English cricket is in disarray - and it's a metaphor for the whole country [View all]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/english-cricket-disarray-ashes-shambles-brexit

It has been years since football surged past cricket to become England’s favourite sport. Even so, more than a century after cricket’s “golden age”, an Ashes Test series between England and Australia remains one of the most resonant contests in the sporting calendar. This week, after the latest ignominious England defeat in Australia, it seems sensible to ask two questions. How come? And for how much longer?

For some of us, cricket is still the most wonderful of all sports, uniquely balancing individual skill, collective effort and the need for time and strategy. But why are England now playing it so badly? The Ashes contest is uniquely deep-rooted in national legend. The Bradmans and Bothams cast long shadows. But why has this inspired Australians to heroic feats, while reducing England to nervous wrecks?

By far the most important thing that happened in English cricket this year was not the Ashes defeat but the exposure of the game’s institutionalised racism. A third of recreational cricket players in England are of south Asian heritage; that dwindles to just 4% at the elite county level. The complaints made by the former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq have at last blown a hole in the culpable complacency of his former county. But Yorkshire – of which I am a member – is not the only club that needs to start again from scratch.

It requires particularly powerful blinkers not to see links between these factors and England’s Ashes defeats. England cricket – and its overindulged Barmy Army of supporters – is too complacent, not very good and spends too much time in a bubble of Anglosphere exceptionalism. It is at risk of becoming a metaphor for Brexit, deluded about its abilities and achievements, promoting itself as the envy of the world when it is not, and resentful of its critics. The world has moved on. Perhaps cricket lovers should do so too.