Author: Matt

What if it doesn’t come back?

That’s what I can’t help but keep asking myself.

What if it doesn’t come back?

I have found myself watching 45-minute-long YouTube videos on “Sports Greatest Moments” or “The Best Sports Moments of the Last 10 Years”. There’s a lot of such videos out there. And they more or less hit all the same high notes: Mays’ catch in center field. Dwight Clark’s catch in the endzone. The Minneapolis Miracle. Last second jump shots. Secretariat. Christian Laettner. Hank Aaron. Maradona. Jordan, Kobe, Lebron. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. Down goes Frazier. Down goes Frazier. Carlton Fisk willing the ball fair in game six. Jackie Robinson emerging from the dugout in Brooklyn for the first time. Jesse Owens winning in Berlin. Lou Gehrig telling us all that he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Catches at the boundary rope. The immaculate reception. Flutie’s Hail Mary. The pine tar incident. Cal Ripken and 2131. Bonds and 756. Rose and 4192. Beckham into the top corner against Greece. Messi, Ronaldo, Bale. Donovan against Algeria. Tries. Goals. Three pointers. Sixes. Touchdowns. Homeruns. AGUEROOOO!!!

All of it.

I watch enthralled. I can’t look away. I get choked up. Even from the sports I don’t even really like, the moments and players I don’t recognize.

And again I think: what if it doesn’t come back?

All these healthy young people, locked in embraces, piles of bodies, celebrating the improbable becoming probable. Fans packed into stadiums, shoulder to shoulder, strangers hugging strangers. I watch and I can’t help but answer my own question: it’s not going to come back. This is too much. We have gone too far away. We won’t be able to go back. By the time we are able to go outside, too much will have changed. Far, far too much.

To paraphrase Will Leitch: I used to watch sports to forget, now I watch them to remember.

A few months ago I wrote a hopeful post about how even if nothing changes internally, the seasons will change. Summer will always come back. And that is still true, but it might not be enough this time to remind us of progress, of getting better. And we all might still be stuck inside. And when we finally do emerge, the world won’t look the same. It’s almost, at times, too much to handle.

Intellectually, we all understand that this will end. Life will go on. It will be different. Very different. But there will still be restaurants. And concerts. And get togethers with friends. And, yes, sports. It might be this fall. It might be next summer. But they will come back. But today — where in Minnesota we are still 145 days away from reaching peak infection — the idea of any normalcy returning feels like a pipe dream. This is depression, the spiraling idea that we are never going to get better. I know this feeling well, I have a name for it, but I still can’t fight my way out of the whirlpool.

So, I look for hope, today. Somewhere, out there, there is hope. There has to be. Hope that we come out of this not the same, but different, but also better. Hope in the simple idea that right now, today, we are alive, we are breathing, and that every breath is a miracle.

“The ground forever away” is a sentence I wrote a long time ago. A lifetime ago. A man is lost in his memories, there are a chasm and he is falling swiftly through them, the rush of the wind drying his tears, the cliff walls invisible in the black, “the ground forever away.”

That is how I feel today. The memories are of a world that used to feel familiar, the blackness below me now the uncertain certainty of the future. And we just keep falling. But the ground is never forever away. There is always an ending. Always. We will reach the bottom of this cliff and we will land safely, God willing, in a basket of soft and safe. And we will be in the chasm of memory, but we will see a way out, and we will start walking, and we will smell summer on the air, a field in the distance, butterflies dancing in the wind, the sun warm on shoulders.

And somewhere, out there, on that field, they are playing cricket. It’s the game we all remember and love, but it’s a little different. The crowds are sparser. The mood maybe a touch more somber. Or maybe not? Maybe things will be even more bombastic than before? And maybe that’s where we find healing, when we know we have healed, when the final wicket is taken, and we hug the stranger next to us, the improbable now probable, all of this somehow forgotten, if even just for a second.

The Battle of the Somme took place July through November, 1916. 140 days. On July 1st alone nearly 20,000 British troops were killed. All told the UK would suffer 400,000 casualties from just that one battle, now widely considered an allied failure. The guns finally fell silent on 11 Nov., 1918, a silence that some have called the voice of God. 12 English Test cricketers were killed in the War to End All Wars, a name now so laced with irony it almost hurts to type. Another 500 first class cricketers from all over the globe were also killed.

In 1919, the very next year, the County Championship in England resumed, rather unsuccessfully, as the ranks of counties were severely decimated by the war, and many felt the game was rushed back too soon. But, slowly, the game came back. There was an Ashes series in 1920-21 in Australia. In 1926, India, New Zealand and the West Indies were promoted to full Test status. The game roared on.

And it will roar on again.

We will get through this.

Today I am looking for hope. I found it in the reminder that we have suffered before, and will suffer again, but we get up off the mat, and keep fighting, keep finding joy in every breath.

 

A lot of cricket was played between April 1, 2007 and the last dregs of games before the world went quiet. 3,233 matches, in fact, and that’s just qualified Tests, ODIs and T20s. Breaking it down, that’s 550 Tests, 1696 ODIs and 1070 T20S. (The math doesn’t really add up there, but it’s close enough for government work.)

Who were the most successful teams? Basing it on tournament outcomes, Australia would have to be in the conversation, with their two World Cup wins. And then the West Indies, too, with their two T20 World Championships. But those are teams that, yes, were juggernauts, but also were teams that got hot at the right time. What about sustained excellence over the entire period of time?

Overall, it’s India. They played 613 total internationals between April of 2007 and now (the most of anyone), winning a whopping 359 (also the most of anyone). Australia were next with 559 and 312, followed by South Africa (485 and 282), England, (562 and 281) and Pakistan (518 and 262) to list the top five.

The most successful non-Test playing nation was Scotland, who played 157 and won 64.

New Zealand, of course, led the whole field with 10 ties.

Tests saw Australia take over first place, with 143 played and 73 won, followed by England who played 22 more Tests — the most by far of anyone — also winning 73 of them. India, South Africa and Sri Lanka rounded out the top five. Sri Lanka is a bit of a surprise, finishing ahead of Pakistan, the West Indies and New Zealand, with 122 played and 45 wins.

