Just not cricket

Sad times for The Times, and for the game of cricket, with the passing within days of each other of William Rees-Mogg and Christopher Martin-Jenkins. Both men represented, besides the potency of the double-barrelled surname, a specific and wholly admirable strand of Englishness. They had unfailing good manners, and though very posh were never snobbish. They would talk to anyone and enjoy it (most of the time anyway). They never looked as if they were trying too hard, though of course both did work very hard throughout their lives.

And by golly they knew their stuff — whether it was Rees-Mogg and his antiquarian books (and Somerset cricket, of course) or CMJ and the finer points of Muralitharan’s bowling figures. They loved the English language and expressed themselves with Orwellian clarity, without any of the vanity that scars a lot of modern writing. Both men were blessed with an uncomplicated and loving family life. And they were decently conservative — suspicious of the new fangled and of anyone promising Jerusalem. The phrase ‘that’s not cricket’ would have meant something to WRM and CMJ, which is why it is a pity neither man was around to comment on events in Melbourne the other day featuring the one and only Shane Warne.

Now, however you choose to describe Warne, the words ‘Aussie’, ‘bloke’, and ‘cricket’ would probably come to mind pretty sharpish. So what on earth was he doing having a hissy fit and throwing the ball underarm to hit Marlon Samuels in a meaningless Big Bash 20-over thrash? Samuels, of course, lost it too, and chucked his bat back at Warne. Pretty dismal stuff and a long way from the spirit of CMJ. As the Aussie sports journo Greg Baum said, this was when the Big Bash came of age: about six and a half.