal or the Match Stewards (senior staff and/or old boys). Traditionally, for older schools like S. Thomas’ and Royal College, the route will perchance take the boys past their sister schools, Ladies’ and Bishop’s Colleges (see ‘Storming The Gates’ below for more on this).
The ‘Truck Tour’
In the middle period of the Cycle Parade’s history, a more robust element of vehicular traffic was added to the volatile mix. It became par for the course for a convoy of jeeps, jalopies, and other souped up vans and trucks – often better suited for the junkyard than the street – to accompany the more plebeian cyclists. (Pedestrians are neither permitted nor tolerated!)
To be part of a ‘truck gang’ became a badge of prestige for every schoolboy in his teens. The attendant rite of passage – three days of ‘trucking’, spent cruising and carousing on Colombo’s highways and byways – was not to be missed by any schoolboy worth his salt.
Truck tours would take budding adventurers from their doorstep to the homes of the girls of their respective dreams (Often, it was the same girl… Perhaps, different dreams!?). En route, it was de rigueur to ‘raid’ liquor shops, litter disreputable eateries with one’s detritus from hat collections, and loiter at lovely girls schools.
Parents, police, and principals of other schools traditionally look with disdain on this aspect of the Big Match Syndrome – sometimes, with good cause. Stories of doings that would make the Rape of the Sabine Women look like a casual stroll in the park are legion – but are best taken with a pinch of salt. This is mostly because ‘sundown’ (or sundowner-driven) recollections of diurnal schoolboy doings are the stuff that legends are made of – half-truths and little lies kneaded in for good measure.
Storming girls’ schools gates
Both Cycle Parades and Truck Tours would inevitably wend their way past the precincts of sister schools, though the sentiments nurtured in the bosoms of the hormonal young boys was anything but brotherly. The sight of a dilapidated jeep disgorging a truck-load of decadent youth would bring day terrors to decrepit security guards who manned the gates to paradise in the good old days. (By the way: “good, old, days” is a technical term signifying that the revellers were not good, not old, and generally up to all their mischief not during the day!)
It was the norm for many generations in a long-ago age that the students and light-hearted staff of the girls’ schools would enter into the spirit of fun and frolic exhibited by the excited youth. The latter (and often the former, too) would leap and prance around girls’ schools gardens like dryads or maenads or woodland nymphs or what have you.
Inevitably, the bacchanalian boys leading the festivities would leave a trail of litter and loutish youthfulness in well-kept gardens or even in well-appointed classrooms. And, in a less serious and sexually earnest era, only serious infractions of the “look but don’t touch” rule – which was part of the strict schoolboy code of conduct – brought the disapprobation of the authorities and the discontinuation of this erstwhile tradition.
Boys’ tents
This was the enclosure at the cricket grounds where the boys of both schools would be housed for the duration of the match.
In much the same manner that “great wits are close to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide”, the dividing wall of hostility was often not enough to satisfactorily keep apart sportive youth with an eye on the main chance at flag-flicking.
Regular incursions were valiantly checked by straw-hatted school prefects and tent stewards. But the regular mêlée was part and parcel of the great game taking place in the middle.
Old Boys’ tents
The past pupils of each school were not above entering into the spirit of the thing (the operative word being ‘spirit’). They had their beer mugs stoutly clutched, their beady eyes on the members of the fairer sex in the adjoining enclosure, and their comradely arms placed firmly enough (for inebriates, that is) on the shoulders of their drinking buddies next to them… and it didn’t matter in these tents if you were a friend or a foe.
A unique sense of camaraderie usually prevails. Wine, women, and song about sums it up for cynics (but don’t quote me, dears, I am reformed or ‘Reformed’ now). But for the initiated, the Colts and Mustangs tents, to take but a select example, were the playing field of Eton, the battlefield of Waterloo, and the feasting hall of Valhalla, all combined.
To be fair by the spirit of journalistic reporting, there were often snakes in this Garden of Eden, this demi-Paradise; and they will be dealt with below.
Fashion parade
The fairer sex would turn out not only in their numbers, but also in all their finery, for the Big Match. While the event hinged on batting and bowling and fielding for the players and the aficionados of the game, the ultimate eventuality on which the fair maidens and their fond mothers had their eye was a ‘Big Match’ of a different sort. Fain they would to have a dashing young cricketer or chivalrous schoolboy bowl their maiden over!
These girls and their chaperones were considered something of a social nuisance by many if not most of the corsair boys and the cavalier old boys. The only stakeholders in the Big Match who treated them with the courtesy they deserved would be the craven media. Cowardly paparazzi present on the perimeter of the cricket ground would metaphorically snap up the lovely lasses and their ladylike escorts. They would then be reproduced most elegantly and even glamorously in the next day’s newspapers. The Queen of Sheba in all her glory was not arrayed like some of these!
That said, a note of jocularity – and even vulgarity – was often introduced into the courtly proceedings when these fine-feathered females would attempt to interact with their male friends and admirers vis-à-vis the game going on in the middle. For truth and beauty may be all we know and need to know, but only beauty can compromise the truth that cricket is not a game meant for girls. (At least in the aggravated, exasperated, intoxicated opinion of scores of indignant men and boys subject to the light-headed ideas of these femmes fatales!)
Political patronage
A big part of the Big Match was the presence of the powers that be in the main pavilion. On these three (formerly, two) days of days, no matter how powerful or influential in the shadowy world beyond the sporting arena, these mandarins were joyfully and willingly transformed into mere mortals. They ate, they drank, they sang… with the hoi polloi.
No doubt political deals were cut all the same, and parliamentary discourse sharpened all the while – albeit in the mostunparliamentary language. But for three glorious days of the local summer, the gods appeared to have come down to dwell among men and make their abode in the fields of gladness.
