Keep up, those at the back!
It’s ironic how swiftly long-held views and perceptions – either positive or negative – can be altered if not reversed. From a personal view, if I’m being honest, my lifelong interest in cricket began in the late 1950s, reached its full bloom between about 1963 and 1993 and has subsequently (along with my musculature, being over the age of fifty, according to a health article in The Times yesterday) decreased by approximately 5% per annum ever since.
In my case the bulk of my cricketing devotion was steeped in the sport’s history, statistical averages and the pages of Wisden. Plus perhaps the fond belief that its current heroes were standing upon the shoulders of giants (whether the latter be – in England’s case – W.G. Grace, Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond, Len Hutton, Peter May, Frank Tyson or Derek Underwood) and that, if it could have been arranged, cricketers of past eras could slot seamlessly into the modern era and hold their own. Other sports changed but cricket didn’t.
But then it did. One day (50 over) cricket came along. And then Kerry Packer’s striped pyjamas version. And then Twenty-Twenty or, as it is now known, T20. And then the IPL and whatever the other one-day cricket competitions of varying different types and continents call themselves.
It all gets a bit bewildering in the end.
Because I try to keep abreast of, and sometimes report upon, them I’m broadly au fait with the antics of the world cricket authorities and power brokers, but I have many pals that I meet in my social circles and in the bar/restaurant of my local golf club who over the past decade or so – okay, let’s be sweeping and say since the year 2000 – have gradually and without any regrets ‘disconnected’ from cricket.
For the most part, and I’m simplifying matters here to get to my point, this has been because the old style Test and county or state cricket structure has gone and they just cannot be doing with the ‘hit and giggle’ cut-down versions that now seem to dominate. I’m probably doing my mates a disservice here by making such a crass summary of their views, but their attitude almost reduces to the conviction that – if things continue as they are – it won’t be long before the bulk of cricket contests watched around this internet-connected, smartphone-dominated, instant gratification-obsessed globe will amount to little more than a civilised version of (God forbid it!) baseball.
In which context – and I bring this to Rust readers without comment – I thought it might be worth recommending this piece by Charles Reynolds that appears today on the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
