We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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England are certainly contributing mightily to the enjoyability of the Cricket World Cup. Their first game, against the Netherlands, stayed interesting almost to the end, on account of the slogging inflicted on England by Ryan ten Doeschate. As a result of that, England had to make nearly three hundred. They did this, but had to bat very well. You kept thinking they might collapse and lose. That was the first really fun game of the tournament, all the previous games having been tediously one-sided demolitions of lesser teams by big teams.
Next up, England played India. India belted 338, and that looked beyond England, but at one stage England looked to be cruising it, until they lost two big wickets in two balls. Then they lost more wickets and looked well beaten. But then, the England tail wagged, and what do you suppose happened then? Only a tie!
And now, now, a true upset is in the offing, because Ireland, chasing England’s satisfactory but not stellar total of 327, and having at one stage been 111-5 (for Americans – that’s bad) are now, get this, 272-5 with all of nine overs left. For Americans – that’s good, really good. Ireland are now odds on to win this!
And the blogger’s curse strikes! Ireland have lost a wicket. A run out!
But this is not over yet, because the batsman who got out, Cusack, has most definitely been the junior partner in the huge stand of 162 that has just ended. At the other end, still batting, is a certain Kevin O’Brien and he is 101 not out, having smashed the record for the fastest (measured in deliveries faced) century in the history of the Cricket World Cup. O’Brien has hit six sixes, including the biggest one of the tournament so far.
WOW says my computer screen. Actually this was an advert for Weightwatchers, but for once an annoyingly interruptive advert hit the nail on the head.
The run rate has now fallen, and it is all getting even more tense. A few more big shots from O’Brien and Ireland will win this, but a close finish plays havoc with the mental equilibrium of even the best players. But, they’ve had a couple of streaky, snicky boundaries and need 34 from 29 balls, with four wickets left.
The funny thing is, even if England lose, they will probably make their way through to the quarter finals. Not a huge amount is at stake. But, if Ireland win, it will be, as they say, what the World Cup is all about!
32 from 26. Ireland now 300-6. Somebody called Mooney is now joining in, with a couple of great boundaries. 23 from 21. 20 from 18. 18 from 16. O’Brien is taking a breather, before what I am sure he hopes will be a triumphant assault, probably in the next over rather than the last one. Ireland won’t want to leave this to the very end. 16 from 13. Bosh! Mooney again! That really hurts England. 12 from 12, still with four wickets left. Even a hectic wicket strewn shambles by Ireland will still probably win this!
Now O’Brien is run out! He scored 113 from 63 deliveries. It’s anybody’s now. Now they’re showing the replay of the O’Brien run out. He had simply run out of puff, poor fellow. No wonder.
And somebody called Johnston hits his first ball, a full toss, to the boundary. Ireland need 7 from 10, and are right back to being hot favourites. 2 more to Johnston! 5 wanted from 8. Ireland 323-7. 4 from 7. One boundary does it. 3 to win from the last over. Mooney, 29 not out, on strike.
Ireland win. Biggest successful run chase at the World Cup, ever.
I was going to do serious things this afternoon. Oh well.
The commentary soundbite of the night so far, from the BBC’s coverage of Super Bowl XLV, from Tiki Barber:
Do not go to bed. Work is not as important as this game.
It’s Pittsburgh 25 Green Bay 28, in the fourth quarter, after Pittsburgh managed what I believe is called a “safety” “two-point conversion” (see comments), Pittsburgh having earlier in the game been down by 18 points. Nobody’s ever won a Super Bowl having been that far behind, but this looks to be anyone’s.
Mike Carlson, Britain’s ubiquitous American Football expert, commentates for whichever channel has the games, be it Channel 4, Channel 5, or, as now, BBC 1, and so he’s with the BBC tonight, as he has been throughout the play-offs. I seem to recall complaining here about the snide little political digs that Carlson has in the past indulged in, when commentating for Channels 4 or 5. The BBC seem to have told him to cut it out. Usually, whenever any player is called Bush (I seem to recall there being a Reggie Bush) Carlson calls him “the Bush you can support”. (Yes, I mention this in the comments here, in connection with something Carlson said during last year’s Superbowl.) George W. Bush himself is actually watching this game, as is Condoleeza Rice, or that’s who it looked like to me. They showed a whole row of such people. Whatever Carlson may have wanted to say about that he kept to himself.
