Gryllidae Cricket

In the 1992 Western Unforgiven , Gene Hackman pleads  “I don't deserve to die like this” to which Clint Eastwood's  William Money  replies “deserve's got nothing to do with it”. In cricket the best players and teams don't always win, sometimes luck has a lot to say; this unpredictability makes the game so compelling. Deserving players don't always win, and deserving has nothing to do with it when it comes to selection. Bouncing in, blond hair glistening, knees pumping high, calm, determined expression, and everyone knows something will happen: the classic Broad devastating bowling spell. Latterly, the same devastation has been seen in Broad's public reactions following an omission from England's Test team, be it the infamous 'Big Brother' socially-distanced Sky Sports interview in 2020 or today's Daily Mail article. Broad's latest piece has added more fuel to the fire over his controversial omission, alongside James Anderson, from England men...

A disgraceful performance from a captain who got his sums wrong. It should never be permitted to happen again. One of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field. Richie Benaud on the infamous underarm ball incident. Cricket is not real life; it probably can’t tell us anything about real life, but it can be a nice distraction from reality. In the real world, a fair, universal way to live to follow is by applying the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. Applying this rule to cricket simply does not work, especially as a common captaincy maxim is to do what the opposition would like you to do least. In real life, someone constantly doing what you would like least would not be nice in the slightest. There are no absolute morals in cricket as it is just a sport where players should do what they can to win within the Laws.  If the majority of the cricket fraternity finds an aspect of play unpalatable, such as an underarm delivery, then it falls on t...