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]
|
The new logo for the 2012 London Olympics has been unveiled and it has produced howls of outrage. Yet I beg to differ. I think it is perfect.
What does it look like to you? To me it is obvious: a collapsing structure of some sort, perhaps a building at the moment of demolition. The sense of downwards motion towards the bottom of the page is palpable.
Breathtaking. I mean what truly magnificent symbolism. The entire Olympic endeavour has been a massive looting spree with already grotesque cost over-runs (and it is only 2007), so surely something that conjures up images of collapse and disaster is really on the money… and speaking of money, at £400,000 (just under $800,000 USD) for the logo, it perfectly sums up the whole ‘Olympic Experience’ for London taxpayers.
No, if ever there was ‘truth in advertising’, this is it. Well done Lord Coe, I salute you.
Some of the more innovative and exciting buildings these days are linked to the world of sport. This may not be surprising given the vast sums of money – alas, sometimes taxpayers’ money – that swirls around sport these days. Take this picture of the Barcelona FC stadium, for example. Ever since the Roman days, in fact, sports stadia have been among the most impressive buildings in human civilisation (the arena at Arles, in the South of France, has a spooky, imposing quality of its own, for example).
But of course today, if you are a sport-loving Englishman like yours truly, today matters because the FA Cup Final is being held at its traditional home, Wembley (for non-Brits, this is in west London). The new stadium looks pretty damned impressive. The project to build it has not gone at all smoothly (a sign of the possible difficulties we might expect from the London Olympics). But the wait is worth it. It is magnificent.
One of my happiest days as a youngster was in 1978, when my local team, Ipswich Town, beat Arsenal 1-0 to win the FA Cup (the Blues won the European UEFA Cup three years later. Ah, those were the days). Even watching the game on the television, you were struck by the atmosphere. In 2000, when Ipswich were promoted in a playoff, I went with friends to the stadium in the last fully competitive game to be held before the old stadium was pulled down.
Update: a pity the match between Manchester United and Chelsea did not live up to the billing. Chelsea won. Well done to them (I think one or two Samizdata contributors will be rather chuffed about that).
Guy Herbert this morning posted a piece commenting on Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s decision to “ban” the Australian cricket team from touring Zimbabwe later this year. I generally have little time for Mr Howard, but in this case I can not personally be very harsh on him. What clearly happened is that the Australian Cricket Board (which these days prefers to call itself “Cricket Australia”) begged him at length the make such an announcement, and he eventually gave in despite considerable resistance, and he did this because the alternatives open to him were probably worse. I have no disagreement with Guy that the outcome is essentially a dishonourable one, but the other easy options were worse. Some background.
In international cricket, there are only three countries for who the game is directly profitable. These are India, Australia, and England (in decreasing order of profitability). The other countries that regularly play international cricket make money by playing the national teams of these three countries, and then selling television rights and other sponsorship opportunities for these matches. Thus it is very important to (say) Sri Lanka for (in particular) India and Australia to regularly tour Sri Lanka and play matches.
In order to assure its members of some sort of regular cricket and regular income, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has in recent years created a mandatory tour program, requiring each of its members to play each other both home and away over a five year period. Reactions to this rule have varied, and compliance with it has been variable. The rule allows two sides to postpone a series if both are in agreement, which has allowed India and Australia to at times get their way by offering more money or more matches if the matches are played at some undefined “later”. However, if a team takes a hard line, then (at least theoretically) the other side must tour, or must pay a fine to the ICC which will be then forwarded to the host team as compensation for the lost revenues from the matches that were to have been played. The ICC’s rules allow for two situations in which a fine is not payable: firstly in cases where there is a genuine issue of safety – tours of both Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been called off for this reason in times of high political tension and terrorist threat – and in cases where a government forbids a tour. This second rule has come into play more in cases where Zimbabwe were potentially the touring side, most notably when Zimbabwean players were refused visas by the government of New Zealand.
Zimbabwe are a full member of the ICC. In the mid 1990s Zimbabwe had quite a decent cricket team (of mostly but certainly not entirely white players) but in the years since then Zimbabwean cricket has gone the way of most other things in Zimbabwe. At the demand of the government, white players were pushed out of the team, as were any non-white players who dared to say anything critical of the government. Officials who ran the game and actually cared about cricket were replaced with compliant government yes-men. The organisation of cricket in Zimbabwe became a shambles, and we are not sure right now to what extent the domestic cricket is even taking place. (The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians has recently been complaining about being unable to get scorecards for the domestic Logan Cup, which it has documented with no trouble for over a century). Inevitably, the standard of the national team has dropped from “decent, but not world beating”, to utterly woeful. Their performance in the recently completed World Cup was dreadful, and they have dropped to 11th in the world rankings, way behind the rapidly improving Bangladesh, and behind even Ireland, a side just consisting of part time Australian and English expatriates and who are not a full member of the ICC.
