Rafe Spall: Locking Eyes with Spielberg & What Makes Cricket So Great

0:00I've spent my life trying to convert people to this sport, so I don't know if I'm going to start succeeding now. And I had that thought on stage after making eye contact with Steven Spielberg, I could feel it. I was like, fuck it, I'm going to hit Glenn McGraw back over his head. What the umpire would say is, Captain, do you think that this should be out? So it's sort of... Spirit of the game. So you go, well, but it's within the rules of the game, but it's not within the spirit. What does that say about you as a person? Yes, exactly. Yeah. People assume with people who are in movies and films that ultimately that does take up their entire life.

0:34But it seems like ultimately that's like a side hustle compared to your cricket obsession. To my main interest. Yes, exactly. Hello and welcome to The Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that reveals the refined and the rare people, items and stories that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain, and today we shall be stepping into that most civilized kingdom of willow, leather, flannel, and impossible elegance. It's the world of cricket. Few sports carry such a distinctive culture, and fewer still inspire the kind of lifelong devotion we'll be exploring today. My guest is the incomparable Rafe Spall, actor, cricket obsessive, and advocate for the power of bespoke tailoring.

1:20Hello, Rafe. Hello, Tom. It's lovely to be with you. It's nice to be with you too, in your front room. I call this the dispatch box. Well, it's very dispatchy and boxy. Yeah, boxy, so yeah, yeah. Very pleased to be here. Boudoir. Well, actually, we're not far from the Oval Cricket Ground. We're not far from the Oval Cricket Ground. But a ball's throw. But a ball's throw. Yeah. Especially with your strength and vigor. With my arm. Yeah, absolutely. I'll clear it easy. Yeah. So I think two people who are trying to kind of get, I guess familiar with this podcast and its sort of nascent episodes may see the topic of cricket and kind of wonder firstly why it fits in here.

1:58You know, am I just looking for an excuse to talk to like a famous actor? Or am I, you know, doing something that genuinely has a kind of cultural imprint in the world of luxury and in the world of how men are and or could be? In terms of luxury, obviously this is a podcast which looks into aspects of luxury. There's no greater luxury than time. Now, this is perhaps the longest game in the world when played in its test match form, which goes over five days. And I suppose that the Regency gentleman was really looking for something to do. And cricket simply filled time and was a great novelty. so you're going to sit there for five days and watch a game and bet on a game.

2:51And in the same way, it isn't just the reserve of the privileged. It's absolutely a game which highlights and crosses and shows up brightly the British class system because it isn't just the reserve of the upper classes. is absolutely a working class game as much as it is a middle and upper class game. Of course, the English cricket team, up until the 30s, I want to say, I'm not a great historian of the game, was populated by both gentlemen and players. Where the gentlemen were, what it says on the tin, gentlemen and the players were paid. They were professional. I understand. And they would travel in different classes on the ship to Australia.

3:39and

3:45not so much now but traditionally bowlers tended to be from a lower class and batsmen aristocratic because the idea is that you get the sort of bowlers to bowl at Millard and then they get faster and faster and that's why you get this great sort of contest between bat and ball and that's one of the great things of this in terms of fairness, this idea of right and wrong, what's cricket, what's not cricket, Englishness, fair play, morality, is that it speaks to the fair contest between bat and ball. Yeah. And I think good sportsmanship, fair play, and I guess, honourability, that is so behind, I think, any kind of conservative value.

4:35And I don't mean conservative in the political sense. I mean it in the sense of anyone with a kind of nostalgic view of Britain. You know, if you look at good sportsmanship and good conduct, that is behind so much of how people across history have, you can understand why they behave a certain way. I absolutely agree. You know, going over the trenches and all these sorts of things, you know. I mean, the whole poem of play on play the game, you know, is linked to going over the top. And the way that that was done was, you know, it was all about, you know cricket cricket played its part there yeah that's fascinating yeah absolutely it is a small c conservative sport as you said it absolutely is but it is at the same time very progressive so you get new forms of the game like 2020 yeah like the 50 over game like the 100 which is a recent incarnation of the game so yes there are certain things which are removal immovable in terms of its sense of fair play, in terms of certain rules, but at the same time, it is progressive.

