Frank Sinatra: Sunshine of the life of many a cricketer

In the noble game played under the sun, that remained perhaps unknown to him, Frank Sinatra remains the sunshine of the life of many cricketers.

Frank Sinatra, born December 12, 1915, the legendary singer who croons in every lovelorn heart, never sang about cricket. There is virtually no record of his association with the game. Yet, as the world celebrates his hundredth birth anniversary, Arunabha Sengupta finds him linked in various ways to the noble game.

We know Virender Sehwag surprisingly sandwiched his farewell speech between a quote by Mark Twain and a line from a Frank Sinatra song. Who would have expected a man who did not know Vinoo Mankad to be aware of these two American legends?

But as far as Sinatra is concerned, Sehwag was not the first. When England cricket’s megastar Ian Botham had announced his retirement, The Mirror had run four full-colour pages stacked with tributes. Pro-Botham journo Chris Lander had splashed two interviews across the issue. In one of the tête-à-têtes the icon had said that he was ‘determined not to become cricket’s version of Frank Sinatra.’ That meant no comebacks.

In Shane Warne’s bizarre self-commissioned painting that decks up his house, the scene depicts a fantasy get-together of his ultimate party guests.  Even as Angelina Jolie lies topless and face-down on a deckchair and Jack Nicholson smiles sinisterly with his face half turned to the front, Sinatra stands in front of Mohammad Ali just behind the swimming pool.

It is however, My Way that echoes in the souls of many, many cricketers, Sehwag being just one of them.

The England coach Peter Moores says, “If you don’t do it your way then, as Frank Sinatra said, you regret it to the end.”

In the seminal Bodyline Autopsy, David Frith writes that Harold Larwood’s favourite tune was Sinatra’s My Way: whenever he heard it, he would “always smile and nod knowingly.” Of course, Sinatra crooned this favourite in 1969, long after Larwood’s playing days. But, he touched the hearts of so many cricketers with those simple words.

Strangely Sinatra, whose voice leafs tenderly through the book of love, almost fell out of love with this particular song himself. Besides, he never had anything to do with cricket. One wonders if he was even aware of the game.

When he sang, “There used to be a ballpark here, the field was warm and green; and the people played their crazy game with a joy I’d never seen,” he specifically added the imagery of beer and hot dogs, rock candy and a great big Fourth of July, underlining conclusively that he was singing about baseball.

Perhaps Bishan Singh Bedi and his brigade of starry eyed fans can insist that “I’ve the world on a string” was all about the left arm spinner, but again, Sinatra was singing about love.

And even when he crooned “I’ve got you under my skin,” he was not talking of Rodney Marsh chirping behind the stumps. He sang as usual about love, of having you “deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me.”

The “Strangers in the Night” exchanged ‘glances,’ but had nothing to do with the pink ball. They just wondered about the chances of exchanging love before the night was through.

The cricket fan can perhaps argue that Sinatra sang of the game with the words: “Night and day, you are the one, only you ‘neath the moon or under the sun, Whether near to me or far, It’s no matter, darling, where you are, I think of you day and night.” Yes, it was as if he was strumming the cricket-lovers’ pain with his fingers, singing their lives with his words, but he meant it to be about love.

Nevertheless, he remained a universal favourite of cricketers. After all, cricketers are just a cross-section of mankind; and there has been no one quite like Sinatra, with melody after melody to touch the hearts of one and all year after year after year.

So much so that Michael Parkinson clubbed Sinatra with Don Bradman when he talked about the ones that got away. Parkinson rued never having had the chance to interview those two. “I got closer to the Kid from Hoboken [Sinatra] than I did the Boy from Bowral [Bradman],” said he.

Of course, Parkinson’s fellow Yorkshire legend characteristically gave his own inimitable spin on this declaration. In 80 not out Dickie Bird, quite close to a century himself, wrote: “People sometimes wonder why I never appear on Parky’s television show. It was said that he has interviewed everybody worthwhile except Frank Sinatra and Dickie Bird.”

Good old Dickie. He kept the essence of cricket and maintained the initials, but stealthily walked into Bradman’s shoes with the nonchalance of a seasoned after-dinner speaker.

Yes, Sinatra perhaps never held a cricket bat in his hand. But he has cricketing anecdotes constructed around him. In the noble game played under the sun, that remained perhaps unknown to him, he remains the sunshine of the life of many cricketers.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history of cricket, with occasional statistical pieces and reflections on the modern game. He is also the author of four novels, the most recent being Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of The Ashes. He tweets here.)