cricket with balls

I want to work in cricket.

Not because it makes me rich, not because I’ll ever play for my country, and not because I think it is a cool job.

I do it because cricket is something that I love.

Since I was a child it has been the one constant in my life.  My first overseas trip was for cricket.  When I was a kid I slept with a new bat in my dead.  My Friday afternoons were all about working out the best fielding positions for the next day.  I spent days on end sitting the MCG with no one else watching the vics.  The delivery of the cricket gear catalogue was more spiritual than anything else in my life.

Right at the moment I don’t like cricket.

I fucken hate it.

I’m so sick and tired of this shit.

It makes me sick.

This whole thing makes me doubt the game I love, the game I grew up with.

Cricketers should be paid more, but there isn’t a cricketer in this test match who will make less than I will this year.  Or last year, or the year before.

But this isn’t just about money.  It’s the Fucken nerve, the Fucken spinelessness, the Fucken abuse.

I’m so Fucken angry at these assholes of cunts.  Those who set it up, those who benefit from it, and those who do it.

I’m assuming that most people reading this, and the person who wrote it, would play for his country for free.  Or at least, what ever a plumber gets.

Some people are just cunts, and they don’t deserve cricket.  And cricket sure as shit doesn’t deserve them.

I cannot fully articulate how angry I am right now.

The game I love has never been clean, but this just seems worse.

Probably because it is in a test match.

But it just feels Fucken horrible right now.

Like someone has cheated on me.

I’m not naïve about spot fixing, I’ve written more than a few pieces about it.  I know it goes on.  But in pointless ICL, IPL or Pro40 games.

This is way Fucken worse.

I’ve never forgiven Hansie Cronje, and I sure as shit wont forgive anyone here either.

No one is guilty yet, that doesn’t make this any better.

I’ve read the transcripts, seen the video and read all the articles.  I want it to be fake, but it doesn’t feel fake.  It feels wrong, because when i read or watch it, i feel sick in my stomach.

I talked to a friend on the phone, both he and I knew that fixing was around, but this still rocked both of us.  I could barely talk, he was breaking down.

We are grown men, men that love and work in cricket. But this just hits you, even if you thought it was a possibility. Even if you thought it could have been happening.  To read the details just hurts.

My game, fucked.

Maybe some of the details from NOTW are wrong, but something has happened, I saw those no balls live, I don’t need news channels showing them to me with a photoshopped circles around them.  They looked dodgy at the time, we even joked on test match sofa that it was like the no balls that David Saker used to bowl on purpose back in club cricket.

Fuck.

This is just complete shit.

I can’t be bothered with it.  There is so much to say, but I’m too Fucken angry, probably even more upset.

Cricket, I love it, but I fucken hate it. Right now.

Dedicated to my wife on our wedding anniversary.

This Pakistani selection story just keeps getting stranger.

Today they announced the squad for the upcoming one day games against England. Strangely, Mohammed Yousuf was in it. That’s Yousuf, a man who has always given the impression that he feels the same way about one day cricket as Shahid Afridi does about Tests – it is a nice idea in theory, but I’m not really the guy for it so why pick me?

More surprisingly, Shoaib Malik wasn’t in the squad. Malik and Yousuf famously have the sort of relationship that makes John Howard and Murali look like bosom buddies. Surprisingly few eyebrows were raised when Malik was left out of the last Test. Playing Yasir Hameed was a sound choice, but dropping Malik rather than Imran Farhat – a man who looks as much like a Test opener as my arse does like Natalie Portman – was odd. Retaining Yousuf for a one day series and not Malik surely reveals who the latest winner in Pakistani Political Selection Chairs is.

The strangest thing of all, though, is just how little comment this has generated in any of the media. It is not as if the day was absolutely bursting with sports news – Jrod was even on national radio talking about that Ricky Ponting story, a tale surely colder than an ice pack down the jockstrap.

Which must mean that the whole Pakistani infighting story is no longer too strange for fiction, it is now stranger than reality, too.

I’ve never seen a snuff movie. Never had the chance to, never wanted to.

Ditto executions. Even in the olden days, when they held them in public, I doubt that I would have been one of those stood near the gallows or following the tumbril. It just isn’t my kind of thing.

In fact, the closest I have ever come to any of this was watching a film about the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland, watching as a number of very ill people (one of whom, sadly, I knew) took their final journey.

But today we all got to watch as the Pakistani cricket team took it in turns to commit suicide, in public, in Birmingham.

Now, I know as well as anyone that Birmingham can have that effect upon people. Even so, trooping out one after the other to top yourself in front of literally tens of people really is a bit extreme.

At the moment that Salman Butt decided to bat first under an overcast sky, he made the clearest declaration of intent since the first caveman attempted to bludgeon himself to death with his own club. After all, he was there at Trent Bridge when Pakistan twice demonstrated their inability to bat in such conditions. What was he thinking of, if anything at all? Then there was the wafty, airy, drive that he played to get himself out…

At least the rest of the team went down with their captain. Imran Farhat and Azhar Ali perished in petrification, immobile and shotless in the fact of England’s attack and everyone else followed. No-one cheered.

In a corner of a room, Ijaz Butt was crying.

The sounds of sobbing brought a startled flunky running. “Master! Master! Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh Salman,”, Butt wailed, “It’s all gone wrong”

“How, Master? How?”

“No-one finds us funny anymore. Salman”

“Surely not, Master”

“It’s true, Salman. We’ve tried it all – three captains who hated each other, suspending people and letting them come back right away, everything. We even gave Kamran Akmal wicketkeeping gloves!”

Salman is, by now, laughing so hard he can hardly breathe.

“But <gasp> Master, that’s <wheeze> hilarious <sob>!”

“No, Salman, it isn’t. Not any more. It was, but it is not now. No-one is laughing.”

“Might I make a humble suggestion, Master”

“Oh, go on. It can’t be worse than my idea of recalling Mohammed Yousuf”

“That’s just it, Master. Now we’ve recalled him, let’s arrange for him to only arrive the day before the Test. And then to claim that all of the flying has made him too tired to play”

“Go on.”

“And then we drop Kamran, and replace him with someone who has never taken a catch in international cricket”

“So, just like Kamran, but with the potential to be even worse?”

“Exactly, Master!”

“Salman, you’re a genius. Make it so!”