Green Bay win the Vince Lombardi trophy, 31-25. The grandstand finish that Tiki Barber had been saying might, if earlier games were anything to go by, be contrived by Pittsburgh’s hobbling miracle worker of a quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, never happened, and it ended rather tamely, as American football games sometimes do, with guys kneeling down, and then … it was … over.
Now they’re saying that a play called Lombardi, about the great Green Bay coach of yesteryear that they now name the Super Bowl trophy after, just opened on Broadway. Blog and learn.
The Green Bay Packers are the “world champions”. Yeah. But now they are making a good point, which is that the Super Bowl has no exact parallel in British soccer. That has the FA Cup Final, but also the Premier League, and also a couple of European titles to shoot for. Every other year there’s either a European national tournament, or the World Cup. Only in the American version of football does the winner of the one big game win absolutely everything.
My fellow Samizdatista and cricket fan (but Aussie) Michael Jennings has been accusing me of not celebrating enough when England have done well in the recently concluded Ashes cricket series. My message throughout the series, to anyone who would listen, has indeed been: wait for it, wait for it. Both to England fans exulting and to Aussies wanting to pitch straight into their speculations about why Australia is now a failed state, I have been saying throughout, needed to wait until the crushing England win that looked ever more likely as the series proceeded was actually achieved. Or not, as the case might have been.
But now that England have indeed achieved their 3-1 (away) victory (there first away win at five-day cricket against Australia for nearly a quarter of a century, which included three innings victories which trust me is crushing), I am now celebrating, with a long posting last night at my personal blog. Well, really it’s about ten blog postings – with handily placed asterisks to enable you to skip to the next one, should you be inclined to.
Topics include: Jimmy Anderson’s girlie-man wicket celebrations, Alastair Cook sounding like Noel Fielding, the role of and nature of luck in sport (and in life generally), the inverse relationships between good individual bowling figures and team success (well, that’s mostly in the first and only comment so far, also by me) and between national economic and national sporting success. Plus, the fascinating contribution made to cricket folklore by the Radio Four shipping forecast, which, amazingly, caused Radio Four listeners to miss the final moments of all three England wins.
If you’re the sort that enjoys that kind of thing, enjoy.
As has already recently been noted here by Michael Jennings, Australia is just now doing rather badly at cricket. The first day of the recently concluded Melbourne game was, for Australia, particularly calamitous. Australia all out 98, England 157 for no wicket. That, trust me, was very bad indeed for Australia. Bear in mind that this was not just any old bad day; this was Boxing Day at the MCG, against England, one of the great days of the Australian sporting calendar, like Derby Day or Grand National day in England or Superbowl Sunday in the USA. After that first day disaster, there looked to be no way back in this particular game for the Australians, and so it proved. England, having won the Ashes back in 2009 in England, will now keep them. If I am optimistic about England’s chances of avoiding a deeply disappointing 2-2 draw in the series in the forthcoming final test at Sydney, it is because I believe that the leaders of the England team agree with me that if they lose in Sydney that will seriously take the shine off their entire campaign.
Okay, sport hurrah! Blah blah blah. But last night, as I settled down to watch the televised highlights of the final spasms of that Melbourne game on ITV4, I realised something else that was, for me, new and different, besides England thrashing Australia in Australia at cricket. Someone else was suffering, if my behaviour was anything to go by, besides Aussie cricketers and cricket fans.
In the past, when a major sports team that I am fond of (usually either the England cricket team or the England rugby team) has done really well, I go out and buy an armful of newspapers and have a good wallow, with newspaper pages spread out all over my living room floor. I know, I know, the internet has been with us for at least a decade. But the habit of newspaper buying has been a hard one for me entirely to break, especially at times like these. Well, now, finally, I seem to be cured of it. I made no conscious “decision”. I simply, I now realise, didn’t buy any newspapers. Never even thought about it.