Meanwhile, in the shorter formats, the numbers break out like this:

ODI
India, 341 and 209
Australia, 296 and 175
South Africa, 250 and 154
Sri Lanka, 331 and 153
England, 284 and 151

T20I
Pakistan, 149 and 91
India, 133 and 82
South Africa, 116 and 68
Australia, 120 and 64
New Zealand, 126 and 59

Moving on to individual players:

The top five in runs scored is as such: Kohli, Amla, Sangakarra, de Villiers and (Ross) Taylor. Kohli scored more than 21,000 runs over the 13 year period, 300 more than second place Amla. Incredible.

In tests, it’s Cook, Amla, Root, Sangakarra and Warner. In ODIs, Kohli, Sharma, Dhoni, Sangakarra and de Villiers. T20Is: Kohli, Sharma, Guptill, Malik and Warner.

Bowling during the period was dominated by Anderson and Broad, with 732 and 721 total wickets, respectively, across all formats. Followed by Steyn, Ashwin and (Mitchell) Johnson.

Test: Anderson, Broad, Herath, Steyn, Lyon
ODI: Malinga, Al Hasan, (Mitchell) Johnson, Afridi, Steyn
T20I: Malinga, Afridi, Al Hasan, (Rashid) Khan, Ajmal

Most catches over the 13 year period in question? MS Dhoni, with 698.

**

There’s no clear winner, but the team of the decade is probably India (a World Cup win in both the short formats, most international victories overall), while the batsman of the decade is most assuredly Kohli. Bowling is a little less cut and dry, but I would give it to Anderson, or maybe to Malinga.

Of course, all stats are cumulative, so there are players like, say, Steve Smith and Babar Azam — some of the best players on earth — who just haven’t played enough cricket to crack into the rankings above. Comparing different eras is always problematic, though, and the game that emerges from this pause will be very different than the game that existed before it. Which is to say, if we allowed Steve Smith a full 13 years he might very well surpass Kohli, but that if is just too big these days, and the post-virus era will be too different to compare the years that preceded it to the years that follow it.

**

Looking back at this post has reinforced one thing: we cricket fans have been damn lucky these past 13 years. We have seen some of the best players to ever play the game play more cricket than ever before. Plus, in the same era, we got to see greats play out their remaining years — Tendulkar, McGrath, Flintoff — while seeing players like Kohli and Kane Williamson emerge into authentic superstars. Yes, cricket had problems over the prior 13 years, but as I said in the original post in this series, I cannot help but feel lucky to have seen the cricket I have been able to see. A remarkable era, to be sure.

“There is too much world” is a quote from Czesław Miłosz, but there can never be too much cricket, I don’t care what anyone says. And the past 13 years have given us so much damn cricket. Never too much. And now that the game has gone quiet, you can really feel the void it has left. From 3,200 matches to zero in a matter of days. The whiplash is real.

Here’s hoping this wonderful game comes back soon, and Babar Azam and Jofra Archer get the long, brilliant careers they deserve.

Ironically, while the period between April 2007 and the present was dominated by the game’s newest and shortest format, it also featured a resurgence of one the game’s oldest traditions: the Ashes.

This is, from my perspective, primarily because the trophy became competitive again. Before the famous 2005 series victory for England, Australia had held the urn for 16 years, since June of 1989. Australia won it back in the very next series, in a 5-0 white-washing during the Australian summer of 2006-2007. But after that, the series enjoyed a long run of enjoyable back and forth cricket — including a year which featured two Ashes series, which was a real festival of Test cricket for those of us that enjoy the game’s longest format.

England won the trophy back on home soil in the summer of 2009 — 10 years ago, how is that possible!? — and then in a real shocker, went down to Australia and retained the urn, winning the series three matches to one, with one drawn. Then in 2013 — the year that due to a scheduling quirk featured two Ashes series — England retained it again on home soil that summer, before Australia took it back six months later. That last series featured the only 5-0 Ashes whitewash of the period in question.

England took the Ashes back in the summer of 2015, before Australia returned the favor in 2017-18 and holding onto the trophy in England this past summer (which also feels like a million years ago).

All told, for the period between spring 2007 and last summer, Australia won 15 Ashes matches, England 13, and there were seven draws. The trophy changed hands a remarkable four times — remarkable in that it had changed hands exactly zero times between 1989 and 2005.

(Side note: did the fact that that the Ashes were a bit snoozy for all those years lead to the rise of the Twenty20? Was it that, and the dismal 2007 World Cup, that brought us here today? Maybe a vacuum was created and the Twenty20 just snuck right in.)

Over the course of those 25 matches, we saw some really remarkable cricket. In 2009, there was that oh so memorable fifth and deciding match. In 2010-11, down in Australia, Alistair Cook ruled the world, scoring 766 runs for England, including an inspired fifth Test score of 189, handing his country an innings victory and an Ashes series victory in Australia for the first time since 1987, 22 years. The 2010-11 series is also the most recent Ashes to feature a series victory by the visiting team.

Back in England, in 2013, we saw the emergence of Joe Root for England, and the beginning of Kevin Pietersen’s international swan song. It wasn’t the most competitive series, as England retained the Ashes while in the dressing room during a rain delay of the third Test, after winning the first two matches. The second match was never in doubt, with England winning by 347 runs. But the first match in the series was a classic, and featured Australian debutant Ashton Agar’s 98, which was part of a record smashing 10th wicket stand, keeping his side in the game when they were falling off a cliff at 117/9, and actually giving them a lead of 65 runs. The Aussies damn near chased down what first appeared to be an insurmountable total of 311, falling just a handful of runs short.

For me, personally, the first Test of the summer 2013 series was my favorite Test of this period.

Then a few months later, Australia took England down under and whalloped them, 5-0, in a series that reminded most of that dark decade and a half when Australia just won and won and won. Mitchell Johnson took 37 wickets and was man of the series. David Warner scored 523 runs and Kevin Pietersen played his last Test for England. And none of the matches were particularly close, as Australia won by 381 runs, 218 runs, 150 runs, 8 wickets and 281 runs. (Not to start a conspiracy theory here, but Australia also won every coin toss except for the one prior to the fifth Test. Coincidence? Probably.)

One note for England in that series was the Test debut for one Benjamin Andrew Stokes, who scored his maiden Test century in the third Test.

Sadly, this was also the series that saw Jonathon Trott fly home early due to his mental health struggles.

