Ashes Poetry

These reflections are about beyond the boundary – qua C L R James – more than just a game.

Three days later, a great draw was a great draw – of crowds and attention to Wales – notwithstanding Nick Morgan’s comments after Day 4 (why not a Test Match Div 2 - Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Holland ….) The EWCB and Cardiff did a great job in making this the most welcoming of occasions, and the Gods of cricket rewarded them and a capacity final day crowd with a tremendous finale.

This must be the first test series where matches have been played in two capital cities, and Cardiff have put down a marker on and off the pitch for the other venues to strive for. It’s a lovely city, compact and full of culture, and Welshness in a cosmopolitan sense. All the flags of the rugby playing world’s nations are paved into the entries to the Millennium Stadium, (if only so the Welsh can walk over everyone else even before they go onto the pitch)

Talking of contests, behind the scenes a face-off between Swalec and npower (it’s the Swalec stadium, npower the series sponsor) seems to have been decided in favour of npower. I’d like to imagine it was decided by a cricket match between the two plcs with no ringers and winner takes all, but doubtless more diplomatic measures were involved.

“Victory for Cricket” most will say, the fly in the ointment the water spilled on or not as the case may be over Jimmy Anderson’s batting gloves. More ink has been spilled on this being or not being in the spirit of the game, as if it is the greatest moral issue since MPs expenses or the Bodyline series – (Ponting should have quoted a predecessor, Woodfull, who was alleged to have said to the English manager ‘Plum’ Warner “There are two sides out there: one is playing cricket, one is not” That would have really got the pressure cooker cookin’.)

There was one crowd invasion of two blokes. http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/content/story/413910.html 

They were protesting about Ryanair’s dodgy employment practices. One of their daughters had paid £2500 to be trained up to work for Ryanair, only to be sacked the night before before she started earning. If  I were her da’ I’d have been livid, and if I were going to the cricket the next day…

The sad thing is that the press didn’t pick up on the story, not even that Ryanair’s dodgy employment practices helped save England from certain defeat – it took at least as much time to dump the protesters as it did to dry Anderson’s  wringing wet batting gloves. I feel sorry for the two blokes. It’s no fun being man-handled away against your will (It happened to me two years ago due to wholly inappropriate application of section 2 of the mental health act) and no fun for those who do the man-handling, unless they’re professional sadists. It takes guts to run onto the pitch and know you’ll going to get man-handled off it, and wind up in court. In many ways they showed more far more fight than the England top order. Will what they did help improve Ryanair’s employment practices? Probably not. What else could they have done? Not much. (Remember Ryanair are Irish, with 1 in 6 on the dole: exploitation is all too easy to let go.)

Did what these protesters do go against the spirit of cricket? Cricinfo reckons “The protest was slightly less eventful than that which occured during the Headingley Test of 1975, where vandals forced the abandonment of the third Ashes Test by digging up the pitch prior to the fifth day’s play. On that occasion, the protesters were campaigning for the release of George Davis, a 34-year-old mini-cab driver who had been sentenced to a 20-year sentence for armed robbery. “

The Ryanair Two delayed proceedings by a couple of minutes, not ruin the chances of England winning a test match and levelling the series, if memory serves. Not to pay attention to the cause of their protest soon leads to a cricketing world where the establishment turns a blind eye to apartheid, as originally the case with Basil D’Oliveira.

 What do you think? Reply below, and if you are travelling by Ryan Air remember to tie a knot in it, cross your legs or take some cash since it is a quid a pee in-flight.