It seems that I have learned enough about surfing the internet to no longer want newspapers even for sporting excitements, even when I would actually enjoy reading about a quarter of what is in them, and might learn all kinds of other things if I at least glanced through the rest of them. Recent newspaper purchases, made for this or that forgotten reason, have only resulted in them being almost totally unread.
It also helped that, this time around, I now have a brand spanking new computer, with several tons more RAM than before, and quick as lightning compared to anything I’ve ever had until now.
It seems that I am not the only one now thinking like this about newspapers, and more to the point buying (as in not buying) like this. (My thanks for that link to Guido Fawkes.)
If one newspaper puts itself behind a paywall, well, there are plenty of others who have yet to do this. If they all, sometime soonish, go behind a paywall, well, I’ll deal with that problem when it happens. Meanwhile, plenty of verbiage is now given away on big sports dramas, and I can now find all I want about England cricket successes for nothing, and in a paperlessly calm manner. Personally, I don’t believe that there ever will be any great lack of good free-to-read stuff about cricket, even if the “professional” journalists do all end up requiring payment to be read (as well they might). The amateurs will happily step forward, I say, in fact I’m pretty sure that they already have. It’s just that for as long as the old school media mostly give their cricket stuff away, I haven’t bothered to find out which new websites and blogs I could go to. I’d welcome suggestions as to where else I might be reading about cricket, besides Cricinfo and the big newspaper websites of the cricketing world.
Part of my point here is: although these kinds of changes are absolute in nature, and very abrupt in historic time, at the time they happen they are often experienced as oddly gradual, and even preventable should you happen to want them prevented. What is later clear to have been a total wipe-out happens at the time as single figure percentage drops. This particular bit of writing has long been on the wall, but it often takes a bit of a while for sufficient numbers to read such writing and to make the long-prophesied on-off switch actually do its switch. For one thing, the hardware often needs to evolve, speed up, get easier and nicer, and so on. In this case, gradually, they (we) are, and it is. And in this case, the phrase “writing on the wall” seems peculiarly apt, even if the wall in question is virtual and electronic rather than literal.
What seems to be happening is that many are now willing to pay pennies to read professional media stuff, on their iPads and iPhones and Google-Android equivalents. How much of a real business this will turn into remains to be seen. Very big but very different from the recent past would be my current guess. I don’t believe that Rupert Murdoch has necessarily made a big mistake with his Times paywall decision, by the way. His old regime couldn’t last, and had to be changed. He has merely decided which bit of the new internet business he wants the Times to be in. The Times now faces turmoil as it adjusts to its new reality, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t adjust.
Meanwhile, all those who, like me, want also to write about it (whatever it might be) and to link to other writings about it will continue to want free stuff. It’s absolutely not – or not only – that we amateurs are cheap. The key is linkage. If we can’t say to everyone reading our own free stuff: hey, have a read of this (no link there because that is my exact point), there is, for us amateur writers, no point in us reading it either.
Another way of putting all this is to say that whereas it used to be that the Mainstream Media were … the mainstream media, while us internetters all lived in our dusty little caves of off-message opinion, gibbering and cursing with only our closest friends, now it is the pay-as-you-read ex-mainstream media who will be the ones living, if not in caves, then at least indoors, so to speak, and hence ever more cut off from “public” opinion. Think: Palace of Versailles. That this switch is already happening explains a lot about the current state of politics, worldwide.
In 1985, the Australian cricket team was so bad that it lost two test series to New Zealand in the same season. Appalled by this, the powers running Australian cricket set up a comprehensive set of reforms to the way the game and the national team was run. One of these reforms was the establishment in Adelaide of a “Cricket Academy” in which promising, potential future test players could receive coaching and training to complete their development as international cricketers. Good coaches and staff were hired, and the academy was one of the explanations given for the rise of the world beating Australian team of the 1980s and 1990s.