5:39So in that dichotomy and in that paradox, it makes it apolitical. Which is why it's, again, appealing. Because, you know, we've all played cricket, if you're English, at school. State schools. I went to a state school to play cricket. we've all had a go so I guess when you watch it at the highest level you can't help but put yourself in their in their shoes you cannot go up to the crease with a bat and not have every sort of young boy's dream of kind of that Hollywood moment of just at the right time playing the perfect shot I still think about it now I still lie in bed fantasizing about going out to bat at Lord's against Australia to win the Ashes.

6:33And I would genuinely trade any success that I might have been lucky enough to garner in acting to play cricket for England. I really mean it. Marvelous. I really would. Just to know what it's like to go out. And the closest I've ever got to what it must be like is doing plays. Yeah. I went to see you in a play. You did. you saw me into Killer Mockingbird I did and you were absolutely superb well we try don't we we try you're very trying but I you know I did a play on Broadway and I what was that? I did Betrayal by Harold Pinter I did it with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz and it was who? sorry he was James Bond and she's won an Oscar and I it was the three of us and it was directed by Mike Nichols who directed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate, one of the great film and theater directors of all time.

7:34And on the opening night, in the audience, there was a piece of paper up backstage who told us it was in the audience. And in the audience was Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Julia Roberts, Joe Biden, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and head of every studio. and it was the most sort of terrifying experience in my life. And I was that nervous before I went on that my dresser, Joe Hickey, went to put on my jacket and I couldn't get it on. My arms went numb. And when you're backstage on a theater show, you've got two lights this big. You've got a red one and you've got a green one.

8:17And the red one flashes. And you press that red one, which then tells the stage manager that you are on your mark, ready to go. And then that stops flashing and it goes block red. and then you wait for the green light. And the green light means you go on. And the first scene of that play was Rachel Weiss and I come on, we meet and we have a 15-minute chat. And in that moment, I felt like I was about to go back for England, right? And I had this very clear choice in my mind. Because I was that nervous that my knees were going and I couldn't raise my arms. The music started, the lights dimmed, green light went on and I walked out and I looked out into the audience and made direct eye contact with Steven Spielberg who looked exactly like Steven Spielberg I bet he did so I came on and Rachel was there and I looked out and there's Steven and I went and started speaking to Rachel now in this moment a cricketing analogy came to my head which was you are batting at Lord's and you've got two choices Mitchell Johnson is bowling at you at 95 miles an hour and you can either explain Mitchell Johnson quickly Mitchell Johnson is a fearsome Australian fast bowler from the late 2000s who bowled like the wind and he's bowling at you at 95 miles an hour you've got two choices you can stay in and do whatever you can to stay in just block it just get behind the ball and don't get out.

9:59Or, you can do what Kevin Peterson did in 2005 against Glenn McGrath, dance down the pitch and try and hit him back over his head into the stand. I dare you. Now, what can happen in that situation? You can miss it. You get bowled. How humiliating. You got trudged back to the pavilion. Or, you hit Glenn McGrath back over his head and 30 ,000 people at Lourdes go, wow, what the living F was that? And I had that thought on stage after making eye contact with Steven Spielberg and looking at the great Rachel Weisz on stage, I could feel it. I was like, fuck it, I'm going to hit Glenn McGraw back over his head.

10:44And I'm going to be as free as I possibly can. And I'm just going to try things that I've never tried in the previews. I'm not going to try and stay in. So you literally did play a game? I did, I did. I went for broke. And, you know, it all sounds rather sort of self-aggrandizing. We like that on this show. It's what we're here for. We're on a podcast. Welcome to the Luxury Dispatch. Well, we don't talk about luxury. We talk about something entirely different. Yeah, exactly. We're going to be self-aggrandizing. It will be self-aggrandizing, which is a great luxury. Which is a great luxury. Yeah, it is indeed.

11:17And I went for it. And I've absolutely got cricket to thank for that. Now, this was a tiny insight in what it must be like to play top-level professional sport. And actually, what separates the good from the great? Because anyone can, not anyone, but very good players can score 100 for their county with 50 people and a dog watching. And they can do it relentlessly. But it's a very, very different game when you play test match cricket, when you play at its highest level against the best people in the world. That's different. do you think when Ben Stokes goes out now if he's feeling a bit nervous he goes look you can either be Rave Spool on in Broadway on the first line of betrayal and you know look at Stephen Spool who am I to say whether it's occurred to him but you know it may have I don't know what's inside Ben Stokes' mind none of us do but it's entirely possible should we get Ben Stokes on and ask him You know, it's not beyond the realms of comprehension, of course.

