2014 : the cricket year in review

Mike Selvey's take on the year in The Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/dec/18/cricket-in-2014-10-memorable-moments

Indians boo English cricketer of Pakistani extraction?

Since partition in 1947, there have been four full-scale wars between India and Pakistan and the bloodshed between them has been glorified in Bollywood and Lollywood films alike.

The cause of the wars is invariably Kashmir and Birmingham is a flashpoint for that conflict as it has the highest concetration of Kashmiris anywhere in the world outside the sub-continent. It's the city where the terrorist Kashmir Liberation Front was founded and after the Front had murdered an Indian politician on the streets on Birmigham in the 1980s, its leaders found refuge in Pakistan.

So of course there is tension between British-Indians and British-Pakistanis and it takes the nuance of a diplomat rather than the blunderings of a sports writer to tiptoe through the minefield - particularly when that minefield is littered with other unexploded bombs laballed racism, multi-culturalism, UKIP and Norman Tebbit's cricket test.

Booing anyone on a cricket ground is poor behaviour - including the English fans who consistently booed Jadeja last summer and the Indian fans who booed not only Moeen but also James Anderson. It might have just been pantomime villain stuff or it might have been more serious. Either way, it is irresponsible for those who know little about the ethnic politics involved to draw sweeping conclusions about the failure of multi-culturalism in modern Britain based on nothing more than their own assumptions.

Neither, it should be added, is there anything wrong with second and third generation migrants supporting the country of their origin against the country they live in (which was what Tebbit objected to, of course). But I'd say it would be wise for cricket writers to eschew saloon bar sociology and condemn booing in general on all sides without throwing around unprovable aspersions about its allegedly racist motivation.

Coming late to this discussion, I don't know whether the booing of Moeen Ali at Edgbaston had at its root

a)Kashmiri tensions between the city's pro-Indian and pro-Pakistan groupings

b)Barracking by Warwickshire "supporters" aimed at a Worcestershire player

c)Too much beer consumed by people who got carried away with the crowd ethos, whether that was inspired by a), b) or some other fatuity.

I haven't yet seen any report of this disturbance that has proved positively the cause, so I would have some sympathy with drawing easy conslusions from its observed effects. I, too, welcome any writer with the gift of relating what happens on a cricket pitch or the arenas in which it is played to the tensions and insights of a wider world view. That doesn't seem to have happened in the piece that is quoted here, but if no-one can throw any more light on this episode then we have to conclude that "'tis all a muddle" and move on.

And right on cue, there he goes again:

www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/current/story/814819.html

(see number three on the list... the worst moment of England's cricketing year? Really???)

I have to say, BM, that you don't seem to criticise other cricket writers with the same forensic intensity that you apply to GD's writings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you telling us once that you'd fallen out with GD (or crossed swords with him, or whatever) in real life. If this is the case, then you give the appearance of waging a private vendetta on a public MB. Perhaps we could have a New Year truce, please?

All journalists write the occasional bad line, but life's too short to lambast all of them so vigorously - and it's not fair to just pick on the one you seem to dislike!

No, it's not a nameless intern's anthology - seven  cricinfo writers were asked to nominate the 'worst moment of the year' and that bonehead nominated a few Indian  boos for Moeen and then derives from  the incident  an entire theory about the failure of multi-culturalism.

Apart from the Kashmiri issue which has such resonance among the Birmingham Asian community, it has never occured to him to ask why they went for Moeen and didn't give Bopara anything like such vociferous  treatment, which rather suggests it was personal rather than racist. Derek Pringle identified the reason at the time:-  "It was probably his (Moeen's) suggestion that British Asians pass the “Tebbit Test,” and support the country they live in rather than the one of their or their parents’ birth, that may have been behind the recent animosity towards him." www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/11083162/Reasons-behind-booing-of-Moeen-Ali-at-Edgbaston-but-why-England-all-rounder-will-not-let-distractions-affect-focus.html

Of the "worst moments", the one  with the most serious long-term implications is probably Hopps' nomination (no 7)  of the decline in recreational cricket which is ultimately what will kill cricket as a national sport. We went to Harlequins v Northampton at Twickenham on Sat and there were 82,000 there. Hard not to conclude that cricket is  below not only football and athletics in popularity but is now below rugby union, too.

It reads to me like a bit of scissors and paste: "ESPNcricinfo writers look back at their worst moments in English cricket in 2014 ESPNcricinfo staff". But anyway, no argument, Dobell was lazy and went for a quick and rather cheap conclusion: it was all the fault of a [failed] multicultural agenda. Pringle's analysis isn't much better:  "On the other hand it may have something to do with the complexities of being a British Asian in the post Commonwealth age, from supporting the cricket teams of your forefathers to waging jihad in the Levant. "

Both of these are lazy and needlessly speculative. Why shouldn't the booing have been thuggish, football-style "fans" who'd had too much to drink on a hot day, finding a figure of fun (Oh look, a bloke with a funny beard!) and giving in to the collective hysteria? What evidence is there in either analysis that the reporter has spoken to individuals, made connections and learnt fom that experience to interpret it to others?

And jolly good to read that 82, 000 saw Harlequins v Northampton at Twickenham, but just to put that in perspective, Harlequins attendance figures for the whole season to date are 148, 000 in total, and London Welsh, at the foot of the Division but still at the top of the pyramid - a bit like Northants in the County Championship last summer - have only 16, 000 spectators in total. Put the big games on at nig centres and you'll get big crowds, rather like Middlesex and Surrey getting 27, 000 for an otherwise meaningless, in terms of league standings, T20 match. Cricket's grass roots decline is actually paralleled by a decline in rugby union support and attendances at club level, even in its prosperous, suburban, heartlands.