Elgar’s lament: how Anderson’s genius encapsulates cricket’s aural joy

A delicious thunk. An exhilarating clunk. Scritch-scratch … gudd-unk. It’s hard to put into words the noise made by James Anderson’s scudding detonation of Dean Elgar’s off-stump on the morning of the third day at Old Trafford. Believe me I’ve tried. Thud clop whomp whump tunk bonk clonk … qunckk.This was very nearly a 900-word onomatopoeic paean to that singular sound. There’s something about the harmonics of a ball cannoning into a stump that gets me in the pit of my stomach and sets my senses alight. I’m not sure what it is and probably shouldn’t delve too deeply but the particular combination of a five and a half-ounce leather ball thwonking, yes thwonking, into 28 inches of tubular English ash does something to me.

I’m clearly not alone. No sooner had Elgar’s ejected stump been retrieved and reunited with bail and ground the dismissal had been “clipped up” and posted online to much cooing. Individual fans and official accounts giddily shared the five-second clip and urged others to watch, more importantly listen.

“Turn the sound up on this!” one such poster of the wicket implored. “A classic of the genre” purred another. Still it went on – “Love that stump noise!” and “Get your cochleas around this!” Only one of these is embellished. One well-meaning commenter chimed in with a deliciously direct statement – “The Sound of Elgar’s Stump Flying Can Become Your Text Notification Noise” which while sounding like the title of a new Arctic Monkeys song was also food for thought. Another person was moved enough after viewing/listening to simply write: “Ear Porn.” No chance I’m Googling that one.

Passages of play such as the Anderson v Elgar wicket have a certain musicality to them, they tap into something within us and stir