By Alphonse Ragamu
Art Critic and Amateur Bowler
Last evening, beneath the overcast skies of a slightly damp but poetically resonant cricket pitch in Surrey, the much-anticipated first edition of the performance art spectacle, Dada Cricket, unfolded with a flourish of nonsense and high culture. Brought to life by the avant-garde collaboration between the King’s Men, a collective of experimental thespians, and the Dartmouth Eleven, a team of cricketing existentialists, the event blurred the lines between art, sport, and confusion.
The Concept
“Dada Cricket,” we are told by the “umpire-curator,” is a celebration of the nonsensical and the unplayable. Inspired by the Dadaist movement’s rejection of logic and tradition, this game sought to deconstruct cricket, that most hallowed of British institutions, and rebuild it as an abstract commentary on life, chance, and the futility of rules.
Before the match, a solemn declaration by a Marcel Duchamp impersonator and amateur groundskeeper, Nigel set the tone:
“This is not cricket. It is art, and therefore aesthetics are more important than your bats and balls and scores, although your bats and balls and scores are just as important.”
Rules, if one could call them that, were distributed in a manifesto, written in French and pasted to the inside of a taxidermy pigeon. Some highlights included:
• The fielders were required to wear surrealist costumes, with Salvador Dalí-style lobster telephones strapped to their heads.
• Every time a batsman hit a six, Tristan Tzara’s poetry had to be read aloud in its original Romanian.
• The stumps were replaced with mannequin legs, and the ball was dipped in ink so it left a trail of artistic “stains” across the pitch, later auctioned off as limited-edition lithographs.
• Bonus points were awarded for “existential gestures,” such as sitting in the middle of the field to ponder the pointlessness of the game.
The Match
The first innings began when the King’s Men took to the pitch, each holding bats painted in homage to Jean Arp’s biomorphic sculptures. The bowler from the Dartmouth Eleven, dressed as a teapot (an homage to Hannah Höch), hurled not one, but three balls simultaneously, all of which ended up in a nearby duck pond. The crowd, which included a smattering of art students, retired cricket historians, and at least one confused pigeon, cheered wildly.
At one point, a “wicket” was declared when a player accidentally tripped over the mannequin legs and into the hands of the opposing team, who were performing a synchronized dance in the style of Sophie Taeuber-Arp. “Out!” bellowed the umpire-curator, as the players responded by performing a collective Dadaist scream that lasted 43 seconds.
Tensions rose in the second innings when Dartmouth Eleven’s captain attempted to “run out” the King’s Men’s lead batsman using a surrealist boomerang fashioned from a cricket bat, a loaf of bread, and a piece of string. The batsman retaliated by performing a homage to Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even in monotone, causing a member of the audience to faint from “conceptual exhaustion.”
The Winner
After five and a half hours of rule-breaking, avant-garde confusion, and one impromptu interpretive dance inspired by Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, the umpire declared the match a tie. However, the winner was ultimately decided by a coin toss, except the coin was replaced by an old shoe, and the result was declared as “neither heads nor tails but something in-between.”
The prize? A single jar of “artistic air,” allegedly bottled from the performance itself, signed by Man Ray’s ghost (or possibly by the umpire-curator after too much cider).
The Scandal
Of course, no avant-garde event would be complete without some controversy. Midway through the game, one of the Dartmouth Eleven players suffered an unfortunate accident when attempting to field a ball that had been replaced with a porcelain figurine of a cricket (the insect). A shard pierced his leg, leading to his rushed hospitalization. Critics called the injury “a poignant critique of the fragility of art,” while his teammates simply called it “unnecessary.”
The Aftermath
Attendees could purchase “documentation” of the performance, including ink-stained balls (£10,000 each), lobster telephone helmets (£27,500, installation instructions not included), and black-and-white photographs of the event, shot by an artist known only as “Jonners,” whose camera was actually a shoebox with a hole poked in it.
Critics’ Reactions
The response has been predictably divisive. Art critic Polly Pofew declared the match “a transcendent interrogation of cricket’s artistic past, framed through the lens of cackling absurdity.” Meanwhile, the Disben Cricketers’ Almanack called it “an affront to both cricket and art alike.”
Saldo Caluthe and Tomas Sinke, hosts of the pretentious podcast Art World Exposed, tweeted:
“Finally, a performance as unnecessary as Tomas’s velvet suits. 10/10.”
Final Thoughts
As Duchamp himself might have said, “It’s not cricket. But that’s precisely the point.