Roger Alton Roger Alton

Can cricket go on like this?

[iStock] 
issue 21 August 2021

‘Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers, and — as George Orwell said — old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.’ Thanks to John Major, former prime minister and noted cricket lover, for those words uttered in 1993 — and that are not worthy of the derision with which they would almost certainly be greeted today. The beer may still be warm, the suburbs nearly as green, and dog owners as dottily doting as ever, but these days the shadows on county grounds are as likely to be cast by floodlights as by the sun, and any old maids are most probably tanked-up middle managers in drag.

Since Major’s speech, cricket has shattered into a thing of so many varieties it is only just possible to pick out the game of my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.

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