Biryanis, bhajis and braais: diverse culinary culture is at the heart of cricket

Twice a day Joseph Joffre, France’s military supremo during the first world war, would stop whatever he was doing and sit down to eat. No matter how perilous the situation at the front, or how many maps and generals required his attention, lunch and dinner remained fixed points in his day.

To most people, this sounds ridiculous. But to anyone who loves cricket, Joffre was simply a man who understood the importance of an interval.

Cricket is the only major sport capable of building towards unbearable tension and then stopping because the kettle has boiled. A batter can be stranded on 99, a bowler can be on a hat-trick, a match can be balancing on its sharpest point. No matter. Lunch is lunch. Tea is tea. These are immovable pillars around which the game must bend. It is therefore a shame France never embraced it.

“Imagine how good it would be to have a Test series on mainland Europe,” says Tommy Banks, a chef with two Michelin stars who once dreamed of becoming a professional cricketer. He pictures pastries for breakfast, beef bourguignon at lunch, millefeuille at tea and enough wine to make a five-day match require a sixth for digestion. “Captains would declare for an eclair,” he says, joking.

Not that cricket’s traditional strongholds have struggled to feed themselves. The game carries the scent of the places where it is played: biryani across South Asia, jerk chicken in the Caribbean, meat pies in Australia, braai smoke drifting across South African grounds and cakes and sandwiches in England. Banks calls it “the only sport where a cup of tea is seen as a performance-enhancing drink”.

Banks grew up in North Yorkshire bowling seam-up and batting aggressively. He imagined a future on the field until, at 18, ulcerative colitis led to three major operations. His playing ambitions disappeared and the obsessive energy he had devoted to cricket was redirected into kitchens.

He returned to the game through food, creating hospitality menus at Lord’s. Even after several seasons working there, he gets goose bumps when he walks through the gates. “For a kid who grew up a world away from Lord’s, it was beyond my wildest dreams. Now to be able to work there and be part of it is just wicked.”

Cricket and cooking, Banks believes, rely on the same qualities: composure, accumulation and countless small decisions made well. A successful service is like building an innings. One spectacular shot or perfectly cooked component is not enough. “Food is all about depth. Every single thing has to be made with love and care.” A dazzling but insubstantial innings, he says, “is like a nicely cooked steak without proper seasoning”.

But the connection runs deeper than technique. Food and cricket draw meaning from the people, places and memories attached to them.

That idea sits at the heart of Taste of Cricket, an England and Wales Cricket Board cookbook assembled by Jo Pocket, the organisation’s head of campaigns. It challenges the familiar image of the English cricket tea as an endless procession of sausage rolls and Victoria sponge. Those foods remain, but now share the table with a broader portrait of Britain.

At one Welsh club, Pocket encountered leek bhajis, placing a national emblem inside a familiar Indian dish. In Devon, volunteers welcomed Afghan refugees into the cricket community and asked families to contribute food.

“As soon as we started to chip away at what was happening, particularly in the grassroots game, it was a far cry from cucumber sandwiches and scones,” Pocket says. “There was such a wealth of different cultures creating ingenious dishes and merging cultures as well.”

The recipes reveal how the sport and the country around it have changed. Isa Guha contributed a Bengali prawn curry inherited from her mother, who used to prepare cricket teas. Other players spoke about mothers making pies, grandmothers bringing brownies and recipes passed through families. Pocket says she had never seen England players more animated than when asked what they ate at cricket as children.

“Food is such a great leveller,” she says. However fiercely the teams have competed, lunch or tea brings players, umpires, volunteers and spectators around the same table.

Cricketers often carry this relationship beyond the boundary. Matthew Hayden published cookbooks after treating tours as culinary exploration. Matthew Hoggard now runs a barbecue school. Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene helped to establish Ministry of Crab in Colombo, turning Sri Lankan seafood into an expression of national identity.

The modern professional’s relationship with eating is more complicated. Nutritionists, recovery plans and measured fuel have replaced the overflowing dressing room spread. Keshav Maharaj, South Africa’s premier spinner, has joked that retirement will finally allow him to gorge on his mother’s cooking again. For some players, freedom is imagined as a second helping.

My own cricket memories are similarly edible. My first recollection of the Wanderers in Johannesburg is the smell of boerewors rather than a Jacques Kallis cover drive. There were doughnuts, cooler boxes, biltong and, as I grew older, vodka-soaked watermelons. Later came Lord’s lunches, Edgbaston buffets and the inevitable touring weight gain.

The scorecards blur. What the day felt and tasted like remains. Perhaps that is why cricket has always understood what Joffre knew. A meal is not an interruption to the important business of the day. Sometimes it is the thing that gives the day its meaning.

Taste of Cricket is available to purchase at the ECB shop – all profits are shared between Chance to Shine, the ACE Programme, Lord’s Taverners, South Asian Cricket Academy and the MCC Foundation.

Stat of the week

36 – the runs Garry Sobers took off one Malcolm Nash over in August 1968, six historic sixes, a feat no one had previously achieved in a first-class match. But it’s just a small part of an extraordinary life. Here’s Vic Marks’ tribute, an obituary by Mike Selvey and a gallery that captures it all.

Root’s timeless value

If Test cricket is the eldest sibling and T20 the attention-seeking youngest, then one-day internationals have become the awkward middle child. Too long for some, too short for others, forever apologising for not being something else. Joe Root has become the format’s favourite son.

England’s one-day international series against India was a reminder that one-day cricket has not lost its soul. Perhaps it had merely forgotten where to look. Root finished unbeaten in all three matches, making 76 from 76 balls, 99 from 133 and 74 from 48. There was only one six in those innings. None of the runs would have broken the internet. Every one of them was worth the price of admission.

The pleasure was in watching the calculations unfold. Root’s onboard computer seemed permanently one step ahead, locating the gaps before the fielders had settled into them. He turned good balls into singles, singles into twos and meandering passages into mounting pressure. There were sweeps, glides, nudges and those hurried shuffles from fielders who realised, too late, that he had moved them exactly where he wanted. This was a master at work.

The numbers underline the point. Since the start of this World Cup cycle, Root has scored 1,304 ODI runs at an average of 81.5. Among batters with at least 1,000 runs during that period, Daryl Mitchell is next best at 64.94. Root has combined old-fashioned accumulation with just enough modern invention to become the format’s leading man.

He will be a few months shy of his 37th birthday when England arrive in South Africa for the World Cup next year. Conventional wisdom says he should be winding down. Instead, he looks more indispensable than ever.

ODI cricket has spent years caught between two identities, borrowing from Test cricket one moment and T20 the next. Root understands that it never needed to imitate either. The format has always had its own rhythm, built as much on patience as power, on judgment as force. While everyone else has been trying to reinvent one-day cricket, Root has simply reminded them how it is played.

Quote of the week

double quotation markI’m not sure my wife wants me to spend 300 days [a year] away again” – Darren Lehmann talks down his chances of becoming England’s next Test coach.

Memory lane

Galle, 22 July 2010: Muttiah Muralitharan entered his final Test needing eight wickets to reach 800 and reached the landmark with the last ball he bowled. Pragyan Ojha edged to slip, giving Mahela Jayawardene his 77th catch from Murali’s bowling.

Still want more?

Gary Naylor took in Northamptonshire’s Blast victory.

The Hundred is back. Simon Burnton explains the differences from last year and reports from the opening day.

And Ali Martin examines how England will solve their captain and coach conundrum.

… by writing to daniel.gallan.freelance@theguardian.com.

In?

Click here to read article