12:22But yeah, that's the way that the England cricket team are playing now, which is about expressing yourself, which is about if I get out, who cares? Yeah. Because I went down trying. I went down going for greatness. Like Bon Jovi. Like Bon Jovi, exactly. Down in a blaze of glory. Right, exactly. Exactly. Because if it works out, wow. Yeah. It's got a poetry about it, cricket. and you know I go to high Anglican mass every Sunday and in the same way through the liturgy of the bells and the smells and the incense and the cassocks you might have a brief glimpse of the otherwise ineffable I get that watching sport, specifically cricket the ritual the rules that are old as the trees that you get glimpses in something deeply poetic and unspeakable in between those gaps, I think is why it's so powerful to me and sort of like a religious experience.

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14:23Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 Copilot. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose, proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours, with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention. Timberland, built on craft. Visit Timberland.com to shop. What is it about cricket that invigorates you the most? I should start by saying that cricket isn't the sort of sport that, if you're watching or listening to this podcast, that you're going to come away from it going, right, I'm going to get into cricket.

15:09I think it's a hard... Let's aim higher. No, because I've spent my life trying to convert people to this sport. So I don't know if I'm going to start succeeding now. I think it's the sort of thing that unless you were bought up with it, it's befuddling. And I understand why people don't like it. But that doesn't stop me from having a deep, lifelong passion for it and with it. Yes. A huge relationship. And I think, like all sport, but specifically cricket, you can map one's life with it. So if you say to me 2005, that means one thing. That means the most famous Ashes series ever played in this country, which we, the English, won at that cricket ground over there.

15:51So it's got an emotional thing for me. And it's strange because it's sport, which means nothing, but also everything at the same time. and I was thinking about why it is emotional and I think it's bound up in familial relationships I think from an early age it's when your dad starts paying attention to you do you see what I mean? it's a way of bonding with your father to sit there watching a test match for a day without having to speak even though my father was a very sort of garrulous man and a wonderful father but I think it speaks to a form of sort of parental bonding. But it just captured me to the point where now I can sit there and watch all five days of a test match.

16:44I'll watch a full day from 11 till 6. I'll watch the highlights. I'll read all of my favorite writers' coverage of that specific day. And I will scroll Twitter for hours. Trying to find the right opinion. Because it's such a subjective thing and different people pull out different things from it. It's got this wonderful sort of novelistic quality to it. It's a cliche to say, but it's got these ebbs and flows where you think you're on top one minute or you think you're behind and you think you'll never win. And then from the jaws of defeat or in fact victory, the other can be snatched. and that speaks to me to life.

17:28Yeah. Which is why I like it so much. It's like a philosophical side to it. I guess so. If I'm really looking down deeply into it, I'd say that would be one of the reasons why I find it so appealing. But did you, when that sort of scholarly or intellectual side of things, whether you researching it deeply and reading reviews and just sort of, you know, finding as many opinions on it as possible, I mean, did that go back pre-internet when you, did you have like copies of Wisdom in your house? Yeah, I absolutely grew up with Wisdom, but I would go and buy every single paper. Do we need to explain what Wisdom is, do you think?

18:04Wisdom is a sort of armagnac of the year statistics because across all forms of cricket. Yes. But what I like about it is it kind of speaks to just how important people have always felt cricket is. It's something that needs to be documented at all times. And I think that's amazing. You can look at a scorecard and get a feeling of a game. And so the other thing that I do to follow the cricket as well is whilst I'm watching it, I will also on my phone have the BBC's ball-by-ball coverage of it. Yeah, okay. Because the richer the tapestry of description, the greater I find it. Also, I've been known to have it on the TV and listen to Test Match Special on the radio at the same time.

18:49That creates quite a difficult syncing experience because one is quicker than the other. but if you can get it down, that, my friend, is a rich experience, let me tell you. Gosh. It's a sort of obsession that has really brought me a great deal of joy. Yeah. And I know some people are into sport and some people aren't. And I sort of envy and feel sorry for people that aren't because it dominates my day. See, this is the lovely thing and why it's so lovely that you're here is because my guess is people, and I think actors are often to blame for this, is that the amount of emphasis put on the craft of acting and the time needing to be spent on sets, and, you know, because you are not shy of work these days.