Shortly after this, the local tourist board in Adelaide discovered a curious phenomenon. Visitors to Adelaide would state that they wanted to see “The Cricket Academy”. Apparently they expected to see buildings, pitches, nets, and a sign at the gate saying “Australian Institute of Sport: Cricket Academy” or some such. As it happened, there were no such premises. The cricket academy used rented and borrowed nets, grounds, and other facilities. The emphasis was on the training.
However, in 2004, the academy relocated to Brisbane, was renamed as the “Cricket Australia Centre of Excellence”, and a new, $26 million dollar headquarters was commissioned: a “state-of-the-art athlete development centre that will integrate science, technology and coaching to enhance both development of athletes and the understanding of skill development and performance in the sport”.
All is explained.
Jim White at the Daily Telegraph has a good piece about the recent unjust – in my view – sacking of Newcastle Utd manager Chris Hughton. Apparently, Hughton’s “mistake” was that he was a “nice” person: straight-talking, honourable, considerate towards his players and unwilling to suck up to the owners of the club. White points out that it is silly to suggest that “nice guys” cannot do well in sports management or sports more generally, and cites examples such as Andrew Strauss, the England cricket captain, whom I have met and thought was a very likeable person; tennis gods Rafal Nadal and Roger Federer, two gents who are brilliant players, and for that matter, the late Sir Bobby Robson, football management great and all-round fine man. I hear stories that Sir Alex Ferguson, the gruff-appearing Scotsman who manages Manchester United, takes a fatherly concern for his players, especially the younger ones. Another example of a nice guy doing well in sports management is Harry Redknapp, currently doing great things at Spurs and presiding over a very entertaining team.
I think the same point about decent people able to achieve greatness because, not despite, their niceness applies in the realms of business, too. Generally speaking, some of the best business people in my experience are certainly hardworking and committed, even aggressive, but they are not nasty pieces of work. That is how anti-businesspeople imagine business people should be. Alan Sugar, the front man for The Apprentice TV show, hams it up by coming across as a total monster, which is presumably what the TV producers want. In reality, any businessman who behaved like that would lose a lot of talented staff. Being a tosser is not a great business strategy, as far as I can see, but there obviously exceptions.
In politics and sport, I can, of course, see why aggression, even nastiness, can be a winning strategy given that politics and sports are, in some ways, zero-sum. If politician A achieves office, he or she does so by pushing B out of the way. And that sort of eye-gouging gets worse the greater the stakes are, such as in totalitarian systems. Hence FA Hayek’s point, in the Road To Serfdom, about why “the worst get on top”.
Anyway, I hope Hughton gets another job in football management from a club that values his qualities. No wonder Newcastle Utd fans are steamed.
Having been a bit ill and it having been very cold recently by London standards, certainly in November or December, I have been consoling myself by paying more attention than I otherwise might have done to the Ashes, aka the series of five day cricket matches that happens every couple of years or so between England and Australia.
My main feeling about the Ashes just now is that there is an amazing contrast between the score, which now stands at nothing-nothing (as in: nobody has won any of these games yet), and the way many of the commentators are talking. England are great, on top of their game, firing on all cylinders, well organised, etc. etc. Australia are rubbish, a nation in crisis, woe woe woe. You’d think Australia had already been beaten five nothing, like England were last time they came calling. Yes, England saved the first game well, and yes, England are now on top in the second game. But a combination of rain and good Australian batting on a good batting pitch could well leave it nothing-nothing as the third game begins, and who knows what might then happen? Momentum in sport is a funny thing. One team can dominate, and then something (often just a bit of blind luck) can go against them and suddenly a savage negative feedback loop of failure, recrimination at earlier missed opportunities and general frustration can strike them down, along with the agony consequent on them having been too complacent, and now knowing it. Meanwhile their seemingly doomed opponents can bounce back, gripped by an equal-and-opposite positive feedback loop of surging confidence and astonished nothing-to-lose optimism. An almost absurdly one-sided contest can suddenly mutate into a real old dogfight that either team could win. This can happen. This could happen. England have not yet won anything in this series.
