{"id":4644,"date":"2023-07-04T10:33:16","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T08:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=4644"},"modified":"2023-07-04T10:33:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T08:33:16","slug":"im-sorry-but-the-spirit-of-cricket-is-just-another-form-of-elitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/im-sorry-but-the-spirit-of-cricket-is-just-another-form-of-elitism\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m sorry, but the \u2018Spirit of Cricket\u2019 is just another form of elitism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
(Shutterstock\/Michael John Manning)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the first four days of the second Ashes Test between England and Australia, the atmosphere at Lord\u2019s Cricket Ground had been sedate to say the least.<\/p>\n

So sedate, in fact, that numerous posts on Twitter were either making unfavourable comparisons to the vibrancy witnessed throughout the first Test at Edgbaston or, even, suggesting the blood and thunder of \u2018Bazball\u2019 was \u201cincompatible\u201d with the staid conformity of Lord\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Day five would prove to be very different, however, as the affordability of tickets, at just \u00a325, had ensured a demographic change among the spectators akin to that called for by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket Report (ICEC) earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

As much as the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) accepted the findings of the ICEC Report \u2013 they apologised to all women who had ever played the game and the Black British community as a whole \u2013 others, most notably Simon Heffer in The Telegraph<\/em>, tried to suggest the Report was an attempt to drag cricket into the broader \u2018culture war\u2019 being waged in British politics by an \u2018activist minority\u2019.<\/p>\n

Desperate accusations of \u2018wokeness\u2019 aside (79% of the 4000 + respondents to the ICEC were, if fact, \u2018white British\u2019), it was clear to all with an open mind that the game\u2019s issues with racism, sexism and social class all stem from an overarching culture of elitism that is, most prominently, embodied by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Lord\u2019s itself.<\/p>\n

The ECB is, as the ICEC suggests, also elitist. But, most infamously, it is the MCC (a private club that only allowed women to join in 1998) that is populated by white, privately educated, middle class men. Referred to as \u2018Type K\u2019s\u2019 by the ICEC report, those in charge of the MCC also hold global responsibility for the \u2018Laws\u2019 by which cricket is played by.<\/p>\n

If it ended there, the furore surrounding the events of day five are unlikely to have ever happened. But the English cricket establishment of the last century, or more, have also imbued the game with an all too nebulous \u2018spirit\u2019.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, certain actions \u2013 even if within or according to the Laws \u2013 are simply \u2018not done\u2019. And as much as Lord\u2019s cricket ground had been enjoying an uncharacteristically boisterous atmosphere, the temperature was instantly raised to boiling point following the \u2018stumping\u2019 of Johnny Bairstow who had left his crease following a bouncer.<\/p>\n

According to the \u2018spirit\u2019 of cricket the, it must be said, immediate action of Australian keeper Alex Carey to hit the stumps with the ball, while Bairstow seemingly went walkabout, isn\u2019t done. And, on being given out by the umpires, Lord\u2019s erupted.<\/p>\n

Incoming batsman Stuart Broad \u2013 no stranger to controversies relating to cricket\u2019s alleged \u2018spirit\u2019 himself \u2013 certainly had a few words to share on the matter once he reached the middle, whereas the crowd either booed or sang \u201csame old Aussies\u2026 Always cheating\u201d.<\/p>\n

The irony of all this is that it is the particularly \u2018English\u2019 sense of fair play that caused tempers to spill over. And yet, it was at lunch where the real controversy occurred as the Australian team were heckled (to put it mildly) as they passed through the Long Room of the pavilion on their way to their dressing room.<\/p>\n

An official complaint from the Australian team\u2019s management led to a telling statement from the MCC that stated the Long Room was not merely \u201cunique in world cricket\u201d it was the player\u2019s \u201cprivilege\u201d to pass through it in such close proximity to the MCC\u2019s members.<\/p>\n

Although three of these members would later be suspended pending further enquiries, Andrew Strauss, ex-director of cricket at the ECB and a member of the MCC, suggested on Sky Sports, soon after the match, that the rowdiness of the day was due to \u201cpeople who don\u2019t normally come to Lord\u2019s\u201d.<\/p>\n

If this was to suggest the cheaper prices had allowed a cohort of undesirables to infiltrate Lord\u2019s, Strauss was not simply overlooking events in the Long Room but outing himself as a \u2018Type K\u2019. In doing so, he was echoing the elitist sentiments of administrators and media commentators of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century who fought a sustained battle to eradicate any working-class presence from County Cricket by, in one case, \u201craising the entrance money to at least a shilling\u201d.<\/p>\n

If it were ever in doubt, the elitism, and the inflated sense of entitlement associated with English cricket that goes with it, was on full display in the Long Room at Lord\u2019s. And while the authors of the ICEC Report will take little pleasure in being proved correct so publicly (and so soon), the powers that be, and certain sections of the media for that matter, who thought the Report could either be ignored or kicked into the long grass have not simply had a rude awakening, they have been hoisted by their own elitist petard.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 Dr Duncan Stone 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first four days of the second Ashes Test between England and Australia, the atmosphere at Lord\u2019s Cricket Ground had been sedate to say the least. So sedate, in fact, that numerous posts on Twitter were either making unfavourable comparisons to the vibrancy witnessed throughout the first Test at Edgbaston or, even, suggesting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[170,136,36,171,168,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-4644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-okategoriserade","8":"tag-ashes-test","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-independent-commission-for-equity-in-cricket","13":"tag-lords-cricket-ground"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/lords-cricket-ground.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-1cU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4651,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4644\/revisions\/4651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}