In 2015, England regained the trophy, winning three matches to Australia’s two. Joe Root solidified his place as England’s best batsman, and Ben Stokes showed his all-rounder chops, taking six wickets in the second innings of the fourth Test. But the fourth Test will be remembered for Australia’s score of just 60, lasting just 18.3 overs, a hair over 90 minutes. Stuart Broad took eight wickets that day, putting him alongside England’s greats like Ian Botham for wickets taken as well as runs scored.

Now it was Australia’s turn, winning down under 4-0 in 2017-18, then retaining the Ashes this past summer after a drawn series (the first drawn Ashes series since 1972). None of the matches of the 2017-18 series were very competitive: Australia won the first Test by 10 wickets, thanks to David Warner’s 87 in the second innings, part of an unbroken first wicket stand with Cameron Bancroft.

This past summer we were slightly more entertained, especially in the 3rd Test, which saw the hosts, England, win by just one wicket, in one of the more remarkable Test matches in recent memory, featuring of course Ben Stokes’s stand at the end of England’s second innings. He put the entire team — nay, the entire country, gone cricket mad after England’s World Cup win — on his back and dragged them over the finish line. Somehow. Some way. This despite the fact that England only scored 67 in their first innings. The match also saw the emergence of Jofra Archer as test bowler, taking six wickets in Australia’s first innings.

But despite the dramatics, Australia were (are?) just too good for England. Steve Smith — freshly back from his suspension for ball tampering — just batted and batted and batted and batted, scoring 774 runs, double that of the next highest scoring Aussie batsman. It was a batting clinic, and England had no answer for him. (Except for the third Test, which saw Smith sitting out due to an injury.)

And that brings us today. Australia hold the Ashes, just as they did at the beginning of the 13 years between 2007 and 2020. The next Ashes series is scheduled for 2021-22 in Australia. It’s over 18 months from now, but like all things, it is in doubt. Which is a shame. Over the last 13 years, it felt like another Ashes series was right around ever corner, so we all always had something to look forward to. But now that light is out. And that can be so hard.

The Ashes will come back though. They came back after an eight year break during World War 1, and they came back again after yet another eight year break for World War 2. None of us can fathom eight years of battling this virus, but even if it takes that long, the Ashes will, some day, come back. They will come back to a changed world, just like they did in 1920 and 1946. But they will still be the Ashes, this trophy that has provided us with so much entertainment over the years, and they will come back, just like they always do.

In cricket, and in history, and in tradition, there is always hope.

There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the years between 2007 and 2019 were the era of cricket’s shortest and newest format: the Twenty20.

It was invented in England in 2003, and quickly, like a virus, spread all over the world. From Pakistan to the Caribbean to Australia to New Zealand (who hosted the first International T20 match in 2005, losing to Australia at Eden Park in 2005) to its home country of England, where there were sell out crowds for county cricket matches for the first time since the 1950s, within just a year or two of the format’s invention. It was, without a doubt, and pardon the pun, a hit.

Shortly after the 2007 World Cup which saw the One Day International begin it’s decline as the game’s most profitable format, the time was ripe for the Twenty20 to swoop in and formally realize its ascendancy. The first T20 World Championship was in the fall of that year, with India beating Pakistan in the final to begin their road back from their early 2007 World Cup exit.

Also in 2007, a T20 league not supported by the International Cricket Council or the Bureau of Cricket Control India — the International Cricket League, or ICL, was started in India. To combat the league — which was siphoning board members and players away from the traditional game — the BCCI imposed lifetime bans for players who participated in the rebel league. They also formed their own domestic T20 league, basing it on the franchise system popular in the USA: the Indian Premier League. The league had its inaugural season in 2008 and the rest, as they say, is history.

The IPL is the most popular league in cricket by a country mile. The most attended and the most profitable. And one of the most popular leagues in all of sport the world over. It has spawned similar franchise leagues in England, Australia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, England, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Zimbabwe and that’s not even all of them. The entire landscape of the game has changed, thanks not in large part but in all part to the invention of the format just 17 years ago, a format that is only three years older than Twitter.

Many bemoan the rise of the format. And their complaints are valid. The T20 has altered the style of play across all formats, rewarding the slog, the big hit. Slowly but surely the art of Test batting is disappearing from the world — simply because there’s no money in it anymore. And boards and counties are assuaging the older formats in order to focus on the Twenty20 (and in the ECB’s case, an even shorter format, the Hundred). The County Championship is dying. And players are turning away from the international game in order to become mercenary batsmen in franchise leagues all over the world. Capitalism has come to cricket in the form of a three hour game, and once that barn door is open, it’s pretty hard to close it again.

But it isn’t all terrible news. In many ways, the shorter format has revitalized the sport. It’s opened avenues that were never there before, for the associates, for women. The Twenty20 has turned cricket into truly a global game, a game for all. And while this may irk the more insular cricket fans among us, it has to be seen as a net positive, in the long run. The Twenty20 league in England for instance is bringing in money to the county boards that they never would have seen without the format. Do those counties survive the financial crisis of 2008-2010 without that revenue? Maybe. But maybe not.

I think we can all agree that a healthier balance is in order, however. A balance between the old great formats (and yes that includes the ODI) and the shorter formats. It can’t all be slog. We can’t let the art of Test opening go the way of the dodo. We can’t let the County Championship slowly fade into obscurity. Keeping cricket safe and secure against the fires of time means not just embracing its international side, but also its history, its tradition. If we lose any of those aforementioned things, the game might just finally do what people have been predicting for decades: go extinct.

What that balance looks like, I am not sure.

But.

Our hands might be getting forced, for good or for ill.

The IPL for 2020 has been cancelled. So have other franchise leagues. For the time being, domestic leagues and international tours have also been cancelled, but some day we will go outside again, and cricket will come back. But maybe it will come back in a different way. Maybe that barn door will close a little, and while the IPL isn’t going anywhere in the long term, maybe for a few years the game returns to its roots of quiet games on local fields, as we seek out what’s next for cricket, and for all of us.

In the end, the T20 changed cricket forever, and it will continue to do so. But the coronavirus has changed the whole world forever. Those two seas of change will one day run together, and cricket might just come out ahead, and finally marry its old and its new, giving it the balance needed to last for another 150 years.

I quit smoking on April 9th, 2007, after smoking a pack a day of Marlboro reds for well over a decade. I quit cold turkey. Crumpled the pack up at my desk and didn’t smoke again.