But, in opposition to point number one, the England team seem thoroughly to understand all of the above. Everything they have been saying in interviews that I’ve seen, especially in the ones involving their admirably level-headed captain Andrew Strauss, has been along the lines of: we’ve a lot of tough cricket ahead, so far it’s nothing-nothing, Australia will play better, and … well, see my previous paragraph. If I thought the England team didn’t get what might happen if, to coin a phrase, they were to take their eyes off the ball, then I’d now be full of dread. As it is, I agree with my Australian fellow cricket-nut and fellow-Samizdatista Michael Jennings that England are indeed now favourites to win this thing. Fingers crossed. Success in sport can indeed be almost automatic, but only for teams which assume that winning is never automatic and can only happen if they give it their all.
To switch subjects from a mere game to the somewhat more serious matter of the state of the world, of the USA in particular, one of the things that most impresses me about the USA’s Tea Party movement is that they too seem to have exactly this attitude to the tasks they now face. Everything I hear from these people in interviews and blog postings says something very similar to the sentiment I now attribute to the England cricket team. So far, they now say, all we’ve done is elect a few politicians. We have many years of tough politics ahead of us if we are actually to accomplish anything. Don’t, they keep on telling themselves, echoing one of their most significant leaders (who would surely deny that accusation), get cocky. It is this very lack of any assumption on their part that they will automatically have any real world consequences that now most makes me believe that the Tea Party will have real world consequences.
So, am I saying that life is like a game of cricket? I suppose I am. Sometimes, it is.
A couple of further cricket games between England and Pakistan have now happened. In the first of these, Pakistan surrendered a winning position. Sound familiar? It should. In the second, they never got to a winning position in the first place. England were efficient in both games. I refuse to provide links to mere match reports. Did the Pakistanis lose because they were paid to, or is it merely that they are now utterly demoralised? Probably the latter, but given that one can’t now be sure it is hard to care. That Pakistan’s cricket bosses had to be bullied into suspending the players revealed as having cheated hasn’t helped. Ijaz Butt in particular looks far more like part of the problem that part of any solution.
I’m reading this kind of reaction quite a lot, the one about being shocked, shocked. As in not actually very shocked at all. But the importance of what just happened is not that cricket fans now strongly suspect Pakistan’s cricketers of cheating, but that we now know it. The cheaters are still protesting their innocence, and the wheels of justice will, as is proper, grind slowly on, but the market (i.e. the fans) is already now speaking, loud and clear. Guilty:
Stewart Regan, chief executive of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, said: “The phones haven’t stopped ringing from people wanting to vent their fury and ask whether they can get refunds.
“I’ve fielded several calls and we’ve had numerous enquiries about cancelling tickets. From the club’s point of view we can’t give refunds simply because of a personal opinion about what’s gone on, no matter how much we might agree with them.”
“Might” agree. Hah. Now I’m watching the TV highlights of the game earlier this evening. The crowd is tiny, heavily outnumbered by empty seats. Pakistan cricket will not soon be forgiven by the English county clubs now caught up in this mess. They will want someone’s blood, and since they cannot expect much satisfaction from Pakistan itself any time soon, they will probably look closer to home.
They won’t have far to look. As Michael Jennings said in a comment on this:
Seriously, the judgment of Lord’s and the ECB looks consistently bad. Somehow they missed getting properly involved in the IPL and ended up doing a deal with Sir Allen Stanford because they needed the money, and they then did this deal with Pakistan (who were unable to play games at home because terrorists attempted to kill the last foreign team that went there, and who India wanted nothing to do with) because they had empty stadiums and needed someone to play in them. Meanwhile, they were unable to do such things as cooperate sufficiently with the IPL so that English sides can participate in the Champions League. They seem to have made the wrong choice every time.
Indeed they do. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, there are fears that revenue from Pakistan tour could suffer. Indeed it could.
