Allan Massie: Aesthetic delight can mean more than sheer weight of numbers

DURING the Cardiff Test, a contributor to the BBC's cricket page complained about the eulogies being directed at Ian Bell and his "dreamy" stroke-play. "Are Bell's runs more valuable than anyone else's?" he asked. "Do they count double?"

In one sense, this was a perfectly reasonable objection. A cricket match is won by the side scoring more runs than the other over two innings and, quite evidently, every run has the same numerical value. One might qualify this by remarking that, sometimes at least, the speed with which runs are scored may be as important as their number, but generally the observation that they all count the same is clearly valid.

Yet there is another side to it. Sport is not all about numbers. There is also an aesthetic element. There is one in all games, but it is perhaps more evident in cricket than any other. Style is important. An innings of 30 or 40 may stay in the memory when a laborious 100 has been long forgotten. Even a single beautifully-made stroke may lighten up a dull day. It's desperately unfair of course, but the fact is that Ian Bell, with his gift of timing that may make a cover-drive for four look effortless, with his range of strokes and the classical perfection of his style, offers the spectator moments of delight which run-accumulators like Jonathan Trott don't. Likewise, by any statistical measurement, Ken Barrington was a better and more effective Test Match batsmen than Tom Graveney, but, given the choice between a 50 by Graveney and a century by Barrington, I would have chosen the former every time. One might say the same of the Waugh twins. Steve was the greater batsman, but Mark offered a deeper delight.

It was in an essay about Graveney that Neville Cardus proposed what I think of as "the Cardus test". If you were in London and learned that X was 20 not out at lunch, would you leap into a taxi and head for Lord's? Ian Bell, yes, no question; Jonathan Trott or Alastair Cook, probably not. This is all sadly unfair, but that's how it is. There is a generation of cricket-lovers for whom David Gower remains the most beautiful English batsman and therefore their favourite.

The aesthetic element is less evident in other sports, but it's there nevertheless. There are stylish footballers who stay more vividly in the mind than more workmanlike, and sometimes more effective, players. Rather surprisingly, none of the eulogies of Paul Scholes that I read this week drew attention to the aesthetic pleasure he offered. This may be because Scholes has always looked a bit of a ragamuffin - an impression strengthened by the intemperate incompetence of his tackling.Yet the precision and imagination of his passing were sheer delight; it was like watching a first-class draughtsman at work. Giotto, asked to prove his skill in order to get some commission, contented himself by drawing a perfect circle with one sweep of the chalk or pencil; Scholes was the Giotto of Old Trafford.

Beauty of performance may be Classical or Romantic - Ken Scotland or Andy Irvine. It may be evident even when the player who exhibits it has a bad day. The first time I saw Barry John play for Wales, against Scotland at Murrayfield, he had a poor game and was immediately dropped. I watched that match in the company of the poet George Barker, who knew very little about rugby - football was his game. He raved about "that Welsh boy at number ten - a lovely player". He was quite right of course. A couple of years later, even New Zealand critics, stern judges and severely practical men, were raving about Barry John. Like Graveney, Mark Waugh and Bell, he never seemed to have to hurry or do anything ugly.

Rafa Nadal is a magnificent tennis player. His athleticism, determination and virtuosity never fail to amaze and evoke admiration. But he is not a beautiful player as Roger Federer is. Nadal's stroke play is full of effort; Federer's seems effortless, even when unleashing a vicious forehand. Nadal nowadays has the regular beating of his rival, but Federer still wins the aesthetic stakes, just as Stefan Edberg, my favourite of all tennis players, did in his great matches against the volcanic Boris Becker.

Beauty doesn't win everything, but beauty stays in the mind. I suppose that Muhammad Ali was at his greatest in his titanic battles against Joe Frazier and George Foreman, epics of the fight game. Yet it was the young Ali, when he was still Cassius Clay, and really did float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, who demonstrated that even the crude brutal old sport of boxing could offer aesthetic delight: the Rudolf Nureyev of the Ring.