Category: Uncategorized

When it comes to sports, there are certainly a lot of really dumb things, but for me, one of the dumbest is surely the ranking system certain leagues/sports use. From the BCS in college football to FIFA’s international football rankings to, of course, the ICC’s format rankings, it all seems so convoluted, and wrong, and random. The formulas are simultaneously too simplistic and too complex. They try to explain the intangible using the tangible, and that never works. It’s like trying to use statistics to describe the act of falling in love. It just doesn’t translate. And to use these rankings to decide championships and tournament seedings lends an air of corruption to the whole system.

The ICC’s rankings are, of course, some of the most ridiculously complicated out there, and we all tend to give them a bit of a hard time – but just how wrong – or right – are they?

Take the current T20 rankings, for example. They go something like this:

Team	Matches	Points	Rating
Sri Lanka	26	2848	129
India	19	1843	123
Pakistan	40	3638	121
South Africa	31	2940	118
Australia	31	2869	115
West Indies	29	2690	112
New Zealand	29	2475	108
England	34	2811	104
Ireland	17	1106	92
Bangladesh	18	1034	74
Afghanistan	15	928	66
Netherlands	12	508	56
Scotland	13	545	50
Zimbabwe	17	589	45
Kenya	17	633	42
Canada	8	11	2

Is Sri Lanka really the best T20I team out there? I think so. Probably. But what about all the other places? Should Afghanistan really be behind Bangladesh? And India has only played 19 qualifying matches – shouldn’t that go against them? And is England REALLY that bad?

Thankfully, we have a T20 World Championship going on right now. So let’s test these out – see how silly – or how spot on – they truly are.

The qualifying matches are happening as I type, but if we use rankings alone, Ireland and Bangladesh will move on to the Super 10 stage.

Then Group 1 will look like this:

South Africa

Sri Lanka

England

New Zealand

Ireland

And Group 2 like this:

Pakistan

India

Australia

West Indies

Bangladesh

And based solely on ICC’s rankings – and just assuming for fun that there are no ties or no results – the Group 1 Super 10 stage will play out like this:

Super 10; Group 1	Winner
SA v SL	SL
ENG v NZ	NZ
NZ v SA	SA
SL v IRE	SL
SA v IRE	SA
ENG v SL	SL
NZ v IRE	NZ
ENG v SA	SA
ENG v IRE	ENG
NZ v SL	SL

And the Group 2 Super 10 stage like this:

Super 10; Group 2	Winner
IND v PAK	IND
AUS v PAK	PAK
IND v WI	IND
WI v BANG	WI
AUS v WI	AUS
IND v BANG	IND
PAK v BANG	PAK
AUS v IND	IND
AUS v BANG	AUS
PAK v WI	PAK

Final Super 10 tables:

Group 1	Wins	Points
South Africa – 2	3	6
Sri Lanka – 1	4	8
New Zealand	2	4
England	1	2
Ireland	0	0
Group 2
Pakistan – 2	3	6
India – 1	4	8
Australia	2	4
West Indies	1	2
Bangladesh	0	0

Those results put Sri Lanka v Pakistan in Semi-Final #1 (Sri Lanka to win) and India v South Africa in Semi-Final #2 (India to win).

And then Sri Lanka will win it all, just as the ICC Ranking Gods decreed.

So why even play the games?

I am kidding of course. We play the games because sport exists outside the realm of math and science and statistics. Sure, they play their role, but at the end of the day, sports are played by humans, and humans are by nature completely unpredictable.

But just as an exercise, I will track the 23 matches above as they go – noting the actual outcome versus the robot’s prediction – and see how it all shakes out.

You have your way to enjoy a T20 World Championship, and I have mine.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have read quite a bit about supporters becoming more and more disenfranchised with their favorite clubs. Coventry City, Cardiff City and even my beloved Arsenal. They feel that their clubs are moving to a place – literally or figuratively – where they will no longer be able to support them. The barriers – financial or otherwise – are becoming too large. They feel as though their clubs have turned their backs on them, their most faithful supporters. And while true boycotts are few and far between, most of these supporters are nearing their breaking points.

All sports fans know that their favorite teams exist for one purpose: to make money for the team’s shareholders. We are not fans, we are products sold to advertisers. We are a demographic. We understand that, and for the most part are able to co-exist with it. It becomes a problem when – as Tim from the Arsenal blog 7amkickoff points out – you are no longer a prime demographic for the club. Because you don’t make enough money, or have the right degree, or live in the right time zone. And once that happens, your club slowly drifts away from you, and you are left with a choice: accept the new terms, or move on.