Further to what I, and Johnathan Pearce, and Natalie Solent, have all being saying here about cricket corruption, and about how this is a story about more than mere cricket corruption, I just noticed this report from a few days ago, at cricinfo.com. Cricinfo is one of my regular haunts, so sorry for not linking to this earlier:
Betting in cricket and other sports should be legalised in India, a Delhi court has said, pointing out that the police have failed to curb illegal betting in the country. Legalising betting, the court said, would help the government keep track of the transfer of funds and even use the revenue generated for public welfare.
“It does not need divine eyes to see that ‘satta’ in cricket and other games is reaching an alarming situation. The extent of money that it generated is diverted to clandestine and sinister objectives like drug trafficking and terrorist activities,” said additional sessions judge Dharmesh Sharma, of a Delhi trial court. “It is high time that our legislature seriously considers legalising the entire system of betting online or otherwise so that enough revenues can be generated to fund various infrastructural requirements for the common man and thus check the lucrative business in organised crime.”
Now I will willingly grant you that this is anything but a pure libertarian argument, of the kind that would prevail in Brian-Micklethwait-world. Judge Sharma is emphasising the revenue gathering opportunity inherent in legalisation just as strongly as the anti-crime point. But for what it is worth, I also much prefer a legalised and quite heavily taxed and state-regulated betting regime to total illegality, if those are the only choices I am offered. And they are, given the current state of the world and of its predominant opinions.
In the previous posting by Brian on the alleged match-fixing scam involving Pakistan’s cricket team, one commenter called Jim made the excellent point that gambling is illegal in Pakistan. It is, as the practice is banned under Shariah law – but there is a vast and thriving underground gambling industry there and indeed across the Indian sub-continent.
Now, as we libertarians like to point out, if you ban consenting activities between adults – such as betting on sports – then when such activities are driven underground, criminals get involved, with all the sort of consequences we are now writing about. That is not to say, of course, that if gambling were legalised in Pakistan, that the match-fixer gangsters would hang up their hats and do something else. But it would, in my view, help a great deal to drive some of these scum away.
Americans bored by all this talk of cricket might recall that baseball has had its problems in the past, as have other sports too. This Wikipedia entry is worth reading (and maybe improving).
And there are certain parallels in this issue with insider dealing in financial markets. On one level, I think that it should not be made illegal since it is difficult to work out the difference, sometimes, between a trader who is just quick off the mark to exploit new information and someone who happens to be privy to inside information. Arguablym, distortions caused by insider dealing eventually get arbitraged out by other investors. However, in the case of private stock markets, they are, as private institutions, perfectly entitled to set the rules so that trading is seen to be “fair” and open, if only to encourage investors to buy and sell stocks who might otherwise have been cynical about insiders getting all the best deals. It is like a private sports association setting down rules against things such as use of enhancement drugs, and so on. So long as no-one is forced to compete against their will, no-one can carp about the rules, and the adoption of such rules draws in more people and interest.
Back to the insider dealing point: As more people play in a market if the rules are seen to be fair, then this encourages greater liquidity and reduces the cost of capital. With the match-fixing issue, the costs of not punishing wrongdoers is something similar: it will drive away people from the sport due to greater cynicism, and hence reduce revenues, investment in new grounds and facilities, and so on. Cynicism, whether in sports, business or elsewhere, is a sort of deadweight cost on an activity by driving away fans, investors, etc.
My original thoughts having been here.
First: The Pakistani tour bosses have been saying that because there has as yet been no decision under British law to prosecute anyone, no wrongdoing has yet been proved. But the legal problem is that there has to be someone who lost a fraudulent bet, and finding such a person may be difficult, even impossible. But just because the British law may do nothing, that doesn’t mean that cricket doesn’t have any problem. Already, the News of the World has proved to almost everyone’s satisfaction (if that suffices as the word) that no balls were bought and paid for, from Asif and Amir, if only to prove that they could be. That Pakistan test match captain Salman Butt and current Pakistan cricket boss Ijaz Butt refuse to acknowledge this only makes them look guilty also.
