Any Chance of Putting Some Proper Cricket on the Telly?
Musings on County Cricket and the IPL from an anonymous former Australian Test cricketer
So, the Sheffield Shield final’s done. Alex Carey sorted it out for South Australia the way he sorts everything out - calm as you like, no fuss, no press conferences about his leadership journey, no Instagram posts that asterisk out their own swearing like they’re filing a complaint with HR. Just a bloke who knows his job, doing his job. Beautiful.
And now there’s nothing.
Not nothing nothing. There’s the IPL, if you want to be up at midnight like a glassy-eyed possum, watching a fifteen-year-old tonk sixes into baying crowds, all screaming deliriously like they’re at a bloody Robbie Williams concert, and the big fella’s just taken off his shirt during ‘Rock DJ’.
Have you heard about this kid? Just out there, playing in the IPL, bold as brass. I’m not talking about one of those BBL ankle-biters who stand awestruck on the field while the fireworks go off then get to keep a player’s cap as a reward. Or those Rock Eisteddfod munchkins doing elaborate gestures at a Power Surge button like they’re in a school play about the wonders of electricity. Or the little ferals in the stands chasing after sixes like golden retrievers and lobbing them back into the ground. No, this little shit is playing in the actual match. Fucken smashing them too.
Everyone’s going spare about it - ‘extraordinary talent’, ‘generational prospect’. Analytics merchants weeping into their laptops. Look, good on the kid. Genuinely. Maybe he is that talented - I wouldn’t know, I’m not staying up until three in the morning to find out. But, frankly, I’m not that impressed. As far as I’m concerned, it just means the ‘best T20 competition on Earth’ can be dominated by some young ratbag jacked up on red cordial. That’s not a tribute to the child. That’s a damning indictment of the format. Hell, my asthmatic niece could hit just as many sixes if you gave her a big bat, a flat pitch, and boundaries shorter than a Hobart summer.
No wonder none of the Aussie bowlers can be arsed playing over there. What are you gonna do? Bounce the little bastard? You can’t win - you get him out, you’re being a cruel mongrel, picking on a child half your age. You let him slog you around, you’re a hopeless clown, past your prime. Nah, if I were Big Hoff, Big Cummo or Big Mitch Starc, I’d keep doing what they’re doing - stay at home until this precocious terror’s forced to go back to school or whatever.
And, look, the Pakistan Super League’s on too, but it’s also at a shithouse time. Play cricket in the daytime, you fucken numpties. Australian Eastern Time. God’s own timezone. Mind you, I’ll give Pakistan cricket this - at least they’re having a crack. Completely unhinged as always, but utterly committed, even though they’re always one administrative crisis away from total collapse. I respect that. You know where you stand with Pakistan cricket. Usually somewhere alarming, but fair play to them.
And, fuck me, nowhere near as alarming as where England cricket stands. After the Ashes, that mob had an ‘inquiry’ into what went wrong. As if you needed an expert to break that shitshow down. I can tell you what happened for free. It’s simple. They were a bunch of shithouse cricketers led by a LinkedIn thought leader, who all decided they’d rather spend their tour down under on the piss, picking fights with Kiwi bouncers, and wandering the streets of Noosa shitfaced at two in the morning.
Fairly straightforward diagnosis, I’d have thought. But that’s not what the Poms decided, is it?
No. At the end of all their careful deliberation, after months of very thorough inquirying, the official finding was: nothing needs to change. Stokes stays. McCullum stays. Bazball stays. ‘We got pumped 4-1 on Australian soil, but fuck it, we’re basically fine.’
And then their captain - the bloke supposed to be leading this sorry rabble - posted 847 words about his feelings on Instagram. Censored his swearing like a man who’s never met himself. Signed off ‘Stokesy 💪’. With a flexing bicep. Very Bazball. We can’t play cricket, but we can fucken well search through the emoji keyboard on our iPhones like nobody’s business.
Anyway, the Bazball leadership clique has promised to pay more attention to county cricket going forward.
Tremendous news. I’m glad somebody is. I mean, theoretically, it’s a cut above the T20 bullshit. At least it’s red ball. But it’s not on television, so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.
You’re not going to find me squinting at a pissweak livestream watching Shithouseshire v Upper Mediocreton grinding away in front of forty people under grey skies with a gale coming in off the North Sea. You want me to watch cricket, put it on a proper channel at a sensible hour. That’s how I grew up, watching Richie and Tony and Bill and Chappelli talking me through the Mercantile Mutual Cup. That’s the way to get your average punter to watch cricket that they otherwise wouldn’t give two shits about.
But even the Channel Nine lads would have struggled to sell the county game. I mean, this is the kind of competition in which Ollie Pope dominates. I don’t know if he is this year, mind you. Like I said, I haven’t watched a ball of it, but dominating county cricket is like dominating the Woolies self-checkout queue. If Ollie Pope is topping the England first class run charts, skittering around at the crease like he’s got an inner ear infection, that’s all you need to know about it.
So those are my options. Stay up until two in the morning watching grown men competing with a child. Or squint at a dogshit stream of pasty English batters nicking off to even pastier English bowlers in front of a handful of retirees in anoraks.
Or… put on a replay of the Shield final and rewatch Alex Carey going about his business.
No choice, is it?