However, through all this Zimbabwe has maintained its full membership of the ICC. Zimbabwe has been “temporarily suspended” from playing test matches due to its declining standards, but it is still playing one day international cricket, and other teams are expected to tour in order to play these games. Australia was scheduled to tour Zimbabwe this year.
The obvious thing to do would be to expel Zimbabwe from the ICC, not necessarily on political grounds explicitly, but simply because cricket in Zimbabwe is no longer being administered and organised properly, that the board is no longer independent of government, and because selections are no longer taking place on the basis of merit. However, there are two reasons why this has not happened. The first is that there is a “third world” versus “first world” divide in international cricket, and some aspects of the administration of the game are a post-colonial nightmare. For many years Australia and England (and, prior to their expulsion from international cricket in the apartheid days, South Africa) had the right of veto over any decisions made in the ICC, and the other countries still have a lingering resentment of this. Once this veto was abolished, the Asian cricketing powers were eager to elevate other countries to membership of the ICC so as to gain a voting majority against the former “colonial” powers, and this is one factor that led to the elevation of Zimbabwe in the first place. Expelling Zimbabwe would increase the voting power of the “first world” bloc, and many people in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka do not want this.
Secondly, what are the objections to Zimbabwe playing international cricket? For one thing, Zimbabwe is ruled by a dictatorship that restricts civil liberties. Well, other members of the ICC include Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are not exactly wonderful on this score either. South Africa is ruled by people who consider Robert Mugabe to be one of their old comrades in arms. If Zimbabwe were kicked out of world cricket on these grounds, then this would “set a bad example” to Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular. Did I mention that the governing body of cricket in Pakistan is traditionally a branch of the army and the head of its board is usually a general? That complicates matters further, and rules out the “We should expel Zimbabwe because the government controls cricket in the country” argument. The government of Sri Lanka appoints that nation’s cricket board too (although not through the army). As for “Zimbabwe selects players on something other than merit”, well, South Africa does that too. (Affirmative action with respect to black and coloured players). One would think that “Zimbabwe should be expelled because Zimbabwean cricket is a shambles” might be enough, but the organisation of cricket in a number of countries is a shambles (most notably Pakistan again, also (sadly) the West Indies). The ICC is also a shambles, having demonstrated in its organisation of the recently completed World Cup that it is an organisation that could not collectively get pissed in Porto)
Australia was scheduled to tour Zimbabwe later this year. The Australian players did not want to make the tour. The Australian government definitely did not want the tour to go ahead. → Continue reading: On cricket, Zimbabwe, John Howard, the ICC, Pakistan and Bob Woolmer
John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister, is quite rightly critical of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, and does not like the idea of the Australian cricket side touring there. He has had to struggle with his conscience:
“I am jammed between my distaste for the government getting involved in something like this and my even greater distaste for giving a propaganda victory to Robert Mugabe.
But not that much of a struggle. The next sentence:
Obviously if there is a way legitimately that the tour can be cancelled and there not be an exposure by Cricket Australia to any fine, then we’ll go down that path.”
Later in the week this was backed by threatening to withdraw the players’ passports, and the federal government undertaking to pay any ICC fine.
What a pity. Mr Howard plainly understands that the administration of sport is not the government’s business; but he feels bound in the pursuit of maintaining Australia’s national image to intervene in private sphere. Talk of the tour being a victory for Mugabe is just justifying cant: a ban is a much bigger target for racialised anti-colonial rhetoric. The quasi-ban – notably exercised by bullying and bribery rather than any lawful power – is a lurch of Zimbabwe-style arbitrary government and propagandising state action.
Western politics is not so far from the world of Comrade Bob, and we forget that at our peril.
There is an old and wise saying that ‘an armed society is a polite society’. It is also the case that a private society remains a private society as well. That is, the importance and respect paid by governments to a citizen’s right to privacy flows on to the rest of society. In contrast, when a government disregards the right of its citizens to keep matters private, other organisations in society will take their cue from the government’s lead.
