One year ago there was that press release. The one that called those of us not in the inner sanctum “outside cricket”.
Let’s celebrate that wonderful statement. Rejoice at the news….
Happy Outside Cricket Day
One year ago there was that press release. The one that called those of us not in the inner sanctum “outside cricket”.
Let’s celebrate that wonderful statement. Rejoice at the news….
Being Outside Cricket 
I posted some of my feelings earlier, but I have to note that anyone paying attention could see some problems right from the time of KP being given the captaincy. Selvey and others continue to try to rewrite this, but the evidence from the reporting is clear:
ECB asked KP for his opinions (as captain) on the coach (Moores).
KP gave them, in typically blunt KP style.
Someone at the ECB leaked them.
Crisis.
KP and Moores both sacked.
As I noted at the time, as soon as you put all the press reports together, it’s clear that this wasn’t KP’s fault. And yet the press continued to bang the drum of “KP is a selfish bastard with a big ego who did for nice Mr Moores.”
In a lot of ways Flower’s success disguised the culture of mediocrity. Which we are back to with the rehiring of Moores. Flower did a bunch of things right, but he also got lucky, so the needed culture change never happened…
I’m rambling now, but it’s only a comment…
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Unfortunately relations between KP and the ECB never recovered after his short-lived captaincy stint. The ECB didn’t see KP as one of them, whilst KP never forgave the ECB.
I thought this was most evident during 2012. Pietersen wanted to quit ODIs, the ECB didn’t want to let him. Pietersen wanted to call their bluff, to win the argument, but they didn’t budge. And later in the summer, a still pissed off KP went ranting to the South Africans.
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Regarding the West Indies Rebel tour – a very personal perspective…
I was about 17 years old in the early 80, last years at school, enjoying cricket. South African sport and television coverage were in isolation. The country in flames. My cricketing heroes were Grae-me Pollock and Clive Rice. My musical hero Bruce Springsteen. Little Steven came to South Africa and rather doing a tour as my heart wanted, he went back and recorded Sun City, what my mind understood. That is also my feeling on the rebel tour – my mind understood the issues, but these guys won my heart…
The West Indies tour caught me in my life at a time that I could spend a lot of time following the players and the games (unlike the English tours). As a white middle class Afrikaner growing up in South Africa the opportunity to see finally some Windies players (although 3rd rate) was unbelieva-ble. These guys were mean fighting machines. The bowled, batted, fielded in a way I had never experienced (Now many years later I caught up with a lot of classic Windies cricketing mo-ments…but then I had no access to this).
It was great, and natural, and despite me backing SA, a love and respect, I would say even hero worship developed for these guys that were … well, black. I adopted Sylvester Clarke’s action (in my mind of course and thereby attempting to adopt his unbelievable cool approach). He was the Clarence Clemons of cricket. I tried to get the flair of Collis King in my batting, the class of Kal-licharran.
Of course I understood these guys were playing “Sun City”. Of course it is must be seen as a be-trayal beyond description. But for me, I shall never forget this tour, and these guys. They were part of a great number of steps that I had to take in my life, and part of a journey towards “normality”, and I thank them for it, knowing that they all paid a heavy price. As I thank Andre Brink, the great author that just passed.
And may we continue to fight for a just society, and a cricketing structure that allows ALL cricketers to earn a living, live (and die) in honor. And long may sport bring us together.
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And while I am on a nostalgia trip…I did a political cartoon once in SA regarding the eminent release of Mandela:
First image of De Klerk being viewed from behind bars asking Mandela if he wants to come “out”
Second Image, De Klerk alone in a small confound, surrounded by all of South Africa…..
So much about who is inside and who is outside…
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Love the pictures. Yes, let’s all celebrate the fact that we are not part of this unsavoury bunch of miscreants. Let’s face it we need them to like us, just as we need a bullet in our heads. Nah.
Headline: “Happy to be outside cricket…the only place in town where you really do need to be seen!”
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I too am now happily outside cricket.
And I’m not coming back.
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Sport n. 1) An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.
2) (informal) A person who behaves in a good or specified way in response to teasing, defeat, or a similarly trying situation.
I don’t see the word ‘exclude’ in there anywhere. I don’t see the words ‘business’ or ‘profit’. There’s nothing about ownership, or inner circles.
But the people who believe themselves to be in charge of the sport of cricket in England and Wales think they own it, and can tell the likes of me that we’re excluded, we’re ‘outside’. While they, with their sponsorship deals and their expense accounts and their appalling management practices, are ‘inside’.
These people who have declared me ‘outside cricket’ are the kind of people I wouldn’t personally want to have anything to do with. The sort of self-satisfied money-grubbing narrow-minded philistines who have such undeserved importance in Britain today because they can claim to have ‘business experience’. People who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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Good to have found you, my lord. Quite lost for a couple of days.
More power to your keyboard, and to the keyboards of those whose posts are far better informed and eloquent than I could ever be.
To be amongst like minded people outside cricket helps cope with the feeling of desperation about the whole sorry saga.
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