19:37You are a busy man, and we'll go into that later. But people assume with people who are in movies and films that ultimately that does take up their entire life. But it seems like ultimately that's like a side hustle compared to your cricket obsession. To my main interest. Yes, exactly. It's like Paul Feig with cocktails. He's like, you know, he'll direct a film when he's sobered up. Well, exactly. But, you know, I imagine that, dear Paul, I'm a huge fan of not only his films, but his terrific dress sense. I don't imagine he's drinking martinis during the day, whereas I will definitely be listening to Test Match Special right up until the board has gone on, on a take.

20:18Okay, do you have a ritual during that as well? Not just what you're listening to, but when you watch the game itself, do you have, I guess I know sports people have it for sure, but as a spectator, do you have your superstitions as you watch? I don't. I was brought up in a very superstitious household. So I've hence renounced all superstition. My father, because similarly with sports, there is a great history of superstition with actors as well. Yeah. My dad being an actor. a great national treasure one of our finest not only actors but Englishmen and he he won't say the word Macbeth will he not?

21:02he will not he will call it the Scottish play and if I was to say the word Macbeth and I'm saying it now sorry dad if you're watching I don't imagine you will he doesn't concern himself with such things he would spit into his hand or he'd walk out he wouldn't like it Good for him. So I like to say it as much as possible. I really enjoy it. That's fabulous. I know, it's ridiculous. But no, I don't have... I'm saying that if... One likes to think that you sort of renounce the things that you've been given by your parents, that you rebel against them. But actually, if there's a batsman that I really want to stay in, trying to save a game, and he's still in, I have been known to not leave the room.

21:43Just in case me leaving the room means that he's going to get out. But, you know, I think with superstition, you end up putting yourself in the center of the world, don't you? Which you should always try and... Try and avoid. That's a really good point, yes. I think sporting in general has that because I think it's... Especially the slower moving sports. And I think that that's an interesting point with cricket is that however much you may, with your wonderful vocabulary and capacity to deliver a line very well and convincingly, cricket is a slow moving sport. It can be. Yeah. It's fits and starts.

22:16it's in much the same way that baseball is and actually American football is that you can go and sit at the Oval or Lourdes or Edgbaston some of our great sporting cricketing arenas in this country you can sit there with the paper sit there with a mate all day having a chat and not miss that much and then you get these extraordinary flurries but I think there's this idea that cricket isn't athletic and I think that perhaps in the past it hasn't been but the modern game is deeply athletic. And I think actually the game was changed in the 70s by those great West Indian sites. Malcolm Marshall, people like that.

22:58These extraordinary physical specimens who were just stronger and faster and quicker and much cooler than us. Yeah. And so they sort of started to change the game. but now you get the odd fat cricketer. Well, yes. I mean, I grew up with, certainly in the halls of school, there was a lot of portraiture of WG Grace. Big lad. Who was sort of a celebrity. Who became very fat later on, but early on actually was a middle distance runner as well as a cricketer. Yes. He has that sort of Brian Blessed thing where he kind of doesn't really look it, but does actually climb Everest for fun. Just a quick digression on Brian Blessed.

23:42I once caught the documentary about Brian Blessed climbing Everest. I just happened to be flicking through it. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. He is an amazing man. He climbed it in the guise of Mallory, right? So no oxygen in a tweed suit. Yes, yeah. And nearly bloody made it, right? Nearly got to the top. I'm not sure he's ever been quite the same since, but I don't think he did much. I mean, it's Brian Blessed. Brian Blessed. I don't think he did much training. But on this documentary, what I really appreciated is that even in the pits of hell, on a sheer icy rock face, on the north face of Everest, he still found time to be Brian Blessed.

24:19So there was this fantastic shot of him. And he's on the side of this rock face, literally clinging on in a blizzard with two tennis rackets on his feet, and a frozen beard. And he goes, Now, if I just keep going, I'll get to the top. God willing!

