Passionate about cricket
This is my blog and one of its aims on the charter is that it will be a place where I can be passionate about the things I love. It was a bit of a surprise when I noticed how little I have posted about cricket.
Cricket is a fantastic sport. I am more of a spectator than a player. The last time I played was for the primary school team and I was very much there to make up the numbers. I couldn't bowl, catch and my batting was definitely reserve standard.
I love the tension that can be built up over a five day test. It is warfare in miniature, none of this running around for 90 minutes all for nothing sport. Cricket is a political waiting game of strategy. Each team player has to play their part, the weather has to be right, the opposing team show some chinks in the armour and then that final bit of lady luck.
Cricket can in a way be about who breaks first, who throws away a wicket or drops a catch. It is a game which Sun Tzu would find fascinating, it is warfare in a battlefield surrounded by rope. The works of Sun Tzu could even be rewritten with cricket examples.
It has culture, tradition, character and famous battles. It is quintessentially British, it is as part of the British psyche as much as strawberries and cream.
Now for ever more it is only available on Sky (and radio). Never more can I rush home from work to watch the steady crack of leather on willow as England score run after run. Never more can I watch Australia loose the ashes live or watch England loose the ashes again and feel that blood rush of wanting to set fire to the wicket. Now I hear all the cricket news third hand little more than a weather report of the day, none of the passion, none of the excitement nothing. Nobody will ever riot or burn wickets over cricket highlights.
Highlights are not the same, any short highlight programme can only show the 4's, 6's, 50's, 100's and wickets. That is not the game of tension and strategy I love, highlights do not get me pacing round the room for the last hour of a five day match chewing cushions in the hope that England can hold off the Australian bowling attack. The highlights will never have me praying for rain to save the series.
The decision to allow cricket to be sold to sky was a criminal act by the English Cricket Board, it can only hurt the sport in the long run. The problem arose because of new stars such as Freddie Flintoff it became too popular, what has always been an underfunded sport saw the money and the greed became too hard to bear.
People like me, the grass root supporters have been kicked in the teeth, all we wanted was to see the game of our heroes played out on national tv. There was a revolution over football and there should be a revolution over cricket but alas we the minority do not have the powers of the tabloid masses.
I miss my summer cricket, please bring it back to me.
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2 comments:
While it may be a little unfair to blame Flintoff for the loss of terrestrial cricket I agree wholeheartedly that cricket and highlights just don't work.
Cricket highlights are like an executive summary. Useful for a technical report, but not so useful for a novel. Yes if you had an executive summary of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows you'd know what happened in the end, but you wouldn't have had the experience of reading the book.
Now while a cricket fan will enjoy watching some choice moments from a match, admiring the technical flair of Tendlukar making another beautiful cover drive for four, or be amazed as Warne turns the ball out of the rough, simply showing the wickets, the boundaries, the dropped catches isn't what the match is about.
The events have to be put in context. A dropped catch, for instance, is entirely different for the fielding side if preceded by 5 overs of bowling a solid line and length, beating the batsman outside the off stump, getting him flashing at leavers, tying him down. If after that, a catch is dropped the bowler thinks "ah you were lucky, but I'll get you sooner or later". If, however the dropped catch follows 5 overs of anything the bowler sends being smacked around the ground with reckless abandon, runs flowing freely and not a sniff of a wicket then the dropped catch can really break a fielding side.
These events have to be presented within the context of the match, joined up together to form a coherent whole. Otherwise they may as well be a montage of footage from any number of unrelated matches. The only way to show cricket is to show the entire match, live, on terrestrial TV as it happens.
well said that man.
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