A clique of radical extremists have seized the levers of power. A risky event that was unthinkable three years ago now seems unstoppable. Those with experience and acknowledged expertise have been marginalised. Dissent is discouraged.
Sensible people are sceptical, uneasy. Lesser officials suppress their doubts and keep working within the system, hoping the leaders are right and that the damage will be less than they fear. They block out fears of ruin and look forward to promised cash. But many others stand aside aghast, some believing the only hope now is for the revolution to happen and fail so that life as we know it can somehow be restored …
But that’s enough about the England and Wales Cricket Board and its 16.4-over competition between confected teams (The Hundred) which is due to dominate future seasons. If it bears some resemblance to some other current situation, well, we are living in crazed times. As Lord’s goes, so goes the Commons.
In both cases, however, the present day is unaffected. It’s holiday time, hooray. The weather has been what we used to call lovely. Even that is now a source of future alarm, but it doesn’t feel very alarming from my hammock. And on Thursday the grandest and most immutable of all cricket events begins: the Ashes.
On my wall is a Punch cartoon from 1926, by Kenneth Beauchamp. On a country lane, a grand dame in a fur coat is talking to a man in a flat cap who might be her gamekeeper. “And do you think, Mr Jones,” she is saying, “our men will get the cinders back from the Australians?” (The charm of the art makes it funnier than it sounds.) Nearly a hundred years on, the same question is being asked, if less universally.
England did get the cinders back in 1926, winning at the Oval after four draws. It was a wet summer and far from a vintage series. The whole tour lasted from April to mid-September and included such exotica as a three-day fixture against the Civil Service at Chiswick. But the Tests were spread over the months of high summer: by August only the Oval was left. They did not start with ripening apples and the football season.
The ball is still red and the clothes still white. The attendances 93 years ago were pretty much what we might expect now: an average 20,000 a day. Pretty much everything else will have changed including the concept of the umpire’s decision being final, once regarded as the epitome of English decency and sense. In 2019, this will be embodied by the crowds booing Warner, Smith and Bancroft and thinking themselves hilarious.
The cinders question was certainly being asked at the Cheltenham Festival last week. But only between more pressing matters. Almost unreported, Gloucestershire put on something close to the perfect first-class cricket match – in fine weather before good crowds, it went to almost the last syllable of recorded time before the home team eked out an improbable victory over their neighbours Worcestershire. Some officials reckoned the 10-day festival as a whole may have been the most successful in decades; certainly last Monday was the best-attended day of county cricket I’ve seen in yonks. And the Twenty20 on Thursday was a sell-out.
This can, in part, be attributed to the post-super over bounce. This worries me. Historically, England play best when most underrated. The risk now, after their two memorable visits to Lord’s this month, is that they imagine they can escape from every hole, even the Marianas Trench. This is the illusion associated with Ian Botham and it lost more games than it won.
The truncated timescale – 47 days against 68 in 1926 – favours England. Since 2005 the home team has won seven Ashes out of eight (the exception being the Strauss-led and Cook-powered England triumph of 2010-11). The intensity is hardest on the visiting team’s more limited stock of fast bowlers and, if they go behind, the sheer joylessness of modern tours saps the whole squad’s morale.
The most startling recent change to consider is the way the draw has become almost as rare as the tie: 19 consecutive undrawn England home Tests, one in the past 33. It’s not climate-related, more to do with better drainage, floodlights, add-on playing time and above all, incompetent batsmanship. The enduring truth of the Ashes, though, is that in advance we know damn all. No point in comparing teams man-for-man: heroes arise from nowhere.
Right now many of us might think Marnus Labuschagne is a Slovakian handball player even though he has scored 1,000 runs this season for Glamorgan. This time next week we may know better. Whatever transpires, let’s revel in it.
The Ashes is still one of the wonders of the sporting world. Drink deep and be merry because tomorrow, one way or another, we’re tatered.
In pure cricket terms, the 2020 fixture list is going to be infinitely more dreadful than the current shambles: no one knows – even at this late stage – what form Cheltenham might take next year. Or when it will be. Or, at worst, even if. This beloved institution is bedevilled by English cricket’s chaos like everything else in the game.
Still, the game is not necessarily well run in Australia either. Last week the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Cricket Australia’s participation figures were bogus. It had claimed one in 15 Australians were active cricketers. This was based, the paper said, on double and even triple counting: 684,000 club players were really 247,000.
Rather than booing visiting players, spectators should be booing the obscure figures who now run the game. But they lurk unknown for good reason.