24:41Isn't that fantastic? His brain is mangled, but he's still Brian Blessed. Makes you proud to be British. It certainly does, yeah. But no, what I was in a long rambling way of saying is that cricket now is actually very, very athletic. And someone like Ben Stokes is a fierce competitor. And obviously, a physical competitor. if you're going to bat potentially for two days, which can happen from 11 in the morning till 6 at night, you need quite a specific sort of… Fortitude. You do. A constitution. A constitution of a countenance. We like big words here. We do. And we're good at them, aren't we? Yeah, very good.

25:25Let's keep going. But not only physical endurance, but the mental discipline it takes. Now, cricket specifically is a form game. Perhaps more than anything else. Golf, maybe, is a relation to it in terms of form. Yes, okay. But batting specifically. Do you mean being in form or having good form? Being in form or both. Okay, fine. But specifically, I'm talking about being in and out of form because it's such a mental game. Got it, yeah. So cricketers, specifically batsmen, are often talked about being on a run of good form or being in good nick. There's very few batsmen in the history of the world who have ever maintained form for the entirety of their career.

26:07I can off the top of my head think of maybe Donald Bradman or Steve Smith, the current Australian batsman. See, Donald Bradman, that's a story I remember hearing when I must have been eight years old at boarding school. They're big fans of cricket at boarding school. They tend to be. My headmaster, his name's, I've said this on a podcast before, but I didn't name check him, but he's a wonderful man called Gerald Barber. Great name. Great name. Great man. Mr. Barber. But he used to walk down the hallway of school and kind of mimic with the palm of his hand a kind of solid forward defensive stroke.

26:44Yes, exactly. A forward defensive stroke. and to him it was the ultimate example of good character and if you could do a good forward defensive stroke then nothing really else mattered and I think that that's an interesting part of cricket for me growing up understanding it is that it plays very much into the idea of Britishness you know the phrase something is or isn't cricket It's just not cricket. Yes, it's the idea of something relating to character and relating to what we in this country think is good conduct. I think that's very interesting. I think that's a very interesting observation of the game and one of the reasons why it's so linked up with a specific idea of Britishness is one of the things that our American cousins or people that aren't into cricket struggle with the idea of is that you can play a game for five days and still not get a result.

27:47And there's such a thing as a thrilling draw. And that you can bat the day out or save the game by playing forward defensives. It speaks to a certain kind of resolve and a gritty sort of rearguard action, which I think we find very appealing in terms of the fabric of British culture in our history. I think it's sort of linked up. The idea of the rearguard action is a very sort of romantic idea, isn't it? But also that, you know, a four defensive stroke is not flashy. And cricket is a sober sport. The white kit, the kind of quiet English countryside fields, the handshaking at the end of the, you know, the sort of clapping in the new batsman type thing, that speaks to a very specific sober British way of being that I think can't really be overlooked at all.

28:45I think it's a very intrinsic part of not only how we culturally grow up just generally, in the same way that we grow up generally being part of a Judeo-Christian heritage, but we also all inherit this cricket heritage too, I think. Absolutely. It speaks to a certain form of sort of Victorian morality, I suppose, and that was actually where the game turned into the game that we know and love today. I mean, it's been around, historians have looked into it, No one really knows about the genesis of it exactly when it came from. It's sort of a bit watery, but it was definitely someone like WG Grace who really solidified.

29:19He was one of the first huge sort of celebrities, really, in Victorian Britain. And so Victorian morality has definitely had an influence on the game today. And yeah, it is separate in its manners. And the spirit of the game, we can talk a little bit about the spirit of the game because you don't really talk about the spirit of the game of football or golf or even rugby, but there definitely is the spirit of cricket. Yes. Which is this mysterious idea is that you can go, well, yes, that may well be within the rules of the game, but it isn't within the spirit of the game. Like that stumping that happened in the Women's World Cup?

29:58Well, there's a few examples, as unboringly as I can. I'll talk about the idea of the mancat. Now, the man cad is a form of dismissal, which is named after a subcontinental cricketer. So basically, the bowler is running up to the crease to bowl, the popping crease, as you call it. And then you've got two batsmen. You've got the batsman facing the delivery, and you've got the non-striking batsman. And what the non-striking batsman tries to do when the bowler runs up is back up the batsman. So if the batsman is going to play a shot, he needs to be walking down the pitch in order to do a quick run, let's say.