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Just Not Cricket
Mar. 25th, 2018 10:05 pmBack when I was in high school, our First XI cricket team came up with a t-shirt idea to raise funds. Quite why the cricket team of one of Sydney's top private schools required extra funds is a mystery for another time... but the t-shirt idea was beautifully simple. $5 for a t-shirt that simply said 'I Love Cricket' in bold red letters on a white background. $6 for one that said 'I Hate Cricket' in the same design. Foolproof, something for everyone to relate to & of course I bought the more expensive, but truer at the time, 'Hate' version
To be fair, it probably wasn't the game that I disliked, just the kind of people who played it at our school. Our sporting team players were always elevated to some sort of demigod status & seeing it go to their heads & their subsequent behaviour & treatment of lesser mortals irritated me to the point where a classroom debate about Australia's obsession with sport became an open slanging match between the combined rugby & cricket elite on one side... & me, alone, on the other. I still won though... Good ball-handling skills are usually counter-productive to developing what's in your other head
And today, the news that the Captain of the Australian cricket team was complicit in & encouraging of ball-tampering & cheating in the current match against South Africa, has finally crystallised & clarified the reason I don't watch the cricket as much, or as intensely, as I used to. The players annoy me & it just takes me back to those far-from-halcyon days at school & I start to wonder if I still have that t-shirt in the back of a cupboard somewhere
To be fair, it probably wasn't the game that I disliked, just the kind of people who played it at our school. Our sporting team players were always elevated to some sort of demigod status & seeing it go to their heads & their subsequent behaviour & treatment of lesser mortals irritated me to the point where a classroom debate about Australia's obsession with sport became an open slanging match between the combined rugby & cricket elite on one side... & me, alone, on the other. I still won though... Good ball-handling skills are usually counter-productive to developing what's in your other head
And today, the news that the Captain of the Australian cricket team was complicit in & encouraging of ball-tampering & cheating in the current match against South Africa, has finally crystallised & clarified the reason I don't watch the cricket as much, or as intensely, as I used to. The players annoy me & it just takes me back to those far-from-halcyon days at school & I start to wonder if I still have that t-shirt in the back of a cupboard somewhere