Take gambling for example. The online sports betting industry in Australia has sprung up like mushrooms after autumn rain in Australia since the advent of the Internet. People used to like to have a wager on a football or cricket game in the friendly environment of a pub, but since the online bookmakers have opened, the betting habits of Australians have increased markedly.
It is not only Australians that have been bitten by the sports betting bug either. But it is illegal in many parts of the world, and that has created more problems then it has solved. When a market is not allowed to be filled by honest business folk, it is instead filled by organised crime figures and all the baggage that this brings. One of the biggest items of luggage is the curse of match-fixing in popular sports.
→ Continue reading: People go where governments lead
He is an admirable character in many ways. He has achieved tremendous success in his professional life; he is by all accounts a devoted husband and I have read that he is good company. It therefore rather a shame even for the most one-eyed follower of Chelsea FC that Jose Mourinho is such a petulant jerk. It takes quite a lot to make me sympathise with Alex Ferguson, the long-standing manager of Manchester United, or for that matter, his highly-paid football stars, but I think the Chelsea boss has achieved that feat.
Class continues to be a sore point in English sport (I am not really qualified to know about how this works in Scotland or Wales). Football has traditionally been thought of as a working-class game although these days the cost of buying a season ticket are beyond the reach of all but the fairly affluent. Cricket is a mixture; rugby union is thought of as middle class, tennis is the same, yachting is for the posh, ditto polo, etc. (I am not quite sure if Formula 1 fits a neat mould any more. It used to be quite posh, since only rich people could afford to drive fast cars). But in football, there is still a strong working class aspect. So I really do not understand why, if the Chelsea manager is going to insult someone, he brings up poverty and humble origins as a reason to abuse someone. In fact, if a person comes from humble origins and becomes an international sports star, like George Best, Tom Finney or Bobby Charlton, that usually counts in their favour.
As sporting competitions go, it may not be one of the most visually enthralling, but the America’s Cup yachting race festival – held this year in Valencia in Spain – has to be up there as one of the most prestigious and oldest. Started in Victorian Britain, the prize to win he massive trophy got its name from the fact that, for more than 150 years or so, America managed to win the series of race matches without a break until, in 1983, the Australian-backed team led by skipper John Bertrand beat a yacht helmed by legendary US race maestro Dennis Conner.
I love the shape and design of 12-metre yachts, and the J-class yachts that were raced in the 1920s and 1930s are arguably some of the most beautiful creations to be struck from the hand of man. I often find that people who do not know much about sailing like to put prints of J-Class vessels on their walls. I think there is something about the aesthetic of such a racing boat that appeals to us in much the same way that a sleek aircraft does. In many respects the design of a modern yacht has a lot in common with the design of aircraft, so perhaps it is not surprising that some of the top aircraft designers, such as Thomas Sopwith, were keen sailors too.
Largely due to the lack of time and of course money, I do not do as much sailing as in my younger days but I hope to get in some time afloat later this year, possibly including the race around the Isle of Wight, part of the Cowes Week yatchting series. I always seem to return from a yachting holiday or race feeling absolutely knackered but also refreshed by getting completely away from the office. You love it or you hate it. For me, sailing is as addictive as nicotine or booze. I intend to take the shore-based Yachtmaster navigation course this winter and eventually go for the full ticket.
Anyway, I will be interested to see if the USA can win back the America’s Cup trophy this year. I do not think Britain stands much of a chance, unless some rich-as-Croesus character decides to fund a serious challenge for the trophy.
Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.
P.J. O’Rourke
I was reminded of this remark while watching the final stages of the The Masters. Britain’s Justin Rose is currently just behind the leader. One of these days, I tell myself, I am going to pay a visit to Augusta and soak up the atmosphere.
When I decided that I would blog the cricket World Cup in detail, I thought I would be reporting on cricket matches. Right now, I should be sitting in a pub watching Australia play South Africa, the biggest game for my team so far. However, I am at my computer writing at length about peculiar historical events. When I started I thought I was writing the following piece for my own blog. However, as it went on, I realised I was writing a background piece to what was being discussed (as much in the comments as the article, and as much by myself as by Brian) in Brian’s piece on Bob Woolmer’s murder yesterday. The piece starts with some history, but this is crucial to understand the weird and pathological events of the game today, if indeed they can be understood.
