Not cricket

In Competition No. 2500 you were invited to describe a modern-day Test match in the style of Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘breathless hush’ poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’.
Summoned by the holidaying Dr Lucy to provide columnar cover, your locum tenens was initially worried that his prescription would not tick the right boxes, float enough boats. It was a big ask, but you played a blinder, whacking Sleazey, Sledgey, Streaky and that prat Silly Fancy-Dressy all round the park. Best entries were the 24-liners, which adapted the poet’s conceit of cricket as metaphor for the Great Game of war and indeed life itself (one can’t imagine such stuff being written after 1914). The winners below get £30 each, while Man of the Match and trouserer of the extra fiver — by a stump’s width from Bill Greenwell — was Basil Ransome-Davies with a dark dactylic diatribe.

There’s a drunken mob in the ground tonight —
The air is opaque with ganja smoke
And the sledging taunts of the men in white
And the umpiring beyond a joke.
Bunce to be made from the tabloid press
In a contest to dodge or fix the blame,
While streakers exhibit their nakedness —
Where’s the percentage in playing the game?
The zone in the city is coded green,
Green like the hue of a one-dollar bill,
Safely remote from the common scene,
Where the booby traps explode and kill.
The Halliburton, the rentagun
And the news channel that knows no shame
All agree how the facts must be spun —
Theirs the profit in playing the game.
For the game is the game of power and wealth,
And justice blind to the loser’s plight.
Grab what you want, by violence or stealth,
And cheating’s fair if the price is right.
From Baghdad to Lord’s the altered laws
Say filling your boots and global fame,
Lies and torture, not honest scores,
Are the age’s way of playing the game.
Basil Ransome-Davies