The 2007 Cricket World Cup started on March 13th. I am not sure at what point I started following the tournament, but I know it was at least after April 9th, which meant that the group stage was already over, and the super group stage was in full swing. And I know it was prior to April 16th, because I commented in this Fark thread about the tournament.

firstmattinspace
2007-04-16 01:22:54 PM
Cannot wait for tomorrow – been too many meaningless matches in a row.

Young Matt. So full of vim and vigor.

However.

I also see that the I commented in this thread … from April 2.

And so the vagaries of memory are on display again. I started following the game before I quit smoking. A real twist in the tail there. I have been saying for over a decade that I found the game after quitting. And so it goes.

But I stand by the fact that the tournament got me through. Watching the ball by ball on Cricinfo, learning the lingo, chatting on Fark. I loved every minute. Every over. Every ball. I watched the final at Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis and was happier than I had been in a very long time.

Cricket was joy. Cricket is joy. It made my heart leap. And the 2007 World Cup was my introduction to this game that I have no doubt I will love for the rest of my days. Every minute of that tournament was, from my perspective, perfect.

Which, for any cricket fan worth their salt, is the most ridiculous statement ever made about the sport.

***

The tournament, as mentioned, started on March 13, and ran until April 28. 46 days of cricket. When it kicked off, Australia were the number one team in the world by a country mile. Led by the likes of Ponting and Gilchrist. They had won the World Cup four years earlier, and came into the 2007 tournament the clear favorites. The rest of the ICC rankings went like this: South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, England (ouch), Bangladesh, Ireland, Zimbabwe and Kenya. 16 total teams featured in the tournament, with associates Canada, Scotland, Bermuda and the Netherlands rounding out the field.

Hosted by several countries in the warm, sunny Caribbean, things kicked off with a group stage match between the hosts and Pakistan, which the West Indies won by 54 runs, thanks to figures of 10-0-36-3 from all around Dwayne Smith.

Then the slog started.

The group stage moaned and creaked through the month of March, with 24 matches taking place over the course of 10 days. The stadiums were empty, as the locals had been priced out, and those that could afford to get in were not allowed to bring drums or horns or any of their calypso flare.

The two top teams from each of the four groups qualified for the Super 8s. The two big surprises being Ireland and Bangladesh, as Pakistan and India both failed to qualify for the next stage, and thereby the majority of the subcontinent tuned out for the rest of the tournament, and most of the cricketing world bemoaned the lack of a Pakistan-India super 8 match.

(MS Dhoni even had his home attacked after his team’s loss to Bangladesh.)

(And for a short time authorities believed that Pakistan couch Bob Woolmer had been murdered following Pakistan’s loss to Ireland.)

Ireland and Bangladesh moving on also put to rest any of the whinging that non-Test playing teams didn’t deserve to be there.

In the Super 8s, the crowds starting to fill in a little more as the ICC loosened some rules. The format was simple: each team played each other team once, except for the team they played in the group stage, the result of that match carried over into the next stage.

South Africa beat Sri Lanka by one wicket in the second match of the stage, with the greatest death bowler of all time, Lasith Malinga, failing to take the one last wicket required. Later in the tournament Sri Lanka took their revenge out not on South Africa, but England, who despite herculean efforts from the rest of the order, lost openers Ed Joyce (would represent Ireland in 2011) for only 10 and Michael Vaughn for a duck and that put them into too deep of a whole, and they came up two runs short, effectively knocking them out of the tournament.

The rest of the stage was, well, a little snoozy. Australia steamrolled into the knock out stages, winning all of its matches (they would in fact finish the tournament undefeated), Sri Lanka, South Africa and New Zealand rounded out the top four, setting up semi-finals between Australia and South Africa and New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka walked all over New Zealand in Kingston, winning by 81 runs thanks in large part to Mahela Jayawardene’s 115 off of 109, and New Zealand’s bats just never got going. In the second semi-final, South Africa bolstered their reputation as being wholly unable to turn it on when it matters and flat out collapsed after winning the toss and choosing to bat, scoring only 149 runs despite batting out all 50 overs. (Which, looking back at it, is kind of hard to do.) Australia chased that down with extreme prejudice in just 30 overs and change, despite losing Gilchrist after just five balls.

That set up the final. Sri Lanka versus Australia in the spankingly redeveloped Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados. We all know how this goes. Rain shortened the match to just 30 overs a side. Australia raced out of the gates in front of a packed house thanks to Gilchrist (who famously had a squash ball in his glove), putting Sri Lanka into a hole they were never going to crawl out of. Then there was bad light. And the match was over. Oh wait no it wasn’t. It was just suspended. And the players had to come out and play three overs in almost complete darkness before Australia were finally handed the trophy they were never in doubt of not going home with since their first match six weeks earlier.

I watched the match in a bar in downtown Minneapolis. I have written about that day before. It was a sunny perfect day until it wasn’t. I think about it a lot. Like it was a turning point, the start of the walk down a path to where I am today. Then again, maybe not. Maybe it was just another Saturday. I was only 31 years old. It was 13 years ago. I had been married for only five years. We would make it another 11.

Four years later Dhoni would have his redemption, and I would be watching alone on a laptop in the middle of the night.

What did the tournament do for the next 13 years of cricket? It’s a little hard to tell. I think the length of it alongside all the lopsided results really wounded the ODI, and allowed the T20 — which had only been around for four years — to really take center stage. It was also the first World Cup that really leaned into the commercialization of the game. Their efforts feel quaint in that regard now, but at the time all the corporate sponsorships were something not everyone was entirely used to, and they also led to the high ticket and concession prices that would affect attendance throughout the tournament. And despite the success of two non-Test playing teams, the tournament began the long push to keep associate nations out of the ODI World Cupo, as many Test teams thought the lopsided matches contributed to the tournament’s snoozy vibe and bloated length.

And you have to assume that Dhoni’s disappointment at being knocked out early surely inspired him in part to lead his team so successfully in the 2011 tournament on home soil.

But, mostly, the tournament has become a bit of a joke, and is widely seen as a grand disappointment. And that, for good or for ill, is its legacy. What affect that legacy has on the game in the long term is impossible to tell. What I do know for sure is that it sowed the seeds of cricket fandom in me, seeds which have taken deep root, and for that reason it will hold a special place in my heart.

