GotGameButNoName
Debutant
- Apr 3, 2023
- 112
- 126
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
Watching this is actually pretty instructive on why I just can't get into cricket anywhere near as much as I used to.
That's not a criticism of the contest itself. Two flawed teams in the arena of test cricket can make for some compelling viewing and this Ashes series can definitely boast that. Stokes is almost Must See TV on his own these days - Botham on steroids. Cummins for his part has led from the front. Wood has been electric, and the series has had subtext and storyline aplenty - from the sad injury to Lyon to the triumphant return of Mitch Marsh.
And yet watching the absurd spectacle of Warner getting out to a bloke for the seventeenth time just can't help but undermine it all a little. I felt the same way watching forty year old Anderson have a trundle, or poor Ali being dragged out of retirement and looking hopelessly underdone. And Bairstow is a wicketkeeper in much the same way I'm an expert on Korean history - which is to say, not at all.
This is the very pinnacle of the game and yet there's more than a hint of the village green despite it all.
Put more simply, at what other stage in this great games' history would a bloke like Warner be allowed to get out to a bloke seventeen times? And what does that say about the games health more broadly?
Cricket can't seem to decide what the elite level of the game is. All of the best players in the world play the shortest form of the game and directly at the expense of the longer format and the international game more generally. The recent failure of a pretty limited West Indies team to qualify for the World Cup speaks directly to that. An Andre Russell or Kieron Pollard may have been useful out there but alas, they've been lost to international cricket for many years.
That's not a criticism of the contest itself. Two flawed teams in the arena of test cricket can make for some compelling viewing and this Ashes series can definitely boast that. Stokes is almost Must See TV on his own these days - Botham on steroids. Cummins for his part has led from the front. Wood has been electric, and the series has had subtext and storyline aplenty - from the sad injury to Lyon to the triumphant return of Mitch Marsh.
And yet watching the absurd spectacle of Warner getting out to a bloke for the seventeenth time just can't help but undermine it all a little. I felt the same way watching forty year old Anderson have a trundle, or poor Ali being dragged out of retirement and looking hopelessly underdone. And Bairstow is a wicketkeeper in much the same way I'm an expert on Korean history - which is to say, not at all.
This is the very pinnacle of the game and yet there's more than a hint of the village green despite it all.
Put more simply, at what other stage in this great games' history would a bloke like Warner be allowed to get out to a bloke seventeen times? And what does that say about the games health more broadly?
Cricket can't seem to decide what the elite level of the game is. All of the best players in the world play the shortest form of the game and directly at the expense of the longer format and the international game more generally. The recent failure of a pretty limited West Indies team to qualify for the World Cup speaks directly to that. An Andre Russell or Kieron Pollard may have been useful out there but alas, they've been lost to international cricket for many years.