Second: Kudos to the British tabloid press. Sport often has reason to resent British news hounds. I was reminded recently, when reading this book, that ace Dutch soccer manager Guus Hiddink (who, unlike current England boss Fabio Capello, is fluent in English as well as soccer) turned down the England job that he would otherwise have loved to do, simply because he couldn’t face his love life being done over by these ghastly people. But this time, a British tab picked a target truly worthy of its ruthless attentions. They nailed down and publicised beyond doubt, within a few weeks, what all the cricket anti corruption units and police forces of the cricket-o-sphere couldn’t in over a decade.
Third: “Innocent until proved guilty” only applies to the legal system. If English cricket fans like me now regard Pakistan cricket as guilty until proved innocent, and most of us now surely do, we can impose our own sentence upon it right now, by refusing to pay to attend any more Pakistan cricket games in our country.
Fourth (the order of these points has now become rather random but I will bash on anyway): It surely doesn’t stop at “spot fixing”, i.e. at just a few no balls that don’t affect the result. Match fixing is surely also involved, still. The Sydney test last winter in Australia, when Pakistan mysteriously threw away a dominant position, and the Lord’s test recently concluded where, whatever official England cricket now says, the Pakistanis did the same thing again, both now look bent. Trott and Broad (who shared in a record stand for England), and the England team in general, understandably don’t want to think this and have said in public that they don’t. But they probably do, just as the rest of us do.
Fifth: England cricket is now busy demonstrating, in concrete and steel, the truth of the Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle, being now deep into a major historic costs swamp. Numerous expensive new stands have recently been built, or at least expensively refurbished, but they mostly can’t now be filled at prices that will pay for all the work that’s been done. Meaningful cricket games cannot be conjured out of thin air even at the best of times, which these times are not, and demand even for good contests is limited. Thus, to cancel the few remaining one day games fixed between England and Pakistan would, just now, be a particular disaster for English cricket. These games will be a disaster anyway, because they are now pretty much meaningless except as a way for the English press to carry on hammering away at this fiasco, but not as big a disaster as they would be if they had been cancelled, because this would have meant all the ticket money so far gathered for them having to be handed back. But, the Pakistanis should not confuse the deeply insincere welcome they will now get for their remaining games here with a general willingness on the part of England cricket to forgive them, i.e. arrange more games with them, or for them, in the foreseeable future. (Whoops. I nearly put “fix” more games.) If the Pakistanis want to go on playing international cricket with England, or in England against anybody else (which is their current arrangement on account of Pakistan itself being too terrorist-menaced for anyone else to visit), they will have to clean up their act.
Sixth: This ruckus here in England has caused a general raking over of the recent history of Pakistan cricket and its various rows. I have already mentioned how the recent test series in Australia is, as Michael Jennings said in connection with my earlier posting about this, being, as it were, re-evaluated. The same applies to things like the big row at the Oval four years ago, which ended prematurely amidst loud Pakistani protestations of complete innocence, this time of ball tampering. Even that run in all those years ago, between England captain Mike Gatting and that Pakistani umpire, starts to look a bit different. So, more significantly, do all the much more recent rows within the Pakistan camp. Shahid Afridi, the Pakistan one day captain for the remainder of the tour, who is said to be a particular hold-out against corruption, behaved very strangely when he recently (a) played like a loon in earlier games in this tour, and then (b) abruptly resigned as the test match captain. It looked crazy at the time. I now suspect that the true behind-the-scenes story might present Afridi in a rather better light. [Later: see also, as explained in the comments: Bob Woolmer, death of.]
Seventh: I have read recent internet comments from Pakistan fans saying that Pakistan has the best fast bowlers in the world, and that the only reason they are being accused of cheating is because the rest of the world, England cricket fans like me in particular, can’t deal with this. Rubbish. If anything, these latest accusations embody the claim that actually, the likes of Asif and Amir are even better than they have recently seemed. They had Australia and England on the ropes recently and could have finished them off. They merely chose not too. How skillful is that?!? Which just goes to show how much is at stake here. A potentially world beating cricket nation, on a par with the West Indies in their pomp towards the end of the last century, and Australia since then until about now, has been brought down from hero to zero by all this.
