Two matches down and the contest is fierce – the battle for the Ashes 2009 is well and truly alive! SBS meanwhile is making the most of the chance to promote their range of shows; ‘from cricket to comedy’, ‘from cricket to cooking’, you know the drill. Well how about this for a comparison – from Cricket to Christianity?! How is life like an Ashes Test Match?
Let’s have a look at a book I’ve been reading…

“It was early morning. The T-shirted figure threw the newspaper over the fence. I fielded it and turned eagerly to the back page. Here was the Australian Cricket team for the Fourth Test in Adelaide. Twice in this 1965-66 Test series against England, I had captained Australia. In front of me was the list of names. Mine was not there.”

Thus begins the book I’ve been reading this Ashes series, aptly titled Cricket and Christianity… Though the date and setting of the game may have changed, and in fact many of the examples he quotes throughout the book are not even Ashes games, the book provides some invaluable and timely insights. It is a book about someone’s experience of life, what it means to be a Christian and how that is just like being an international cricketer.

With permission from the book*, I will spend the next few weeks of Australia’s English cricket tour sharing bits of it with you. I hope these will help stimulate your thinking and help you play the game of life with a straight bat… safely navigating your way through its tests and ready for when your innings is complete to hear the words from your ‘skipper’ – “well played good and faithful servant”

For now, let me return to the book’s introduction and the first of many wonderful insights. As he stood there reflecting on having just missed the cut for the next cricket Test, he concedes that
“My batting scores in the earlier Tests had not been good. I suspected I would be dropped and I was right. This is the difference between Cricket and Christianity. In cricket you earn your way into a team and you stay there as long as your form is good. But in Christianity you do nothing to deserve your place in God’s family.”

Wow, what an opening, a ‘challenging first over’ so to speak. A first up statement that should blow us away… and this one is a difference between the game of Cricket (or just about any sport) and Christianity. Any of you with representative experience will surely know the joys and disappointments that are part and parcel of achievement. But with God, that is so very different. His acceptance is not based on our performance. Sounds like an offer to good to refuse doesn’t it? I hope you will see it that way as we move our way through the book… stay tuned!

————
*The book is title ‘Cricket and Christianity’, featuring the life of Brian Booth, former Australian cricketer and Hockey Olympian. The book is co-written by Paul White and published in Australia by ANZEA publishers.
Throughout the course of these articles, I will place all segments directly taken from the book in blue and will identify them with quotation marks.