![]() ![]() Official bands can be hired to play but plenty of people bring their own instruments. ![]() Noise rolls down off the stands towards the pitch, an insistent drumbeat marking time beneath the swells of emotion, accompanied by the trumpet's clarion call. Flags wave like the standards of a benevolent army. The concourses are alive with rhythm and blue shirts, people dancing and singing, standing and cheering. Take a stroll around Colombo's Premadasa Stadium on a match day and you can see the magic at close quarters. Even if the ship sinks, the party will go on. Such is the importance of this musical genre that it can soothe the pain of defeat. The experience of watching a game in Sri Lanka is one of unrivalled vitality, and papare is its official soundtrack. Port Elizabeth has its own brass section. The sound of conch shells and steel drums remains evocative of Caribbean cricket, even if the fire has dimmed in Babylon. In Sydney, "Yabba" still has a seat in the Victor Trumper Stand, a symbol of Australian spectator feedback. Lord's does not welcome the sound of a Barmy Army trumpet but hums with the genteel burbling of bourgeois contentment. Around the world, different grounds have their own mood music. In the stands, outbursts of emotion are more commonplace, particularly in the modern age where lively crowds are a much-desired feature of television coverage. For players, there is often a need to attenuate those sensations: to block out the ambient noise, withstand the heat of the sun, ignore the fact that the ball becomes invisible at the very moment you hope to strike it.Īround the ground, pockets of papare keep time with the action on the field, a harmonious and joyful counterpoint to the usual hooting and hollering The taste of fingertips that have been working on leather. The feel of the ball in hand, the smell of cut grass. The sound of "Chelsea Dagger" cutting through the evening air after a batsman has been dismissed is a bit like being given an amplified send-off over the PA system.Ĭricket is a game of the senses. The French horn that can be heard tooting away incessantly during breaks in play at ICC events and the IPL is aimed at extracting a Pavlovian cheer from the crowd rather than providing auditory delight. Whether this makes the experience more melodious is open to debate. The rise of T20 has brought with it some of the more obvious entertainment gimmicks from other sports, such as cheerleaders and big-screen distractions, and it doesn't take much for the in-house DJ at limited-overs games to subject spectators to a blast of electro-pop. It is fairly common to encounter music at the cricket these days. The sound of one hitting the other is music. The ball is made of leather with a hard seam running around its circumference. ![]()
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