Posted by We’re not quite sure how to tackle the issues of the day, so in time-honoured tradition, we’re not bothering.
At one extreme, we’ve got the T20 Blast. We watched Friday night’s televised game and kind of felt we should say something about it, but then we didn’t because the weather was nice on Saturday morning when we would normally have put fingertips to keyboard. We’re kind of glad we didn’t, because the T20 Blast already promises to make a fool of anyone who reads anything into anything.
For example, on Friday, Lancashire’s batting was as ordinary as ever and they lost. A day later, they made 194-3 and won. Or how about Jade Dernbach? He failed to defend 15 off the final four balls on Friday and then secured a win for Surrey by conceding only three off the final over yesterday.
Clearly, events promise to oscillate wildly throughout the season and so commenting on them demands a complete lack of perspective. It feels like checking someone’s hazard lights are working and telling them that they’re ‘on, off, on, off, on, off…’
Then there’s the opposite extreme: match fixing and how Lou Vincent’s apparently going to rip the lid off of it. Cricket being cricket, decent information will doubtless become more and more devalued as an investigation wears on and the conclusion will be something like: ‘There is strong reason to believe that certain elements of a number of televised Twenty20 cricket matches have been fixed and there is an urgent need to crack down on this’.
I love your optimism KC.
T20 In Unpredictability Shock
T20 In Match Fixing Shock
These things are not unrelated. T20 is a match-fixer’s dream, because there is absolutely no way of knowing if that skyer to mid-off was accidental or deliberate.
Not meaning to trivialise a serious subject, but may favourite part of the Vincent ‘revelations’ was when he said he tried to get out but ended up accidentally hitting a six.
I once tried to hit a six to impress a girl and ended up getting caught. These things happen.