And the final was the first cricket match I watched live. And I have allowed that day to become a lynchpin in my life. Again, for good or for ill. I would not watch another cricket match in a bar until 12 years later, when the whole world had changed. Those two days are tied together forever, and for that reason too I will always think fondly of that silly little six week tournament that the whole of cricket just laughs at. And that’s fine with me.

 

And here we are.

Cricket is still happening. Most series have been called off — including the IPL — but there is still cricket. There is always cricket. The Pakistani Super League. The West Indies Championships. Domestic leagues in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. But, for the most part, the world of cricket has grown dark, quiet, as we all move inward, to a place of retreat and safety, until the worst of this hopefully, some day, passes us by.

The anxiety around COVID-19 has been palpable over the last few weeks here in St. Paul. But now it is here, and with that there is some comfort. It’s here, we can stop worrying, and start acting, even if all the action we have is staying inside, and checking on those we love. And reality is never as bad — or as good — as we think it is going to be. There’s comfort there, if you want it.

What I would truly find comfort in, however, is the promise, the reassurance, that things will get back to normal. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but back to normal at some point. That in a few weeks time the County Championship will be in full swing. Baseball will be back on the radio on top of the refrigerator in my kitchen. And the patios will be full again in the early evening, full of laughter, full of ease, like none of this ever even happened. But no one can make that promise, because no one could keep that promise, because no matter what happens, things will be different from now on. Cricket will come back, but it won’t be the same.

And maybe that’s what we are all mourning. The end of what we knew before this. Often I grieve for the cricket I never knew. The cricket of the 70s, the 80s, even the 90s, before the game changed irrevocably with the invention of the T20. Now I grieve for the cricket I knew, that I might not ever know again. Bloated world cups, endless franchise T20 leagues, mercenary sloggers, the slow ebbing away of the County Championship, as well as some of the best cricket the world has ever seen. I will miss it. I will miss all of it. Cricket will come back, but it won’t be the same. And right now we don’t even know how it won’t be the same, we just know it will be different.

Those differences though, might be all right. The game will take on a new shape, a new form, but the changes might be a net positive. Instead of a taking away, a changing, a morphing into not what cricket was in 2019, but into a hasty marriage of what it was in 1959 and 2019. A quiet game. A game that no longer takes itself for granted. A game that understands that it can all change in a heartbeat, and that we need to hold it close, take care of it, treasure it.

Right now, millions and millions of dollars are leaking out of the game, gone forever. And while that is a tragedy for those that rely on the game to make a living — not players, or broadcasters, or administrators, but the guy pouring beer at Lord’s, or the woman taking tickets at the MCG — maybe cricket will be better off in the end if there is just a little bit less money on the line. The game can be played for the game, not for the TV contracts.

Of course, I am being rather Pollyanna right now. Things are hard, and they will get worse, and more people will die. But I also think that one of the other reasons we are all suffering is that, collectively, we no longer have anything left to look forward to. Sports, movies, trips, plays, graduations, weddings. All of it is now tainted with worry and fear. And I am in the same boat. My brain is a mess of bad wiring as it is, and this has made it even worse. But I am looking forward to the new cricket, to what cricket brings next.

The game has survived two World Wars. The Spanish Flu. Famine. Fire. For almost one and a half centuries it has soldiered on. Reinventing itself over and over again, as the world around it burned to the ground, rebuilt, and burned to the ground again. And with each reinvention came hand wringing, but also brilliant moments of cricket none of us will ever forget. I am choosing to look forward to that.

I am also choosing to lock back at the cricket we once knew. The only cricket I knew. The cricket of 2007 through today. When the game creaked and moaned to a place where everyone was unsure if they even wanted to like the game any more. And now look at us. Mourning the death of the era we so despised. “You can miss anything” is something I used to say at college parties to impress girls. And it’s true. We can. And it’s bearing out right now, as we all are already missing what many called cricket’s darkest age.

And we will miss this. This. Right now. We won’t miss the death and the fear, but we will miss the camaraderie. The coming together. The promise of new, of change, of reinvention, of resilience. We only have this one planet. And we are all in this together. And there’s only one way out. Maybe, just maybe, COVID-19 will remind us of that for the rest of our lives, making each of us a little kinder, a little more patient, a little less critical and a little more appreciate of our now, this moment, what we have. Because what we have is always pretty great, and we will always miss it when it inevitably goes away.

So for the new few weeks, I will be using the blog to write about the only era of cricket I have ever known, one that is gone now forever, for good or for bad. The era that stretched between the 2007 World Cup, to the last gasps of the game before it, like so many institutions, went dark for a while, until this — like all things — passes.

I have plenty of time to write, and I bet you have plenty of time to read. And I hope everyone shares their own memories in the comments. It will kick off in the next couple of days with a post about where it all started: the farcical, laughing stock that was the 2007 World Cup.

For me, cricket has always been a lesson in social distancing. Aside from two occasions — the 2007 World Cup final and the 2019 World Cup final — I have only experienced cricket alone. But it is has rarely been a lonely endeavor, thanks to this blog, and to Twitter, and to all the other marvelous cricket blogs. Hopefully in this time of quiet and dark, we can band together once again, safely distanced, and talk about this game we love, and the era we have shared together, that is now lost to history.

Until then. Take care. Wash your hands. Be there for each other, and let others be there for you. Soon the lights will be back on, and the fires will go out, and cricket will be back.

Cricket, like so many other things, relies on a connected world. Without such a world — the kind we live in right now — it would not exist in its current form. I think that is something we can all agree on. From British colonizers bringing the game via ships to the far flung corners of the globe (including the Caribbean and southeast Asia — imagine cricket without those parts of the world) to today, when I have access to cricket of all shapes and sizes thanks to our digital landscape. I can listen to County Championship games and stream Shield matches all from the comfort of my bed.

But despite our digital connections, the game still relies on actual, physical human travel. Teams and players travel the world to compete, and not just at the highest level, but at all levels. The USA men’s team, for instance, just played a handful of ODI’s in Nepal, nearly 13,000 kilometers from home soil. The world is huge. And it is fully connected. And cricket not just thrives because of this, but it relies on it to exist in its current form.

And maybe that’s not a good thing. These connections. This connected world.

