Book Launch – The Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment

An evening to celebrate the launch of Jim Green’s new book,

The Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment

Meditatio Centre, St Mark’s, Myddelton Square London EC1R1XX

September 10th, 6.30 – 8.00pm

https://meditatiocentrelondon.org/events/zenofben/

The Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment explores a sporting icon and sport itself through the lens of psychology, cultural history, personal memoir and the wisdom traditions that help us face the biggest questions in life and death. In this fascinating book you will find:

• The meaning of sport explored in the light of ancient wisdom: The Bhagavad Gita, the Christian contemplative tradition, The Tao Te Ching, and the many bewildering koans of Zen.

• An entertaining account of Zen through the ages, its arrival in the West, its fierce determination about what can and what can’t be said.

• Significant contributions from two England cricketing legends: Mike Brearley (former captain, philosopher, distinguished psychoanalyst) and Jonathan Agnew – ‘Aggers’ of Test Match Special fame.

• A deep exploration of the psychological and emotional dimensions of sport and life, with reflections on Ben Stokes, his team-mates, and the much-loved Graham Thorpe.

• A challenge to what we really understand by ‘winning and losing’, ‘success and failure’ – in sport and in each of our lives.

• And much more…

With accounts of the 2025 India Tests and the most recent Ashes series, the book explores what Zen and Ben reveal about each other – and asks what it means to live without fear of failure, to let go of our seriousness, and to be just a little more playful.

On Thursday 10th September, come and hear about the book from Jim, and enjoy some refreshments in the beautiful space of The Meditatio Centre, London. 

*Our special guest MIKE BREARLEY will also be attending and speaking at the event*

The book, of course, will be available to purchase during the evening at a Zen-friendly price. And Jim will be signing copies too!

Please tell us you are coming by registering via the link above.

WINNING IS AT THE BOTTOM

George Orwell famously once wrote about sport that ‘it is war minus the shooting’. In his essay of December 1945 (when the shooting had just stopped – for a while at least) Orwell was arguing against what he took to be the rather sentimental notion that sport between nations could create understanding and good will. (As I write, it’s still not clear whether Iran will be playing in the 2026 Football World Cup, to be co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the USA.)

For all of Orwell’s scepticism, it’s worth pausing for a moment and celebrating the bald fact that – in theory at least – sport does indeed divest itself of ‘the shooting’ (except, of course, for the shots taken at the goal, towards the gaps in the field, the holes in the ground, the pockets at the edge of the table). Unlike warfare, it is not the actual destruction and death of the opponent(s) that is the explicit aim of the activity.

Death, though, does feature in another equally celebrated quote about sport. Bill Shankly – legendary manager of Liverpool Football Club – once had this to say in an interview: “Somebody said that football’s a matter of life and death to you; I said ‘listen, it’s more important than that’.” Whether tongue-in-cheek or not, Shankly’s words hint at the possibility of glimpsing sport’s meanings well beyond the daily news fix of who’s won, who’s lost, who’s getting sacked, whose prize money – and endorsements – are the biggest.

If we look past the shouting headlines and the online alerts of today, all the way into the deep past of sport (so deep that it wasn’t even called ‘sport’ then) we come across the extraordinary phenomenon known as the Mesoamerican ballgame. This was a ‘game’ that had already been played in Central America for over 3,000 years by the time the Christian conquistadores (‘conquerors’ or, significantly, ‘winners’) arrived in the New World and were stunned to see huge, cathedral-sized ballcourts and large bouncing balls made of a magical, alive-seeming substance – rubber – that they had never seen before.

The game (or probably more accurately, the ritual) seems to have been very much operating at the level of life and death. Historians understand it as being, among other things, a kind of proxy for warfare, although in the later period, just before the arrival of the Spanish, there is clear evidence of human sacrifice. We see carved representations of the ball-players losing their heads at the end of the game. The ball itself is understood as representing the sun, and the blood spilt as the necessary tribute to ensure the fertility of the land, the continuing life, health and prosperity of the people. Retrospectively, we can only try to describe this mysterious activity within our own invented categories: ritual, sport, performance, theatre, cultural display, religious ceremony, game. Perhaps the simplest and truest thing we can say about it is that it was people finding a way to ‘play’ in order to deal, symbolically, with their deepest individual and collective anxieties.

Fast forward to the present day and I think it’s safe to say that those fundamental anxieties are still with us. Our conscious and unconscious hopes and fears about ‘success’ and ‘failure’, about living and dying, underpin everything in our lives. And they remain part of the deep and hidden back-story of what has turned into the multi-billion-dollar global industry which we in the UK call ‘sport’. (‘Sports’ in the USA – always going for more).

Actually, talking in billions is to play it down rather. Asking a search engine what is the global sport industry’s annual worth gives you an estimate of $2.3 trillion. For context the global ‘defence’ industry is pitched at around $2.6 trillion. The different types of shooting are clearly converging. Given the scale of the income streams and capital involved, perhaps it’s entirely predictable that ‘play’ in our culture has turned into this phenomenon where all that matters is winning. Not being a ‘loser’ seems to have spread from the White House and threatens, once again, to become the primary secular commandment.

Which is why I sat up and took notice when I heard the still recently appointed England Men’s Test cricket captain, Ben Stokes, say this before a key series against the Australians in 2023: ‘We have a list of things we want to achieve, and winning is at the bottom.’ This was in keeping with a seemingly revolutionary way of playing the game that had started as soon as Stokes took over as captain. It was characterised by an apparent detachment from ideas such as ‘success’ or ‘losing’ (‘The fear of failure has gone’, Stokes also claimed). Players were encouraged to play without fear, to experience the joy – the playfulness – of no longer being paralysed by the dread of consequences.

Cricket commentators, journalists and pundits groped in wonder and puzzlement for a way of describing this phenomenon that they’d never seen before. One of them came up with a label – Bazball – that stuck. (‘Baz’ is the nickname of the team coach who has been alongside Stokes throughout this revolution). I found myself groping as well, but Bazball didn’t quite cut it for me. Where I was taken by this liberating emphasis on detaching from the outcomes of your actions (always essentially uncontrollable) was to the central teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, in which Lord Krishna tells the anxious Arjuna (in effect, the team captain) as well as each one of us, that we must renounce all claims on the fruits of our action. It took me as well to the stories and the puzzling koans of Zen, designed to break through our ponderous reliance on thoughts and words, our desire to always be in control. And, of course, it took me to the words of Jesus about winning and losing: ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first’.

Eventually I was led to writing a book called The Zen of Ben: Cricket in the Moment, which turned into an opportunity to reflect on the contemplative, as well as the psychological, emotional and cultural meanings of what we call sport. The counter-cultural surrendering of all targets – all goals – when we meditate is at the heart of our practice. It is fascinating to enquire into what happens when we take that surrendering into a world still trapped in the belief that winning is all. Maybe, alongside Business & Leadership, Health & Medicine, Science, Social Justice and Earth Crisis, our community might explore a new area of outreach: Sport. Perhaps it would help us to know that prayer can be play – and play, at its most playful, can be prayer?

Jim Green

May, 2026