What Did They Do Before The Internet?

I was thinking about the Internet earlier and the massive potential to ‘waste time’.

Well, I don’t really mean waste time.

Who can honestly say they haven’t gone on to YouTube for five minutes only to find themselves absorbed in a clip about fainting goats two hours later? Or haven’t taken two minutes to check a source (if you can call wikipedia that) for an impending deadline only hear a strange voice in your head saying, ‘Yea. It would be great to know who the WWF Hardcore Champion was at Wrestlemania 2000.’

OK then, maybe that’s just me.

But I’m sure, as you are reading one of these new-fangled weblogs, you know what I mean.

And who would dare call it time wasting? I have gleaned countless bits of completely irrelevant and utterly nerdy facts whilst doing so. I would go so far as to say it is a hobby of mine.

It was only on Monday that, thanks to something Dougie, one of my Lecturers said, I found myself reading a ‘list of assets owned by News Corporation’. From there, I moved on to Disney and the Time Warner.

Without the internet, I would not have found out that Rupert Murdoch owns 20th Century Fox, Searchlight Pictures, MySpace, Harper Collins and the whole of Australia. That adds to the knowledge I already had about him and therefore enlightens me further. ‘Time wasting’ on the internet has gone towards me passing one of my modules.

However, there is a dark secret that many Englishmen would love to keep from you.

They had this pleasure long before you did.

In fact, they had this pleasure long before anyone did.

Many Englishmen have been able to waste glorious time for 146 years.

And they’re all cricket fans.

Allow me to reproduce part of an article which was written by Rowland Ryder in 1995. It was titled, ‘The Pleasures of Reading Wisden.’

“The chief joy of reading Wisden is also the chief snare – once you have picked up a copy you cannot put it down. How many wives have become grass-widowed on account of the limp-covered, yellow-backed magician it is impossible to say. If a teasing problem crops up – when was W.G.’s birthday? Who captained the Australians in 1909? Who won the championship in 1961? – then ‘I won’t be a minute,’ says the cricket enthusiast, ‘I’ll just look it up in Wisden‘, and he disappears in search of his treasures. And of course he isn’t a minute: he may be away for an hour or for the rest of the day. He may even never return.

There is one thing that you can be quite certain of in ‘looking it up in Wisden‘ and that is that you will pick up a whole miscellany of information before you find the thing you have been looking for.

Suppose, for instance, that you want to look up the match between Kent and Derbyshire at Folkestone in 1963. You pick up your Wisden for 1964, open it up at random, believeing firmly that the problem will be solved in a matter of seconds, and you find yourself confronted with a Lancashire-Yorkshire match at Old Trafford.

The result is a draw. Forgetting now altogether about Kent and Derbyshire at Folkestone, you next turn up the Table of Main Contents to see if you can find out how Yorkshire and Lancashire have fared over the years in their Roses battles. On skimming down the Table of Contents, however, you come across a heading about Test Cricketers (1877-1963). This immediately starts you off on a new track, and you turn to the appropriate section to find how man cricketers have played for their country. The names Clay, Close, Coldwell, Compton, Cook, Copson leap up at you from the printed page: memories of past Test matches dance in bright kaleidoscopic colours before you. Wisden you feel, is as exciting as a Buchan thriller. The word ‘Buchan’ leads logically enough to Midwinter.

Midwinter – of course! – now, didn’t he play for England v. Australia, and also for Australia v. England. Research confirms that such was indeed the case. You look him up in Births and Deaths; but this entails searching an earlier edition. At random you select the issue for 1910; and sailing purposefully past an offer on page 3 of a free sample of Oatine (for Men after Shaving) you find that Midwinter, W.E., was also a regular player for Gloucestershire and for Victoria. Meanwhile you have hit upon another Test-match series.

In the first of this series of Tests England were trying out a twenty-six-year old opening batsman named Hobbs (Cambridgeshire and Surrey). He made a duck in his first innings, but did better in the second. ‘England wanted 105 to win, and as it happened, Hobbs and Fry hit off the runs in an hour and a half without being seperated.’

There are now two tracks that lie ahead. You can follow the Australians on their tour, to find that they won the Ashes but came close to defeat against Sussex and Somerset, and also played some unusual sides – Western Union (Scotland), South Wales, two rain-ridden draws against combined Yorkshire and Lancashire elevens, and, towards the end or the tour, Mr Bamford’s eleven at Uttoxeter. The other track, of course, is the golden trail of the Master’s 197 centuries.

Wisden’s attractions are endless.”

Aren’t you jealous? Cricket lovers have been enjoying this thrill for years.

Most of my own collection of Wisden’s (I have 15) are at home but I have brought the 145th edition from 2008 to Glasgow with me. It has pride of place on my book shelf.

Now when that book is exhausted, and I do mean the book for I shall never be exhausted from reading Wisden, what then?

Well thankfully Wisden have taken pity on all who missed out and have their whole collection online at cricinfo.com.

For the modern ‘reader’ who knows the sound of typing more than the feel of an old book, it may just be perfect for a good spot of ‘time wasting’.

Extract taken from The Picador Book of Cricket.