RIP Cricket: Australia's Shame

I used to look forward to Cricket season. It meant that I could dust off my scorebook and special scoring pencil and spend my holidays in front of the telly diligently marking the score during another enthralling Test Series. What’s more I could get shit faced while doing it. However, that was last summer. This summer I’m over Cricket. I’m divorcing myself from the game. She is dead to me.

I did try watching some cricket but I finally released why non-cricket fans found it so painfully boring. The first test between SA and NZ was, lets be honest, of a pretty poor standard (Amala, Kallis, Steyn and Bond excepted) and the AUS Vs Sri Lanka was downright tedious. Nope, Cricket is no longer a part of my summer diet.

There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the last of the great personalties has gone. Shane Warne is now text messaging full time and that means that the game is being overrun with the cricketing equivalent of accountants – The Mike Hussy’s, Raul Dravids and Michael Vaughn’s, of this world - Men with all the appeal of a knitting circle. Even those that remain are censured. Flintoff left his personality at the bottom of a Caribbean bay, Smithy’s growing up and evolving into Keppler Wessel’s and Pieterson has finally made the jump from pretentious prick to sullen faced knob.

But that is not the only reason Cricket is dead. No she is dead because she was poisoned. Slowly. By the Australians. Over a period of time. They administered a slow realising toxin that gradually killed her. Bit by bit. It attacked her nervous system and killed her. By degrees.

It began when Tubby Taylor was replaced with Steve Waugh as captain of the Baggy Green’s. Suddenly they started applying Science (yes science) to the gentle art of cricket and have never looked back. Nowadays they win everything, and convincingly, but at what cost?

All that “science” and “progress” has turned the Aussie into the most boring 11 men in the world outside of a Star Trek convention. Their sound bytes sound positively scripted and their play methodical. And if have to watch Brett Lee celebrate a wicket by ‘who-hooing’ like a ten year girl one more time I will move to Alabama or Brasilia or anybloodywhere where they don’t have cricket. Shame on you Australia for being too darn good and too darn boring. For shame.
No, Cricket is dead. This summer will be spent on the front deck, using my special scorebook and pencil to play car cricket (Red Car = 6, Black = Out etc). If you see me, give me a wave. And some booze. Don’t forget the booze.