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Antoinette Mueller (aka @mspr1nt) discussed in a wonderful piece what cricket fans can learn from what is happening at Coventry City. So I am not going to do that here. Instead I am going to tell you my story about how I have – slowly, but surely – walked away from a team I once adored.

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I moved to Minnesota in December of 1987, two months after the Minnesota Twins won the World Series. They were a scrappy bunch of has-beens and never-will-bes (plus Kirby Puckett) and they were a true Cinderella story. I watched those playoffs from the sunroom of our house in Michigan and I instantly fell in love with them. These were my guys. This was my team.

As we all know, we do not choose which teams to support – the teams choose us. And the Minnesota Twins had chosen me.

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The Metrodome, now a laughing stock, was for me at the time a shining beacon of hope. It was loud and different and quirky and possessed a sense of magic that only little kids could sense. Furthermore, I was not happy in Michigan, and the move west was a chance to reinvent myself.

When we moved that December, we approached the city of Minneapolis from the north, and drove right past the “Dome”. It was a moment I will never forget. There it was. That inflated Teflon lid that had housed all of that October magic. Before that moment it had only existed on television. But then there it was. In all its glory.

It was evening. I can still picture it.

As a family, we would attend many Twins games at the dome. Sometimes just my dad and me, sometimes the whole clan. And from my basement bedroom, two years nearly to the day after my dad had passed away, I watched the Twins win another World Series in what was affectionately known as the “Homer-Dome”.

In the mid-to-late 90s, Twins fans – including me – suffered through some horribly lean years. The dome held 50,000 people but most home games saw crowds as small as three or four thousand. A few hopeful faces amid oceans and oceans of those uncomfortable blue chairs.

From 1997-1999, I lived in a studio apartment that looked out over the Metrodome – pretty much the same view you see above. The Twins – and the Dome – were a near constant presence in my life those days, even if the team was simply terrible.

But then in 2001, the Twins all of a sudden were good again. My wife and I were living downtown and for the next few seasons attended games almost weekly. Sometimes it was just us – other times we were surrounded by friends. I remember so many wonderful walks to the Dome on perfect summer evenings. And I have oh-so-many fond memories of the Twins winning in brilliant fashion and leaving the stadium surrounded by joyous fans followed by an elated walk back home.

It was one of the happiest times of my life. Young love. Baseball. In the heart of the city.

We would always go to games on Tuesday nights – for it was half price night. Seats in the outfield bleachers were only seven dollars. And that’s the thing: the Twins at the Metrodome were always a bargain. And because of that they attracted a more blue collar crowd – a younger crowd, a more urban crown – than the gridiron football team in town, the Minnesota Vikings. They were our team. They belonged to us. The suburbs had the Vikings. We had the Twins.

You would go to indie rock clubs on Friday nights and the bass player of the noise rock band you came to see would be wearing a Minnesota Twins cap.

It was things like that made me love my city, made me love the Twins. They were mine. They had always been mine.

And then, all of a sudden, they weren’t.

In 2010, after years of wrangling, the Twins opened Target Field and left behind the Metrodome forever.

Target Field is a beautiful ballpark. A top notch facility in every way possible. But the team it hosts is no longer my team. They are a rich person’s team. I have been priced out. I was no longer their prime demographic and I was given the choice mentioned above: accept the new terms, or move on.

And in the last few months, I have chosen the latter.

Sure I have been to a few games at Target Field – and had some really great times – and I still check the box scores occasionally – and I still love baseball – but the Minnesota Twins are no longer my team. And they never will be again. They moved on, and so have I.

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The Minnesota Vikings – who shared the Dome with the Twins – had their new stadium approved in 2012, to be built on the same land as the Metrodome. And so my beloved old ground is being slowly dismantled. Every time I go by it, a little bit more of it is gone, and I think of all the memories and ghosts and moments – some baseball related but also many, many non-baseball related – friends now lost, summer nights, dads, and the magic of being young and in awe of sport – that were housed there. Those memories will be around long after the last pillar is demolished, of course, but the physical connection to those memories will be gone forever. And that breaks my heart.

The dismantling of the dome is a physical manifestation of what happened to the love I used to have for the Minnesota Twins.

They were my team.

Once.

