Home > The Magazine > Columnists

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Spectator Sport

Roger Alton

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

Indian summers

Blizzards have been sweeping the country, so it must be the start of the cricket season. And sure enough MCC play Sussex, the champion county, in the annual throat-clearing match at Lord’s today: thermals at the ready please. Though quite why that has always opened the season is beyond me. And ask yourself where would you rather be: in St John’s Wood or flying out to Jaipur, to see Graeme Smith, Shane Warne and Younus Khan take on Chennai’s M.S. Dhoni, Matthew Hayden and Muralitharan in the Indian Premier League’s Twenty20 series which starts next week?

In truth, though, for all its stately flummery, cricket has been very nimble in adapting itself to this changing world, while hanging on to the best of the rest. The 100th annual Army v. Navy game, for example, takes place this year, at Lord’s, and is marked on the cover of MCC members’ ticket book. Meanwhile Lord’s will stage the all-singing, all-dancing Twenty20 World Cup final next year, with marching bands, and presumably cheerleaders in MCC bikinis.

But you hope that cricket will be able to deal with what Kevin Pietersen touched on recently. Pietersen was bellyaching, not unsurprisingly, that top English players were missing out on the IPL jackpot because it coincided with the start of the English Test season. He added: ‘Chris Gayle [the West Indies captain, and a perfectly OK player but not anyone you’d drive through the night to watch] texted me the other day to ask why I’m not playing and I said “I can’t”. He just sent dollar signs in the next text message.’ Classy. There’s still no sign that the international calendar is being reorganised to take account of the April–1 June IPL schedule. But it will — and sooner rather than later. England are in the West Indies next spring which means that Flintoff, Pietersen and even Collingwood will miss out again. Dimi Mascerenhas, he of the five sixes off the last five balls against India last year, will however be coining it in India as he’s not on a central contract.

1 | 2 Next page

More articles from: Roger Alton | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Another Voice

Matthew Parris

I blame those who worked with Brown, knew what he was really like, but stayed silent

And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

A gardener must be a philosopher but never an atheist

Status Anxiety

Toby Young

Sean left strict orders: if he was kidnapped, I was to be kept away from the region

Spectator Sport

Roger Alton

Mighty Murray

Glasgow East is Brown’s dirty little secret: a hideous, costly social experiment gone wrong

Fraser Nelson

Glasgow East symbolises — as few other places in Britain can — the fact that the problem Labour faces is not just lack of leadership but lack of mission. What is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates.
For all the latest on the Glasgow East by-election, visit Coffee House

Some advice for Brown’s second year: find a John Reid and bring back Charles Clarke

Steve Richards

Steve Richards reviews the week in politics

Even middle-class children are suffering from neglect

Rachel Johnson

Rachel Johnson says that working mothers, divorce, Polish nannies and an obsession with extra-curricular activities mean that our children are seeingless of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years