I am being a little Chicken Little here, but I know that I am not the only one worried about the Coronavirus. This is a disease that is spreading outside of China because of one thing: our connected globe. It is not until a pandemic like this begins, that you realize how much people travel. Ten of thousands of people in and out of China every single day. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. It is remarkable when you stop and think about it. And a little scary. These connections bring us cricket, but they also bring us disease. Would I — and many other westerners — be worried about the Coronavirus if air travel didn’t exist? Probably not. But we forget about small pox and syphillis. So maybe travel of all kinds between continents would have to disappear for us to feel truly safe.

The other side of this coin is that because it is a global crisis, the globe is responding. If China were completely isolated, they would be on their to battle this disease. But now they have the resources of advanced medicine from all over the world. Which will save lives in China. And that is important, that cannot be overlooked.

But part of me, even the part that loves cricket, would be okay if the world was just a little bit larger, that we respected its vastness just a bit more. That instead of USA players flying to Nepal, they played Canada. Or a professional franchise based league was formed to nurture and grow the game. And maybe this respect for the size of our planet would in turn help heal our game, even though the game relies on a small world. Maybe the consternation about franchise T20 leagues or the slow death of the County Championship would be slightly alleviated, if we all just stayed closer to home.

I love to travel, and this all makes me a hypocrite. I went to Germany in November. I am going to Ireland in 12 days. And while I think globalization is problematic in some ways, it’s also not the evil some people think it is. And so I am not advocating for this in any seriousness. I believe in open borders where appropriate, and freedom of travel when safe for those on both sides of a line in the sand. But when pandemics hit, I think about this. And it snowballs into a larger thought of maybe, just maybe, our world is too small. Or, rather, that we think it is so small, when in reality it is almost too large for us to comprehend. And as mentioned above, that vastness maybe could use a little more respect now and again. For while we are all connected, and no country is an island — even the actual islands — when a butterfly flaps its wings in Arizona, it causes a tornado in Texas, not in Kirtipur. And maybe — again, just maybe — we would be better off if we all stayed a little closer to home, saw how green the grass was on our side of the fence.

Perhaps that it is worth the sacrifice of certain parts of this global game that we all love.

All of that said:

Lost in all this is that America has its own epidemic right now in influenza. There have been 48 flu related deaths so far this season just in my home state of Minnesota, and the season still has months to go. There are no global connections causing this outbreak, just simple ones like going to work and buying groceries at the corner market. Yet we all fear the unknown disease hitting China like a ton of bricks. Why? The key word there is “unknown” — we fear the unknown. And what makes the unknown a little more known?

A connected world. A knowledge of other people’s streets and what it means to walk down them in their shoes. Cricket is a global game, and maybe — just maybe — the connections that bring us this game, are the same connections that teach us that we are all connected. And in those connections we breed empathy. And understanding. And the unknown becomes the known, and we all grow a little less scared of what’s around the corner from the safe confines of our bubble.

All of this is to say that the world is very large, and it is also very small, and that we need to respect both, and enjoy the benefits of both. The same is true for life: it is very short, but it is also very long. Which brings me to the one thing I know for sure: it is too short and too long to spend a minute more worrying about the Coronavirus. Time to read about USA Cricket instead, and then maybe a walk in the cold sun, under blue skies.,

 

 

 

There are no guarantees in life except for death and taxes, or so old the saw goes. But in reality there is but one universal human truth: change. Impermanence. Fluidity. Nothing is forever. Nothing. Not even forever is forever. It’s the primary tenant of humanity. If you want to be happy, content, okay, satisfied, then you have to believe that everything is temporary. Really believe it. Even happiness. Especially happiness. But also pain. And hurt. It is the primary tenet, but it is one humans fail collectively at believing. To a person, we all assume that whatever we are experiencing right now, is what we will only and always experience.

The practice of yoga was developed in northern India over 5,000 years ago. Throughout those five thousand years, it has tried with all its might to teach humans the value of now, and the inevitability of change. You are in a pose, and you are struggling, it is difficult, but it will end. Now take that knowledge, and apply it to your every day. And for 5,000 years humans have listened to that teaching, and the vast majority of us have ignored it. Damning ourselves to unhappiness, discontent, and the belief that the pain we are experiencing will last forever and forever. It is a hallmark of depression; it is the hallmark of my depression. I am writing this today at a coffeeshop. My house just went on the market yesterday and it already has an offer. I have the day off. Just writing and reading and no work. But while I know the contentment I feel right now won’t last, I also wholeheartedly believe that the sadness I feel — the dark colors that run behind my eyes every minute of every day — will be with me until the day I die. This is not abnormal. Every human experiences this. Why? Why do we do this to ourselves?

A few days ago i wrote about one of cricket’s many gifts, that it reminds us that the world always changes, no matter how we might not believe it at the time. A few weeks before that, however, I wrote about how cricket is consistent, that while it changes, its changes are slower, less noticeable. Players play their whole careers for one country, one team, in one uniform, for decades. How to marry those two disparate ideas? And take comfort in them simultaneously? Is that even possible? Am I running in circles, chasing my tail? These are the questions that matter. How to take comfort in something that doesn’t change while also remembering that life is only change.

Enter cricket once again.

Cricket is an old game, with old traditions, and old grounds, and old teams, played in some of the world’s oldest countries. It is also a modern game. With statisticians and nutritionists and new formats designed for the digital age. And the styles are different. Today it slogs and groans away the overs, while before it tiptoed through them, a walk in a field, a day in the park, interrupted by only the occasional intense heat of the perfect cover drive.

And so there it is, right? Consistency meets change, and vice versa. Becoming one. Showing us that life is change, but also the same. So enjoy the now, but bear in mind that it is not forever.

Now, however, enter the cricket fan.

The changes the game is experiencing are for many of us hard to swallow. The destruction of the game’s longest format, the Hundred, the slog worship. It’s change but too much change. Every day we wake up and load up Cricinfo and are confronted with the reality that everything we enjoy about cricket is slowly drifting away from us. Into the awful ether of change. How can we start to accept change and find joy in change and be reminded that nothing even our struggles are permanent if the change before us is so detestable?

The question answers itself.