But not anymore.

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They came to be elated and uplifted…raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. ….

Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives.

– Dennis Lehane,from Mystic River

Yesterday Arsenal lost 5-1 to Liverpool at Anfield. It was a dismal performance and very difficult to swallow.

Since the match was at 6:45am here in Minneapolis, I was forced to dwell on it all day long – and it cast a real pall on my day. I was in a funk from the first minute when Skrtel scored all the way through to much later in the evening when I finally had enough wine and non-football-related conversations to rid myself of the stink of the loss.

For the most part, I am able to shake tough losses, but yesterday was different for some reason, I am not sure why. It was the worst I had felt after an Arsenal loss since their 4-2 loss – again to Liverpool – in the 2008 Champions League quarterfinal.

I tried to watch the highlights of that 2008 match last night. I saw Diaby’s goal, and Hyypia’s leveler, and then Gerrard’s rocket. And then there was Walcott’s run. Charging through the midfield. Shaking off one, two, three defenders. Only 20 years old and playing with the kind of un-jaded freedom and joy that only the young possess. Pulling it back to Adebayor. Goal. 2-2 on aggregate. And Arsenal through to the semi-finals on away goals. But then tragedy. And I closed the browser window. I couldn’t watch Toure give away the penalty. I couldn’t watch Gerrard’s conversion. It was too much to bear. I have not watched the penalty since I saw it live. And I probably will never watch it again.

It is still so, so painful. All these years later.

We all know that feeling, of course, as sports fans. That gross pit in our stomachs after watching our side utterly collapse right before our eyes. Those lonely and cold and depressing walks from the stadium to the train station or the parking lot. Half drunk and grumpy and surrounded by strangers. And how that feeling sits on our shoulders for hours and days – and sometimes even years.

But why do we allow these silly little games to affect us so? And why are some tougher to swallow than others?

I guess I don’t have the scientific answers to those questions, as I am not a psychoanalyst, but I think Lehane was half right above – as sport is the only place on earth where, vicariously at least, we are able to experience true victory. Our lives are, for the most part, winless. Unemployment. Car crashes. Deaths. There are victories, sure, but they are often tainted, often colored by tragedy.

“Life isn’t,” wrote Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch, “a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.”

And so I see why we celebrate our teams victories, as it allows us to taste pure winning.

But why then do the victories crush us so? If we only know defeat in our lives why are we so utterly saddened by the defeat of our teams?

I think it is because we have – as sports fans – come to rely on that vicarious winning, and when our teams do not deliver, we mourn not the loss of the game on the playing field or on the television, but the loss of the chance to feel truly good about something.

We are not sad because Arsenal lost. As there will always be another match. And Arsenal lose a lot. We are instead sad because the opportunity to feel the untainted and limitless joy of victory was taken away from us. And we are forced back into the drudgery of Monday, of February, of work, without having tasted of that joy.

“Win for me. Win for my kids.”

It’s silly, of course, because non-sports-fans go their entire lives without experiencing any of the above. They know joy and sadness and victory, too – just in other pursuits.

But I will say this, at the risk of being controversial: sports fans experience higher highs – and lower lows – than non sports fans.

I think this is similar to parenting. People that have children – while not necessarily happier than people who do not have kids – do experience higher highs – and lower lows – than childless people.

Again, Nick Horby:

…So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.

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But why do certain matches affect us more than others? It surely has more to do with how big the game was, with how much was at stake. And it again surely has more to do with how your team loses – 5-1 is easier than 2-1, for instance.

I guess I don’t have the answer to that question either. I don’t know why yesterday’s loss bummed me out more than, say, the 1-0 loss to Manchester United or the disastrous 3-1 home loss to Villa. I don’t know why I needed to taste joy yesterday morning more so than any other Saturday kickoff.

I guess maybe it has just been a dark winter. Full of drudgery. And I needed a little light. And I didn’t get it. And it bummed me out. And I mourned the loss of the chance for that light. And I will continue to mourn it for a long time, just as I continue to mourn the missed chance for joy that that Champions League quarterfinal had promised.

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Listen. Sports are stupid. And we are idiots. But I truly believe in all of the above. We all – sports fans and non-sports fans alike – are searching for meaning in our lives. We live for 70 years (if we are lucky) on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old and is spinning on the loneliest edge of an incomprehensibly vast, dark and cold universe. We do all that we can to eke out an existence for ourselves, our children, our friends. Hoping to leave something behind that says that it all mattered.