Fights and fisticuffs
Into each life, a little rain must fall. Few and far between are the boys and men who have not been touched by violence at the Big Match. As in the famous anecdote, the gladiators who attend the annual cricket encounter fall into three categories as far as brawls and blandishments go. Those who make it happen; those who watch it happen; and those who wonder what happened.
In the main, the clashes and conflicts and confrontations are soon forgotten in the larger interests and dominating spirit of the game… but many are the proud villains and valiants alike who bear the wounds and injuries of their martial action, as if they were sacred trophies instead of mere marks or scars to hide from their women-folk. For many a battleground hero has been felled with a curt cold word by the Dame Justice he married, a sisterly Valkyrie, or some maternal Avenging Angel upon his return home…
After party
In the evenings of the three days on which the Big Match is conducted, the activity spills over into happier hunting grounds. Hotels, bars, pubs, clubs, and restaurants are taken over and converted into morgues. Here, virtually dead bodies are propped up as in mortuaries, which is not inappropriate perhaps, for there is where post-mortems on the day’s happenings (and it is not all about the cricket, at that) are conducted into the wee hours. This eventuates until it is time to go home… or go back to the grounds!
At more elegant soirées, reserved for the elites, the flannelled heroes who had battled it out during the heat of the day – virtually forgotten until now – are feted and felicitated. Chivalry, courtesy, and romance are the order of the day (or night, as the case may be).
Postscript
All good things must come to an end. After all has been said and done, the Big Match Syndrome boils down to not whether the game was won or lost… but whether a good time was had by all? The result of the game is for statisticians and stiff-upper-lip party-poopers. Win or loose, we booze – that’s the crude motto of a majority of the Big Match participants.
Perspectives of interpretation
The metier or metrics of cultural anthropology may be applied with some measure of success to the phenomenon of the Big Match.
This event, in wide and varied forms – depending on the respective sub-cultures of the schools concerned – has become a visible part of the metropolitan landscape in the first three months of any school year. Its ‘meaning’ (in anthropological terms) pendulums between being a ‘rite of passage’ for schoolboys to a culturally acceptable ‘safety valve’ for student enthusiasm to express itself in extra-curricular social activity. Least charitable is the view that the ‘true meaning’ of the Big Match is the scholastic equivalent of “bread and circuses”. Whereby the mass of juveniles – who are otherwise likely to rebel and revolt – are indulged for a short if hectic season – to satiate their appetites for blood, guts, and sex. The introduction of the heady element of alcohol lends the otherwise ‘Promethean’ proceedings a ‘Dionysian’ aura.
The reality of the Big Match as experienced by successive generations of boys, old boys, teachers, staff, enthusiasts, admirers, aficionados, sportsmen, media, women, law enforcement officers, et al., underlines the truism that cultures are constantly changing. The Big Match of fifty years ago, as much as five years ago, is not the same animal, mineral, or vegetable as it was – if indeed it ever was what it was perceived to be.
In short, there are as many ‘mental maps’ of the reality that is the Big Match as there are observers and/or participants. And everyone’s culturally loaded perception of that reality is more persuasive than reality per se. Which is why you will find that one man’s Big Match is not another boy’s Big Match – and that a school principal can carp and cavil as much about the same annual encounter of the school he heads as a school prankster can wax eloquent about the calumny he heaped on his flag-flicking rivals’ heads!
Some conclusions
Having been a schoolboy observer of – and participant in – the Big Match subculture over several years (as trucker, a steward, and then a spectator – to name but a few of the roles played), this writer feels he is suitably situated to offer these conclusions on the Big Match Syndrome:
i. Good Educator.
It helps schoolboys gain valuable insights into adult worldviews and their component parts – such as law and order, decency and good conduct, healthy rivalry and honourable competition. It also socialises them into the role-paradigms that stand graduates of schools and colleges in good stead in later life… leaders, stewards, initiators, wards, guardians.
ii. Gentle Encourager.
Many a youthful maiden would be born to blush unseen and waste her sweetness on the desert air if not for the complex array of courtship rituals introduced and initiated by even the more egregious aspects of the Big Match culture.
Love as practised in the rude trade of trucking may be a crude and rough-hewn thing, but opens many lads’ eyes to the lovely charms of the opposite sex.
Some are spared from being scarred for life by the gentle encouragement offered by the fairer sex who understand readily enough that boys will be boys, and that behind physical demonstrations of attraction and interest there lurk shy young men fit for romance and marriage.
iii. Great Equaliser.
As in the game of cricket, then, even in the Big Match culture, now, the more perfidious distinctions of class and creed that characterise societal divisiveness are suspended – if only for a season. But at least it is a start in life for young men desirous of heading in the right direction.
In the Boys’ Tent, there are no cultural superiors or social poseurs. Even in the rough and tumble of a rivalry inspired tussle, there is a democracy of sorts by which a youth from any background or persuasion can get his nose bloodied or his body bruised as well as the next.
iv. Grand Enterprise.
Despite the brutal orthodoxy of egalitarianism evinced in iii. above, there is little doubt among those who have experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat that cricket, crazy cricket – as seen up close and personal like nowhere else as in the Big Match – is the grandest enterprise of man under the tropical sun.
For a while, it turns sportsmen into demigods, boys from rival schools into worthy if still ignoble opponents, and girls into creatures from myth and legend.
v. Glorious Experience.
Warts and all, the Big Match Syndrome is the next best thing to transfiguration to give a schoolboy his first taste of life, death, and life beyond death. To be at a Big Match is to experience the reality that for man as for boy, the vast marvel is to be alive. To return to the humdrum existence of more scholarly pursuits is to know the resurrection life… for there is always next year! Which makes plodding through yet another piddling term the abundant life – for with the turning of the cycle comes the return of the once and future Big Match Syndrome.