Cricket is rotting away. Everything worthwhile is being destroyed

Oct 20, 2017

The authorities are ruining so much of the game many love as they concentrate on T20 money and power – and the ludicrous Test final is the last straw

Thirty years ago, when he was newly retired as a player and before he was canonised (if not yet knighted) for his performances as a jolly old card on Test Match Special, Geoffrey Boycott appeared on the Radio 4 programme In the Psychiatrist’s Chair.

The interviewer, Dr Anthony Clare, casually mentioned that cricket was a team game. Boycott denied it. “No, it’s 11 individuals as a team.” What a giveaway, thought the massed ranks of cricket-loving, Radio 4-listening, amateur psychiatrists. Boycott had finally admitted what his contemporaries always claimed: that he played for himself.

In Asia, it is being wrecked from the top down. In Britain, it is happening from the bottom up

Tags: Cricket ECB International Cricket Council Sport