Life is hard. And there are vast chunks of it that lack any sort of meaning, but sport helps us find a pattern in the void, in life’s wallpaper.

And I don’t there is anything the slightest bit wrong about that.

George Dobell, on Cricinfo:

This England environment, in recent times, has a record of ruining players. A confused Steven Finn has regressed, an over-used Swann has retired, an exhausted Jonathan Trott has taken time out and the loss of form of the likes of Cook and Joe Root suggests that the schedule is part of an unsustainable business plan that risks running the greatest assets of all: the players.

The article is about Kevin Pietersen of course, which is why he doesn’t mention him – but he does oddly omit any mention of Andrew Strauss, who went from world beating captain to disgraced outsider all in less than 18 months.

And so what has happened to this England – this machine, this juggernaut – that created such a poisonous environment?

Nothing all that out of the ordinary, actually – at least in my opinion. Sure, they hit a bad patch of form – a bad patch greatly exaggerated because it was against the old enemy on cricket’s biggest stage – but this is not their first bad patch since reaching what most would see as the pinnacle of recent years: beating Australia in the fifth Test of the 2010-11 Ashes at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

In fact, it’s their third since the SCG Test. I even plotted it out for us all to see:

With each bad patch came a series of knee jerk reactions from the ECB (Eoin Morgen’s last Test for England was against Pakistan in Dubai and Andrew Strauss’s lest Test for England was against South Africa at Lord’s – to name just two).

And now they are dismissing Pietersen.

Again, from Dobell:

It is increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that it is the institution at fault, not the individuals.

I cannot agree more.

The ECB, through mismanagement, and just since 2011, has ruined the careers of a half dozen of the greatest English cricketers of the last 50 years.

But a caveat:

As seen in the graphic above, each reaction from the ECB was followed by a period of relative success at the Test level – that cannot be disputed. And so maybe, despite what we all may think, the ECB upper management knows what they are doing better than the armchair journos, as they have the results on the pitch to back them up.

Maybe.

But probably not.

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumns trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.

– Virginia Woolf, cricketer

I was utterly flattered to be counted among the inspirations for this wonderful, wonderful post from Chris Smith (@chrisps01) on his blog, Declaration Game.

Over the last week or so, I have gone back more than a dozen times to read and re-read the final two paragraphs. I think they are truly perfect:

Watching, say, a Test match: in between overs, the sound of applause, distinct but feint through distance, will drift across the ground. There’s no action for the crowd to respond to and nobody around you is clapping. But some 150 metres away a fielder is jogging or walking away from the square, with hand raised, holding hat or cap, towards a section of the crowd. It’s the bowler whose over has just finished, perhaps having taken a wicket, or completed a spell, but definitely having impressed. And now that bowler is returning to his fielding position close to the boundary, close to a section of the crowd who, independent of allegiance, identify with the bowler and welcome him back.

On the other side of the ground, the noise feels like a reaction to an event already viewed and understood. Or simply an echo delayed by the reach of the ground. At a distance, the harshness of clapping is tempered, not hand smacking hand, but raindrops on a roof, hooves on soft ground; insistent and gentle. Above all it’s the warmth of cricket and its people.

Now is the time to find the balance: getting the big things right, so we can enjoy the beauty of the little things.

It is writing like that that gives me hope for this game. Despite the position paper. Despite everything.

And I love the sentiment expressed in the sentence “…the warmth of cricket and its people.” Being a cricket blogger, I am exposed to said warmth on nearly a daily basis. And I am given hope for the future of cricket every single time.

The paragraphs sum up everything that is great about cricket – and about Test cricket in particular – and reinforces why we all need to act as proper stewards of this grand old game. It has more wonderful traditions than every other sport put together, and those traditions need to be protected.

There is something really special about barebones Internet/TV coverage of a cricket match. Just one or two cameras, no on screen overlays and sparse commentary. Whenever I watch one I feel like I have stepped back in time to an era I sadly missed as a newcomer to the game.