Nothing is permanent. Not the Hundred. Not the Test. Not the County Championship. Not the latest T20 Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em franchise league. Everything we dislike — and like — about cricket, and about life, will one day go away. That’s the promise of time, of life, of humanity. And so where is the comfort in that? The comfort is not for those not struggling, and that’s the rub of all of this. If you are okay, then change is difficult. If you are not, then change is all you desire. I take comfort in cricket’s change, even though I dislike those changes. And I also take comfort that the old traditions and styles and formats are still around, and in some cases still thriving.

I say that, but I don’t believe it.

All of us are lost. Lost in the haze of time and change and life and all of it passing us by. Cricket can’t fix that. Yoga can’t fix that. Religion can’t fix that. Meditation can’t fix that. Humans are doomed to the very first sentences of this post: we know happiness isn’t forever, but can’t believe the same idea about struggle.

So, where are we then?

We are at a coffeeshop. And it’s winter but not too cold. The coffee is good and there’s plenty of it. There is sadness but it’s not overwhelming. There are cricket highlights to watch. A green field at the bottom of the world. There is the now. And only the now. Now is this moment, where it’s okay but still hard. All we have is the now. That’s comprehensible. The now. And here is cricket’s lesson:

Every ball is an island, every delivery the only delivery that matters, everything is the now, nothing else exists. Each ball is a reminder that what we have is what we have, this second, this very second, this blissful wicked second, before it passes again, and into the wicketkeeper’s gloves, a bit of banter, a rub of the ball on pant leg, a walk to the bowler’s mark, and then a run up, and the now begins again. Again, and again, and again. Cricket brings the now every few seconds. One ball, one bat, two people, experiencing the now like we all hope we could. It’s all we have. This moment. It’s gone in an instant. Maybe a cover drive, maybe a bad ball and a worse shot, maybe a wide, maybe just an unremarkable delivery to an unremarkable batsman on an unremarkable morning. Life, happening. Tomorrow is change. Too much or not enough or not what we wanted. But that’s later. Here is this moment. Enjoy it. And then move on to the next. See what it brings. And then move on again.

Life is change. Happiness is contentment. Struggles are not permanent. And the now is a place existing outside of all of that, when we can just breathe. One breath. Inhale, exhale, run up, into the gloves, and do it again. Erasing the past. Never minding the future. All that matters is the ball being delivered, and the breath being taken.

In one of Rachel Cusk’s novels from the Outline trilogy, she encounters a fellow Brit while in Greece. He tells her about how he had been sad his entire life in Britain. Every day was a slog of misery and hurt, his life lurching from one sadness to another for decades on end. And then he moved to Greece. And he sat on the beach for a few years. And he felt the damp and cold of England slowly leave him, as if his bones were literally drying out there in the sun. And as the damp and the cold left, the sadness did too, like it was baked out of him after so many years of wallow and cold.

I think about that scene a lot whenever England travels to Sri Lanka.

It’s always in February. Dark, dank, cold February. The weather for the next week in London calls for rain and wind and highs in the 40s. Sure, it will be colder here in Minnesota, with highs in only the teens, but England has that damp, that wet, that wind, creating the kind of cold that sinks into your bones and sits there and for some people there just isn’t enough sun and warmth to melt it come summer. I know this feeling. I know it well. The coming of summer in the north is something very special. But sometimes that summer never comes, and so sometimes you have to seek it out. Travel to the other side of the world, sit on the steps of an old stone fort, and take in a cricket match. And sometime around day two, in the afternoon, you realize that you aren’t cold, that you aren’t damp, and that maybe — just maybe — everything is going to be okay.

I love watching England play cricket in Sri Lanka. There is a long and storied history between the two sides, despite Sri Lanka only achieving Test status in the early 1980s. In fact, England have been playing cricket in Colombo since 1882, when they stopped in Sri Lanka on their way to Australia to reclaim the Ashes. And after that Colombo became a regular stop on the way down under, playing one day cricket under the sun and shaking off creaky sea legs.

There is a great post about these early days by Nicholas Brookes on Wisden’s blog today.

Today the England fans dress in white and their faces turn red from the sun and the beer and the scene is full of joy and heat. And the cricket is always joyful and warm and entertaining, even when the teams are far apart in the rankings. What’s fun about this year is that there are only four matches, two touring matches and two tests. So not only will the weather be warm and the sky blue, but fans will be treated to the best of what Cricket has to offer. A few lazy, hazy, hot mornings, afternoons and evenings to bake the cold and winter and sadness into submission, and then back to England to see out the winter.

I don’t live in England, and I am not going to Sri Lanka, but I will watch. For even to just be reminded that somewhere, somehow, it is warm, and skin is hot, and there’s a game of cricket on, is enough to keep the fires burning until June. There are other sports, of course, taking place in warm climates right now. And of course we also all intellectually understand that it has to be warm somewhere, that’s just how the world works. But there’s something about seeing those pale Englanders revel in the sun of Sri Lanka that does my heart good.

Cricket is a feast of traditions, and England’s in Sri Lanka is one of my favorites.

**

One note from the above linked article is what it meant for the small nation to have England — and Australia — stopping by to play cricket for more than a century.  These “whistlestops” as they were known were more than just opportunity to challenge their colonial masters at their own game — and challenge them well, something they weren’t able to do otherwise day-today — but they also gave generations of young Sri Lankan cricketers the chance to play against the best in the world. Does this small nation achieve Test status and win World Cups if these whistlestops never happen? It’s hard to imagine so. And it’s a shame that these kinds of matches have more or less gone away from the world.

As Brookes writes in the article:

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from them is that exposure brings improvement. Given the ICC’s somewhat exclusionary attitude, we rarely see contests between the game’s giants and those countries trying to find their way. But had Sri Lanka’s cricketing infancy not been punctuated with regular visits by England and Australia, who knows where they would be today?

All those great Sri Lankan teams, lost to history. Imagine that world? I don’t think I want to. Unfortunately, as is said, we live in that world now. With each gift given, one is taken away. England in Sri Lanka is a reminder of warmth and heat, but also a reminder that cricket as we know it is slowly disappearing. Generations of Lasith Malingas and Kumar Sangakkaras and Muttiah Muralitharans playing cricket in a country the ICC doesn’t care about, lost forever to obscurity and time, never even to play with a hard cricket ball their entire lives.

What a shame.

With each gift given, another is taken away. Which means every gift needs to be enjoyed, and that is the lesson here. And that is why I will watch England play Sri Lanka, and enjoy every ball.

The United Kingdom has left the European Union.