For Samizdata readers, there is one point that I sort of assume knowledge of, but which may not be obvious to people who do not follow cricket. I get to it at the end of the post, but I may as well emphasise it now. Cricket has an odd structure, which stems from a century in which it was unable to decide if it were an amateur or professional game. Cricket is today a professional game, but the principal professional teams are national representative teams, which play together all year long. Australians must play for Australia, Indians for India, Englishmen for England. If a player falls out with management, that can end a career, whereas in baseball or soccer he would simply find another team. This also means that if a very good player has the misfortune to come from a small poor country, he will not make nearly as much money as an equally good player from a larger or richer country. It also means that a quite good player who comes from a country with a strong team might not get much of a professional career, whereas the same player would easily do so if he came from a country with a weaker team. It also is partly responsible for the fact that playing strength, expertise in the game, money, and good governance are all too be found in different countries. These imbalances are one thing that makes the game as prone to corruption and criminality as it now seems to be.
In soccer, the World Cup is played between teams of players who spend most of their time (and make most of their income) playing for clubs. In cricket, it is played between the same teams who play together for the rest of the year.
In 1983, India unexpectedly won the World Cup in England. This was a huge event for India, and it led to India and Pakistan asking for and gaining the right to host the 1987 World Cup. This was a big thing for the cricket World Cup, as it had been a largely English event (hosted by England, under English local playing conditions) until that point. The 1987 event ended up on the subcontinent at least partly because the England board had to some extent lost interest, and they were not too bothered by somebody else taking it off their hands. (It was not too long later that the cricketing boards of the world – including England – started arguing bitterly over the right to host it – but interest in it was limited at that point).
India followed up the 1983 win with a win in the seven nation World Championship of cricket, held in Australia in 1985 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the state of Victoria (or some such excuse). At the time, this event was not regarded as much less than a World Cup (which was, as I said, England’s event) – the key thing is that all seven test playing countries were participating. That 1983 win had something that the Australian organisers would not have preferred but which must have gone down well on the subcontinent – an India v Pakistan final, won by India.
Thus India in Pakistan went into the 1987 event believing that they were the teams to beat, and that the event represented a coming of age for subcontinental cricket. The two teams did indeed play well, topping the points tables in the two groups, and each playing home semi-finals. The expectation of everyone was that India and Pakistan would meet in the final.
This did not happen. Australia and England each won their respective semi-finals and met in the final, with Australia winning the tournament. (Expectations in Australia were so low that nobody had even purchased the television rights to the tournament until midway through it – and then after Channel Nine did so, it did not bother to show any of the semi-finals live, and then chose to show a movie rather than the second (England) innings of the final. Australians did not get to see Australia’s first World Cup victory on live television). Some people in India compared the final to a wedding without the bridge and groom. The event was in truth a huge success, and probably the first major subcontinental media saturating cricket event, of a type we have had many of since. The victory by Australia seemed to many to be a complete fluke at the time, but looking from 2007 it seems almost fated – the first of a great many Australian victories that have filled the last 20 years. I remember reading in an English newspaper a couple of months after the event that gave no credit to Australia whatsoever, blamed the victory mostly on Mike Gatting’s reverse sweep, and that it was a game that “England would have won nine times out of ten”. You cannot imagine an English commentator saying that about England v Australia matches these days, but that kind of attitude might help to explain why we still enjoy beating England so much. 1987 was also probably the time when the curious inability of home sides to win the World Cup started to become clear. Nobody had expected England to win any of the three previous tournaments in England, and England did actually do well enough, especially in 1979. However, India and Pakistan could not do it in 1987, and then Australia could not even make the semi-finals despite being pre-tournament favourites in 1992.
But as I was saying, 1987 was the first big subcontinental cricketing media event. → Continue reading: Some background to the Woolmer affair: how did cricket get here?
What I only guessed to be a possibility on Tuesday night, and repeated as a guess here on Wednesday, has now been officially confirmed:
Jamaican police today confirmed that British-born Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was murdered.
Next question, as Michael Jennings commented here yesterday, and which he also copied-and-pasted to his own blog: How about Hansie Cronje? Just to remind you of what Michael said:
I have always been very suspicious about the death of former South African captain Hansie Cronje in a plane crash in 2003. When someone as mixed up with gangsters as Cronje dies mysteriously, one tends to think the worst. I wouldn’t have thought that Woolmer was mixed up with gangsters. However, nobody would have believed it of Cronje (who had a reputation for being honest, upstanding, and God-fearing) until he was caught red handed. Secondly, perhaps the situation is that to enter the Pakistan dressing room is to be mixed up with gangsters.