Subash (aka the Cricket Couch) said it best in a post about Cricket Ireland’s stream of the Ireland-Pakistan ODI:

It was throwback to an earlier time.  A time when cricket was innocent and the pictures shot with cameras you could count with the fingers on one hand; Almost an amateurish feel to the angles and the switch to the different views trying to track the ball down; The voices telling you what you need to know rather than trying to capture your attention so that they could peddle you a product; No graphics besides the odd look at the scorecard and a demand of the viewer to pay attention to the live pictures because there weren’t many replays on the screen…

Subash, in the same post, also brings up the great point that Internet broadcasts such as the one discussed above are the future of world cricket. And if the ICC truly is interested in growing the game, then they need to make cricket more accessible via online streaming:

There is no doubt in my mind that endeavors like the one witnessed today from Ireland Cricket streaming an ODI on YouTube is the way forward in terms of the global consumption of the sport, which would allow it to expose it even a wider audience and hence a more robust long term health.

Spot on analysis as usual.

I bring this all up because today we are being treated to two such streams: Australia Women vs England women in a series deciding ODI, and Hong Kong versus Kenya in a World Cup Qualifier.

The former match will be on the ECB’s website, and the latter on the ICC’s website.

For free.

I am looking forward to taking in as much of both matches as possible, and I urge you to do the same. For while these matches will be – to paraphrase Subash – a window into the past and simultaneously a look into the future – they are doubly important to take an interest in considering the contents of the now infamous “position paper”.

It is my opinion that considering direction the ICC appears to be headed in, the future of the games lies not in tonight’s dead rubber Australia-England ODI, it lies instead in the women’s game and in the hands of the Associates. And it is up to us to support them.

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Note: the ICC will stream three more world cup qualifiers after tonight’s match. Full schedule here.

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Finally today: yes you read that right: Hong Kong has a shot at getting into the World Cup. More than that though, because of their top six finish, they are now listed as a top eight Associate side and therefore qualify for the World Cricket League Championship and have been elevated to full ODI status. A great accomplishment for sure!

The downside to all of this, however, is that – as pointed out here – Hong Kong does not have an international quality cricket facility. And while they will receive US$350,000 for their participation in the WCL from the ICC, that of course does them no good right now.

It would be a real shame if this burgeoning side was forced to play its “home” matches at a neutral venue. They are far too many nomadic sides in World Cricket as it is. I do hope they are able to build or renovate a facility in time for the WCL.

The executive summary from the latest Oxfam Briefing Paper, dated 20 January, 2014 and entitled ‘Working for the Few’ (emphasis mine):

Economic inequality is rapidly increasing in the majority of
countries. The wealth of the world is divided in two: almost half
going to the richest one percent; the other half to the remaining 99
percent. The World Economic Forum has identified this as a major
risk to human progress. Extreme economic inequality and political
capture are too often interdependent. Left unchecked, political
institutions become undermined and governments overwhelmingly
serve the interests of economic elites to the detriment of ordinary
people. Extreme inequality is not inevitable, and it can and must be reversed quickly.

Sound familiar?

Full report here (PDF).

Context.

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One of my favorite Twitter accounts is the official account of Lord’s Cricket Ground: @homeofcricket. Sure they do their fair share of ticket and event pimping, but they also tweet out pictures of the ground covered in snow or of the pitch on the morning before a big match. It’s that kind of stuff that makes me love Twitter generally and I wish more grounds did it. Some of the County Grounds do it, of course, but very few of the major Test grounds, which is why the spreadsheet ranking the major Test grounds’ Twitter accounts is so small:

The Lord’s account is obviously the most successful. They do a really nice job with it and I am surprised more grounds have not taken the time to follow their lead. Cricket grounds may be inanimate objects officially, but they are actually living and breathing monuments to the memories of millions of cricket fans the world over. The outcry when Perth hosted its last Test is just one example of this. I think the management team of all grounds would find it beneficial to give their stadiums a Twitter account, and thereby a touch of humanity.

Caveats:

**Five Test minimum

**These are ground specific accounts only. I left out @trentbridge, for instance, because that is Lancashire CCC’s official account handle and I covered the Counties already.

**Twitter Strike Rate is the term coined by @paperstargirl for the stat I invented,  formerly known as “Tweets per Follower” or “TPF”.

Simply put, Twitter Strike Rate is the number of tweets divided by the number of followers. The lower the number, the more effective the social media campaign…supposedly. It is by no means scientific.

As an example, ECB’s Twitter SR is .05, which means they are earning 20 followers per tweet. While mine is 9.95, so I am earning one follower every 10 tweets or so.

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It has taken me a couple days of reflection on the news out of the ICC earlier this week in order to form a semblance of an opinion.