Next week — probably on Wednesday — the US Senate will vote to acquit President Trump of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I will not give you my opinion on either of these events. If you know me, you know my politics, and we can just leave it at that.

But we can all agree that these two events show a shift in where the world’s big western democracies are headed, politically speaking. Whether you agree that this direction is a step forward or a step backward, I think we can all agree that about half of the people believe the former, and about half of the people believe the latter. And so America is truly a nation divided, a nation cleaved in two. So is Britain. I cannot speak for UK political history, but while this is not the most divided America has ever been, it certainly feels like it sometimes. And honestly it feels like the entire world is in the same boat — though I admit that that is a rather insular notion on my part. But really, it feels as if you are either left, or you are right; there is no middle ground. And the gap between the two is growing greater. And — and for me this is the worst part — people on each side are failing to see people on the other side as actual human beings, with thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears. Instead, we see them as monsters, or dullards, or over educated ivory tower racists.

The worst part? I don’t see this really changing at all very soon. Barring a giant squid being dropped on New York City, or a pneumonia like virus named after a shitty beer wiping out, let’s say, a third of the world’s population, I just don’t see the two sides coming back together, at least any time soon.

I remember when I first felt stress, for instance, in early elementary school. And then it went away. And then it came back. And then at some point in like sixth grade I realized that I was stressed all the time, and that’s been the way it’s been ever since. After a while, something — even a terrible something — can be become normal, just the way things are.

You can get used to anything, you can miss anything. These are phrases I say all the time. And sure they sound like empty platitudes, but they are also 100% true.

And so if something is broken, we get used to it. And when it’s really broken — like our politics are — while we get used to it, it’s not going to fix itself. Barring a cataclysm like a civil war, these days are our new normal unless we — all of us — actively try to change that. I talk about old roofs a lot. When a roof is broken, it’s never going to fix itself. No matter how long we hang around, it’s never going to get repaired unless we do something about it. We. Humans. People. For while things cannot repair themselves, humans can heal and grow and change. We can fix this. We have to fix this.

Some folks will point to the 1960s, another divisive time in America. Probably even more divisive and disrupted then our current times. I mean, National Guard troops were shooting kids on college campuses. We’re not quite there yet. Some folks will say the 60s got better, that over time divisions healed. But I don’t really agree with that. I think people just got tired, and then it was the 70s and there were drugs and the 80s and even more drugs and everyone decided to move on and kick the can down the road. The wounds of the 60s never healed, and begot what we have here today.

Roofs don’t fix themselves. Neither do furnaces or cars or toilets.

Or politics.

But everything can be fixed.

This is the point in the post where I usually relate this back to sport, to cricket. And I will still do that, but I will do it with the warning that this is not enough, not nearly enough.

Yes, sport heals. It brings people of all walks of life and political persuasion together to share a common goal. I play soccer with people whose world view I abhor. I watch Arsenal with people whose world view I abhor. And while we might never agree on some things, we know each other as people, as friends. We care about each other and see each other as humans. The importance of that cannot be overstated. And I think sport is one of the very few bridges between our two worlds. I would not know these people otherwise. We would all just be in our insular little bubbles. Art, music, work, movies, television, all of these things for the most part feel like extensions of these bubbles. While sport does not.

And cricket? As usual, even more so. Even more than soccer, or other global sports. I am a 40-something while male in the United States who has a pretty good grasp on the political situation in India, who can point out Bangladesh on a map, who has friends in New Zealand, England, Guyana. Soccer is a global sport but we still just cheer our national team, and watch teams in Europe, firmly in our bubble both. But cricket breaks us out of our shells, and shows how big the world really is, and how long life really is.

I haven’t been watching a great deal of cricket lately, but the game is still teaching me.

But the irony in all of this, however, is that the path the world is currently taking might make it more difficult for cricket to bridge these gaps between us. Take Jofra Archer, for instance. Born in Barbados, he has English citizenship through his father, and is allowed to play for England after the ECB relaxed its residency requirements. No one right now sees the rules for citizenship and immigration changing to the point where Archer would not be allowed in England or to play for England, nor do people on either side want those rules to change, but that is where we are all heading: to a closed border society, where my side of the river is my side of the river, and your side of the river is your side of the river. I am not saying that that point of view is wrong, I am just saying that is the way the tide is turning, and that it might end up hampering this great international game that has so much more to teach us.

And it’s already happening, with Brexit eliminating Kolpak status for cricketers. And even without Brexit, the Cotonou Agreement is set to expire at the end of the month, which is going to severely limit players from the Caribbean and South Africa and their pursuit of the work permits needed to play county cricket in England.

Our world is getting bigger, but also getting smaller. Borders are closing, maybe forever, and as those borders close, we lose out on the chance to see the people on the other side of those borders as human beings, people, friends.

Maybe I am overstating things, playing Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf. And maybe smaller worlds are better worlds, maybe our silos will protect us, and maybe even protect our planet. But it’s hard to see fewer interactions, fewer shared goals, as a net positive, and it’s easy to slip into doomsday scenarios where once again all we know looks the same, and all we know is what is around us, and where what we don’t know is remote and evil and wrong.

I don’t want to live in that world.

I don’t think anyone does. No matter their side of the aisle.

And so let’s work together to find common ground. Because there is always common ground. Let’s make sure future Jofra Archers can go to England and play cricket, but let’s also make sure people with similar backgrounds who aren’t world class bowlers also have opportunities to better themselves. Let’s reasonably protect our borders to provide safety and comfort, but let’s also allow the people who need to cross them to cross them.

Now I have reversed course, now I am Pollyanna. But when I look at the people I have met through sport, through cricket. When I look at what I understand about this big old world because of sport, because of cricket, I cannot help but feel a little hopeful. We are all people, we are all in this together, and the vast — vast — majority of us want the world to be a better place for all those who live here. When I look back on the World Cup last summer, I don’t see a country divided, embroiled in a once-in-a-generation fracture, but I see a country rising as one to cheer on Jofra Archer, bowling at Lord’s, in the world’s greatest international city, while the whole planet watched. That’s the future I want. Not just for cricket, but for all of us, everywhere. Our politics divide, but we are all human, and we all want great things, and that afternoon in London I think showed us all that we are capable of getting there.

Of getting there together.

It’s a big world. We’ll be okay. I really do think so. And I think so because of cricket.