I don’t think that Woolmer was mixed up with gangsters if by that is meant that he was personally involved in match fixing. More probable is that he was about to publish in a book what he had merely observed. But, who knows?
If this was a Poirot murder mystery on TV, the real killer of Woolmer would turn out to be someone entirely unconnected with cricket or with cricket betting, who killed him or who had him killed for entirely different and perhaps purely personal reasons.
But this is not Poirot on TV. This is for real, difficult though many are now finding all this to believe. Today, the entire Pakistan team was questioned and finger-printed by the Jamaican Police.
International cricket matches involving Pakistan now become more than somewhat ridiculous, and are likely to remain so for quite some time, even supposing that cricket’s administrators permit them to continue. It makes no sense at the moment to shut down the entire Cricket World Cup. What purpose would that serve? (At least Pakistan are now out of it.) Nevertheless, Ireland’s ‘surprise’ win against Pakistan on St Patrick’s day now looks more like a gift than an achievement.
England are looking well below what it would take to get very far in this competition, even if they do get past lowly Kenya tomorrow. Yesterday New Zealand thrashed Canada, and Holland were far too good for fellow minnows Scotland. Commentators will want to avoid words like “murdered” when describing such games.
Yesterday, I came across this story, about the late and much lamented former England international cricketer and cricket coach for Pakistan, Bob Woolmer:
Speculations are rife about foul play being involved in Pakistan coach Bob Woolmers death. Reports indicate that some current senior Pakistan team members might have fixed both matches, against West Indies and Ireland.
It is being debated in cricketing circles that he could have been killed to cover up match-fixing by the Pakistani team. The Pakistan team would not be allowed to fly back home till the investigations are over.
And, although I never blogged about this yesterday, I did talk about this yesterday, while surrounding by Iain Dale who at least pretended to be interested, and by three young Conservative ladies who almost went to sleep with excitement. This was on DoughtyStreetTV last night, by way of mere introduction to saying how very much I had enjoyed reading this short but sweet recollection by Peter Briffa, about how Woolmer was one of his teachers at prep school. We have not, I said, heard the last of this story. I also said there would be a tax cut, although I cannot recall if I actually said it might be income tax. So, I had a pretty good night of it.
Because, the Woolmer story has now erupted from the recesses of the internet and gone global:
NEW DELHI: Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, found dead a day after Pakistan’s shock defeat at the hands of Ireland, was murdered, police have confirmed. Although the Pakistan Cricket Board has been claiming that the autopsy conducted on Woolmer was inconclusive, sources, according to Times Now, have confirmed that investigators have indeed said the coach was murdered.
In fact, the Jamaican Police is said to be already ascertaining the whereabouts of some of the Pakistan players at the time the murder could have taken place. Sources confirmed to Times Now that further questioning of Pakistan players is on the cards as well.
The confirmation comes soon after allegations by former Pakistan pacer Sarfaraz [wrong spelling – should be “Sarfraz”] Nawaz that Woolmer was murdered by the betting syndicate. The outspoken Nawaz has said that almost everybody in control of the game is involved in betting and Woolmer was perhaps about to reveal all in a book.
Since they spell Sarfraz Nawaz wrongly, I cannot help wondering if they have any other of their facts wrong, such as little details like: “police have confirmed”.
For, on the other hand, there is this, from Woolmer’s wife:
“No I don’t see any conspiracy in his death. I am aware that his death is being viewed as a suspicious death. He had nothing to do with the match fixing controversy and any such person being involved is highly unlikely. We never got any threats as far as I know.”
I await developments with extreme interest. Not least because, whatever the truth of these now very noisy rumours, they do rather put this ruckus in a somewhat different light, do they not?
As for the mere cricket, try reading this.
UPDATE: The BBC now confirms that Woolmer’s death is being treated as “suspicious”.
Freddie could have drowned out there
An anonymous source at the Rex St Lucian hotel in St Lucia, discussing the fact that England’s cricket vice-captain Andrew Flintoff celebrated England’s stunning first up World Cup loss to New Zealand (in which Flintoff was out first ball) by having an eight hour bender, commandeering and then capisizing a small boat and having to be rescued at sea at 4am.
Regardless of the England heroics the World Cup has turned out to be a fascinating event so far, with Bangladesh possibly announcing their coming of age in international cricket with a stunning victory over India, and Ireland celebrating St Patrick’s Day by knocking former champions Pakistan out of the tournament with a rather mind-boggling win. Personally I think another upset is on the cards today. England are capable of beating Canada.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