I have always been an optimist when it comes to Test cricket’s future. The game has been around for 130+ years. It has seen action in three different centuries. It has survived two world wars, the introduction of the helmet and DRS. It has seen half its member nations go nuclear, two of which against the better wishes of the international community, and still it soldiers on. It has survived the introduction of two new formats, the IPL, the Big Bash League and dwindling attendance records. It has weathered the storms of Kashmir, the Mumbai and Pakistan terror attacks, and countless other attempts to derail it – both external and internal.

Cricket will be fine, I always say, even Test cricket. It has battled against history and time throughout its entire existence. It can handle whatever you want to throw at it. Do your worst, cricket will still be standing.

And cricket supporters, as @dbackwardpoint mentions, do a lot of crying wolf when it comes to the death of the game’s oldest format:

It’s for times like these that I’ve been begging people to dial down the “test cricket is dying” outrage. [1/2]

— Devanshu (@dbackwardpoint) January 19, 2014

I remember when the ICC planned to kick the Associates out of the 50 over World Cup and supporters the world over were up in arms. It was the death of World Cricket, they said. But it wasn’t. The ICC heard the fervor and reversed course and the most powerful Associate member, Ireland, is stronger than ever.

And so I admit, my first reaction to the leaked revamp paper was “relax, everyone. It’s cool. Cricket will be fine. Just like it always is.”

But for some reason, after a few more days reading and reflecting, I realized that this time things were different somehow. The Internet was not littered with “the sky is falling” loonies, it was instead my favorite cricket journalists and bloggers writing logical and reasoned pieces on why this could really and truly be the final nail in the coffin of this game we love. It was reasonable people whose opinion about the game I deeply respect, figuratively dropping to their knees and wailing in despair for the future of this game that has brought them so much joy.

It comes down to this: one of the biggest problems in world cricket is too much power in the hands of too few. And the leaked proposal puts even more power in the hands of even fewer people.

And that spells death knell.

And so now that we have decided this is a problem – what can we do to fight it?

Step number one of course is hoping that cooler heads prevail and the proposal is sent to the incinerator where belongs – but what’s step number two?

The always brilliant Jarrod Kimber – cricket’s white knight if it ever had one – suggests, as he always does, just doing something simple: writing to the heads of CA, the ECB and BCCI. The links to their contact pages are here, here and here, respectively. I have done so, and suggest you do the same. It takes all of 15 minutes.

As Kimber says, the ICC is counting on our silence, but now is not the time for silence. It is the time for action. I cannot do what I have always done and just assume the game is going to be fine. It needs our help to continue.

The good news? Again as mentioned by Kimber in the piece for Cricinfo above, there are a lot of good people working to help keep the game alive. Let us not stand idly by as they carry this weight alone, let us – the collective massives – help shoulder their burden.

For the game does not belong to England, India and Australia. It does not belong to the Test playing nations and it does not belong to the ICC. It does not belong to the advertisers or the TV networks. It does not belong to the players. It doesn’t even belong to us. It instead belongs to our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. We are all stewards of this game, and we must act accordingly.

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So what else should we do to help preserve this game? Well, based on some inspiring tweets from the aforementioned DeepBackwardPoint, I suggest that we all find a way to support cricket in all its forms and at all its many levels. Don’t just watch Tests between the big three. Watch and support the Associates and the Women’s game. Financially support your local club, or better yet sign up and start playing. Contribute a few bucks to your favorite blogger or buy one of their t-shirts. If you live in the States, pay $15 a month for Willow and watch legal streams of Ranji, County Cricket and lesser Test nations.

Personally, I am going to make an effort to learn more about the Associates and the Women’s game – and in turn write more about them. First step is making sure I add their matches to the Internet Schedule for US Viewers. It is not updated accordingly yet, but I hope to have it done soon. Hopefully this will be a tool we can all use to support “outsider” cricket. Bookmark it and check back often, as it is updated every Sunday. And then take in a ladies Test match, or maybe a First Class match between Ireland and Nepal. There is lots of cricket out there, and the best way to ensure it stays that way is to not ignore it as too many of us have been doing.

The other day I talked about finding the little things in the game, and using those to inspire my blog posts. Along those same lines, there are dozens of cricket matches every day of the week on every corner of this big old world, and there are dozen stories in each them just waiting to be told. And those are the stories I want to tell. And hopefully by telling them I will be doing something tangible – in my own small way – to make sure those stories are there for the telling for the next thousand years.

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