When I was a boy, I loved cricket with a passion. To this day, my recall of inane cricketing trivia is embarrassingly extensive. I mean really; is there any reason I should be able to list every Ausralian cricketer who's taken more than 200 wickets or made more than 5000 runs? No, there isn't. But I can.
Over the years, this love has waned. The main reason - as best I can tell - is the now longstanding inability of the Australian team to be gracious winners. I had no problem with their winning virtually every game they played. After all, they possessed for a time, some of the statistically greatest players to ever don whites. (I refuse to acknowledge the baggy green, as it is an utterly, utterly stupid form of millinery for a game played under hot sun.) And yet somehow, they managed to make their winning (or losing) something about which I no longer cared.
It seems that a team is more than the sum of its parts, but the nuances of the parts themselves never cease to matter. As Kerry "Skull O'Keefe sagely noted, with the retirement of Jason Gillespie, there was no longer a single player left in the Australian side with whom he'd be happy to share a beer. And as anyone who's followed the game via the wireless will attest, there is no saner, calmer, measured voice of cricketing reason in the world than the inestimable, Mr O'Keefe.
The Australian side is efficient and hardworking, with players who do not lack for talent. However, these epithets could also be applied to a band like Kiss, or Bon Jovi, where successful is unarguable, but intrinsic value is doubtful at best. I can see a lot of parallels with Kiss, actually; so much arrogance, but an arrogance derived from success, rather than quality. It's weird, but you'd be forgiven for thinking that many of the current crop, including their offensive captain, possessed a peculiarly malignant blend of arrogance and insecurity. I'm honestly not sure what the problem is, but if nothing else, I am certain that I no longer care whether Australia wins or loses. And this a shame.
But my distaste for the game extends well beyond the Australian side. The game itself has become ghastly to watch. Cricket was once a game of style and substance, and now, it has very little of either. Who cared what David Gower's batting average was? He was great, because to watch him make a hundred on a good day was like watching a master perform Tai Chi. Effortless and beautiful. And he once flew a plane over his own side when they were playing, after being dropped for disciplinary reasons. The man had class and cheek. To say that there is no one world quite like him any more is somewhat of an understatement. All I can say is thank Heavens for Gavin Swann and his trapped feline. Without him, it terms of class and aesthetic value, English cricket would be on a par with the cricket of Inner Mongolia. And in Inner Mongolia, for bats, balls and wickets, (and, in a pinch, players) they use yaks.
The introduction of 20-20 cricket was a bad idea, because it made the two other forms of the game seem questionable, whilst adding nothing to anything except the Indian economy. 20-20 cricket is a forced highlight reel, or worse, a highlight reel comprised of slap and tickle nonsense that could only satiate a drunken buffoon's idea of what the best of cricket looks like. But introduce it they did, and now one-day cricket looks pathetically slow, and tests look endless. To be honest, I'd scrap both one-dayers and 20-20, not simply because they are a waste of time, but because there is a law of diminishing returns. I can care about cricket (in theory) a few months of the year, but not all the time. If the footy season never ended, I'd logically have to care less about it, as I've only got so much time and enthusiasm to go round.
And yet, from here, things only get worse. The problems in Australian cricket pale to those in other parts of the world. The West Indies are a feeble excuse for a cricketing nation, which is horrible, given their illustrious past. England is effectively a representative side for the majority of the Commonwealth, and is played by people almost as distasteful as those here in Australia. India is trying to become the Collingwood of cricket, which is one step short of desiring to force cricket upon Poland, and Pakistan are the most offensive of all.
The door needs to be shut on Pakistan. A side whose players can be bought by betting syndicates, who cannot play a match without the taint of corruption, and who cannot even hold a match on home soil for fear of terrorist attack are not a viable franchise. They are certainly less viable than Zimbabwe, and they were given the boot without any in opposing teams actually being shot at. (Which, under Mugabe, is quite surprising.)
To be honest, it's probably time for the whole game to take a year or so off, and regroup. Tradition be damned - cricket is an international joke right now. I think that perhaps in the much the same way that Australia could (and should) call stumps on the monarchy when the Queen's wicket falls, cricket should come to an end with the retirement of Richie Benaud. At least for a while. And in its much-needed hiatus, it can figure out how to be a viable international sport.
To do this, it will need to reduce itself to one code. I vote for tests. It also needs to devise a system of competition and roster of games that works. And it needs to ban corrupt sides immediately and indefinitely.
Australia has some work to do, too. For a start, it needs to abolish all Cricket Academies, in the hope that less prattish folk will decide to play the game. It needs to get rid of the Allan Border Medal - an award that makes being issued with a parking ticket seem an honour by comparison. And above all else, it needs to learn how to play with a spirit and a desire that aspires to more than winning.
I've never really stopped watching cricket. It's in my blood, like some kind of virus. But I've stopped caring about it. And that's a shame.
I like to think things can get better, but I think it's going to take time, and come at a cost. Reducing the number of viable international sides down to about six teams might seem drastic, but expansion is not the mother of all success. So, it's time for the Pakistanis to get the arse. It's sad to do this to them when their country is underwater, but then I think their players should have thought harder about the long term value in being paid to, in every sense of the phrase, over-step the mark.
Or I could just start watching hockey. It's just an anarchic form of cricket anyway....
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