mills

Cricket Fighting.

I recently read Hugh Raffles’ excellent essay on cricket fighting, which for the first five pages I believed was a Swiftian parody along the lines of A Modest Proposal; it seemed incomprehensible to me that there existed a world of massive wagering, cricket trainers, performance enhancing drugs for bloodline-bred crickets, and cultural traditions surrounding contests between these insects stretching more than 1000 years into the past. It was unbelievable, but it is nevertheless real.

Champion crickets are beloved and honored; the vanquished are released into nature and protected by a curse against any who would harm them. Their fights are goaded by men with small blades of grass (inspected for knives and chemicals!), and between fights crickets are trained, medically attended to, and given sexual partners for the release of their urges.

Doping is such an issue that crickets at the top levels of competition are kept in “public houses,” where their trainers are supervised and they detox from any drugs given to them. Weight-manipulation is practiced, too: saunas sweat crickets down to lower weight classes (measured in zhen, a “Shanghainese cricket-specific measure now used nationally for this purpose”).

Raffles discuses the thirteenth-century Book of Crickets which is the origin of much cricket lore, as well as the 72 types of cricket personality and methods of training. A local legend named Master Fang at one point demonstrates his techniques:

[He] barked orders at the cricket as if at a soldier (“This way! That way!”…) and the insect, to Michael’s and my real astonishment, responded unhesitatingly, turning left, right, left, right, a routine of exercises that Master Fang explained increased the fighter’s flexibility…

Of additional note is the associated wisdom offered by those whose lives are intimately connected with the bloodsport, some of which is quite beautiful; quoting (and paraphrasing) Raffles:

The Five Virtues (present in ideal humans and crickets):

1. ‘When it is time to sing, he will sing. This is trustworthiness.’
2. ‘On meeting an enemy, he will not hesitate to fight. This is courage.’
3. ‘Even seriously wounded, he will not surrender. This is loyalty.’
4. ‘When defeated he will not sing. He knows shame.’
5. ‘When he becomes cold, he will return to his home. He is wise and recognizes the facts of the situation.’

The Three Reversals (present only in crickets):

1. ‘A defeated cricket will not protest the outcome of a fight; he will simply leave the arena without complaint.’
2. ‘A cricket requires sex before a fight and performs better for the stimulation it provides; rather than having an enervating effect on athletic performance (as, according to this reversal, it does in men), among crickets, pre-game sex promotes physical prowess, mental focus and fighting spirit.’
3. ‘Crickets have sex with the female on the male’s back’ — a position functionally impossible for people (without complicated equipment). Moreover, as the entomologist L.W. Simmons points out in what we might think of as a decisive commentary on Reversal Three: ‘Since the female must actively mount a courting male there is little if any opportunity for forced matings by males.’

Raffles’ essay is an amazing study; you might also consult the selection of cricket fighting photos in the Life archive, a video of market-fighting, or the minimal Wikipedia article.