Eighth: Although the attitude of fans elsewhere in the world, most notably in India, Australia and England, will be very important, the decisive factor in all this will probably now be the attitude of Pakistan’s own cricket fans. What they now demand of their cricketers will determine whether Pakistan cricket now embarks upon the painful and difficult climb back towards cricket respectability, or just gets wiped out as a serious cricket force by its inability or refusal to do this. If the “they only say we cheat because we’re better than them” school of thought triumphs in Pakistan – if, that is to say, they all bury their stupid heads in the sand – then it’s goodnight Pakistan cricket.
On the other hand, England cricket officialdom had hoped that the recent England Pakistan games would attract large numbers of Pakistani fans living in England. But these fans have been notable only for their almost total absence. At the time, commentators said it must have been the prices being charged. But what if Pakistani cricket fans in England, who will have been paying far more attention to their team than I have until very recently, had already concluded that their cricket team was bent as the proverbial nine bob note, and had decided that they simply could not bear to watch it throwing games away any more? It makes sense to me.
Ninth (this has become like that joke about two Oxford philosophers overheard in debate, but never mind): What Michael Atherton said (Times so forget about a link), as flagged up here by Natalie Solent on Monday, about the illegality of betting in large parts of Asia, and the consequent extreme nastiness of the people who run it.
I do not underestimate the difficulties involved in cleaning up Pakistan cricket, and I strongly agree with all those who are saying what a particular tragedy it will be if Amir now has his career taken from him, as will, I think, have to happen. Either Amir will now get banned for long enough to really hurt his career, or they will just prove they aren’t serious. But do not for a moment imagine that not cheating, if you are a Pakistan cricketer of talent, is a mere matter of Just Saying No. Threats are involved, not just bribes. If they can’t charm and smarm you into doing their bidding, the gangsters are all too likely to try violence, not just against you but against your family. So, it absolutely won’t be easy. It just has to be done if cricket in Pakistan cricket is to have much chance of surviving as a force in the world.
Either that, or we will all have to wait for Pakistan to stop being a totally failed nation, full of gangsters, and of religious maniacs who don’t have a clue how to stop gangsterism but only make it worse (e.g. by banning all betting) and many of whom are gangsters themselves, and hope that when that has been accomplished (I give it half a century at the absolute minimum), they still remember cricket.
Two articles. Right next to each other on page 7 of today’s Times. I hope you lot are grateful; I can no longer link to the Times so I had to type all these quotes out myself. The first article is by Ashling O’Connor and Andy Stephens and is headed “Call for action against novelty sport bets”. The “action” to which it approvingly refers* is that of the government passing more laws to regulate cricket. The article says:
Cricket, with its complex rules and endless permutations makes it an ideal companion of spot-betting. Traditional British bookmakers avoid bets on what might occur during short passages of play and were not affected by the events allegedly manipulated at Lord’s on Friday. However, the more arcane aspects of the game attract huge interest in some parts of the world, especially Asia, where betting is unregulated.
The second article is by Mike Atherton. It is headed “Shift of power base to gambling-obsessed India fuels corruption”, and it says:
The only bookmakers who offer markets on elements of the game open to so-called micro-manipulation are those in India where bookmaking is illegal and designed to avoid tax and service the black market.
Two questions.
1) Why is the Times printing contradictory articles on the same page?
2) Which one is right?
Two comments. Firstly, even I know that Mike Atherton has played a little cricket in his time, has mixed with teams from all the cricketing countries, has made a genuinely successful career as a sports writer after his retirement from cricket, and might be presumed to know something about these matters. In contrast the O’Connor/Stephens article appears to have been churned out from a Play-doh Fun Factory using the Quango Calls for More Regulation extruder template. Secondly, they might be right and Atherton wrong even so.
*Dear Lord, what misery has been inflicted upon the world because no one ever looked good issuing a call for inaction.
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