Cricket

It's like my mother telling me how "taking part is what counts" after I entered a swimming race and finishing last was meant to make me feel better.

Look, after both teams had lost 18 wickets in total, England were ahead, so its a moral victory for me Clive

also Joe Root is back, back, back as best batsman in the world in the ICC Rankings sponsored by MRF Tyres, so who are the REAL winners here?

England were massive favourites with an hour to go. Needed two tailenders to play the innings of their lives. Had England their main spinner available, they'd have probably won. Unearthing a functional spinner is the priority before the remaining Tests

"results based cricket"

That's going to make for a truly thought leading LinkedIn update.

"When your fast bowler with a history of racist tweets verbally abuses a Muslim opponent in an Ashes Test, do you start asking questions, or do you simply assume you already know the answers?"

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/27/english-cricket-independent-commission-equity-prejudice-azeem-rafiq-racism

good article, would quibble this though

a sport created and codified for the purpose of allowing rich white landowners to bet against each other

CLR James writes of how it was codified in the Victorian era as a means to establish sport as 'civilising' influence over the workers both at home and abroad and ofc quell resentment, but how the game itself was devised earlier - yes, with betting a crucial component

In all essentials the modern game was formed and shaped between
1778, when Hazlitt was born, and 1830, when he died. It was created
by the yeoman farmer, the gamekeeper, the potter, the tinker, the
Nottingham coal-miner, the Yorkshire factory hand. These artisans
made it, men of hand and eye. Rich and idle young noblemen and some
substantial city people contributed money, organization and prestige.
Between them, by 1837 they had evolved a highly complicated game
with all the typical characteristics of a genuinely national art form:
founded on elements long present in the nation, profoundly popular
in origin, yet attracting to it disinterested elements of the leisured and
educated classes. Confined to areas and numbers which were relatively
small, it contained all the premises of rapid growth. There was nothing
in the slightest degree Victorian about it. At their matches cricketers
ate and drank with the gusto of the time, sang songs and played for
large sums of money. Bookies sat before the pavilion at Lord's openly taking bets. The unscrupulous nobleman and the poor but dishonest
commoner alike bought and sold matches. Both Sir Donald Bradman
and Mr. Neville Cardus think that cricket is too complex a game to
encourage betting. The history of the game is against them. There is
nothing too complex for men to bet on. Cricket took its start from the
age in which it was born, both the good and the bad. That the good
could predominate was a testimony to the simple men who made it
and the life they lived.
The class of the population that seems to have contributed least
was the class destined to appropriate the game and convert it into
a national institution. This was the solid Victorian middle class.

not to take anything away from Liew's analysis of its current problems, which are well-observed and manifest across the game

That article is I want to say brutal but I guess just honest. Liew is on fire at the moment.

much to unpack here but one thing jumped out at me in all this: Lord's, the self-styled "home of cricket", has NEVER hosted a women's test match, and yet continues to provide the venue for the annual Eton v Harrow match.

just nice to see Stokes committing to being a saviour

liew had to take a fair amount of shit from Jonathan Agnew a few years ago about his cricket writing iirc

liew was right then and he's right now

Aggers called Liew a cunt; then backtracked and blamed it on his meds.

Despise Agnew!

This is fucking idiotic.

Trying to attack the short stuff?

Falling into the leg theory trap aye. Four wickets and counting (five if you count Root getting out twice).

not great shot selection but batters are allowed to make mistakes on occasion, particularly JE Root. Stokes seems to be calming things down now.

If England carry on like this I'll be back supporting them before the end of the series.

I'm thinking we should go back to not talking about men's mental health

where to even start with all this

that Bairstow incident certainly got them going!

*frantically checking Robinson and Tongue's first-class batting records*

I knew I should have put a tenner on England an hour or so ago when they were almost double figures to win this test

it seems Broad has been caught on the stump mic calling them 'Same old cheating Aussies'

Fucking hell, this is crazy.

Just need an Anderson half century now to win it.

I put a pish £3 bet on England when they were 20/1 just in case there is another plot twist on the cards today

and that's why I never make any profit from cricket betting!

Hopefully this will put at end to this chummy shite between the two teams and they will go back to hating each other, as they should.

Cummins' unapologetic presser will increase the hatred and booing at Headingly, stoked for it.

I'd expected nothing less from an Aussie captain.

stuart broad of all people getting the hump about 'spirit of the game' is frankly hilarious.

It's weird listening on the radio because you react to the crowd noise and can only 'see' what the commentators direct you towards. Which is to say, it felt wrong at the time and I've had a horrible feeling in my guts about it all afternoon. Having seen the footage and listened to a bunch of people who know what they're talking about, Bairstow was out and should 100% know better, given it's a tactic he's used himself over the years. None of which is going to stop it from getting (uglier, given what happened in the ground and, particularly, in the long room). Headingley is going to be even more of a bear pit than usual.

Honestly, those fuckwit members in the long room. You would do more for the 'spirit of the game' if you staked them all out, covered them in bacon and left them to the wasps and herring gulls.

seeing as the series is done as a competition then extreme levels of spite are just what it needs

and that's why I never make any profit from cricket betting!

I am frantically trying to find a way to bet on Ben Stokes getting dismissed by Mankad at Headingley.

Anyway, this is all very funny and highly amusing.

I couldn't find any odds on the England team plumbing new depths of the victim playing British "fair play" delusion.

still don't know why Australia are getting booed, what have they done wrong?

To Johnny Bairstow too, hero of right wing wankers everywhere.

Gotta laugh. No spinners, dropped catches, crazy hour shot selection. Quite a philosophy!

if they don't win this one, don't throw Bazball in the bin but maybe consider a few of the batsmen

if you took Stokes considerable batting contribution out of the Bazball equation for this Ashes it would just look like an abandonment of tactics and all focus would be on some of the careless braindead ways the rest of them cheaply gift wickets to the Aussies. But it has been a lot of fun!

crawling towards Bazlam

I knew all the heckling would pay off

we just need another champion spell leading into Old Trafford

and to drop Bairstow

bairstow does need to go. v strange test, those first two innings entirely wrapped around two batsmen and a couple of maurahding bowlers.

I was expecting rain this afternoon, both the MET office and BBC weather got it wrong. Bairstow has been useless, his only indirect contribution was that the confected sense of injustice around his idiotic stumping seemed to have the knock on effect of wakening the beast in Stokes.

that was an intense last 100-ish runs to watch live, i have a ton of thoughts about the distraction that is Bazball but not now. Bairstow is screaming to be dropped by almost any metric