Cricket blows its own trumpet

8/06/2009 11:41:00 am / The truth was spoken by Rich /

They've banned the Barmy Army trumpeter/bugler fella from Headingley tomorrow. It's not necessary, it's not sporting, it's just not cricket apparently!

Our Government and local authorities are so consumed with politically correct mamby-pambying that it has seeped into our culture and we're now incapable of distinguishing between good old fashioned hijinks - the sporting of fancy dress, the rear-goosing of waitresses, the playing of trumpets and the serious incitement that causes genuine offense and physical harm - anything that happens at Tottenham.

Can our sports fan strata not re-organise themselves? Our working class football fans have complained for years now that they're being squeezed out of stadia by the wealthier nancy boy middle classes and now the nancy boy middle class cricket establishment are complaining about being squeezed out of cricket grounds by yobbish working class largered up buglers and flag wavers and lord help us, booers. Can't we all just get along? Obviously not.

Why not un-gentrify football and re-gentleman cricket? Just let the noisy under-classes back into football and the quieter prawn sandwich middle-classes can then re-acquaint themselves with the Gentleman's game? Or could we all not just relax a bit and do both?

P'raps cricket's guardians are right to complain. The under-classes who have infiltrated cricket might only be booing today, but who knows what noises they'll be making tomorrow: Geering? Whistling? Saucy chanting? Who knows where it might end. Someone might even end up calling Ricky Ponting a wanker, then where will we be?

It's a slippery slope and perhaps cricket is now on it and slipping at an unrecoverable rate. An inexorable descent into the murky depths of our nations most base emotions which football took a good three decades ago and - despite all the new stadiums and Sky Sports graphics and shiny tight suits wrapped around boy-band/ex-footballer hybrid pundits - one it can never recover from.

Cricket purists have time to process the death of their game though - they have time to grieve. Like a terminal cancer yet to take hold, it'll be a good few years before cricket grounds have to tolerate the bi-weekly scenes of Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane - filled with fans who have lost their opposable thumbs through a process of devolution possibly as it isn't required when giving the Nazi salute or opposition players the finger.

If this is the beginning of the end for cricket's traditional support - the bushy tashes, the outrageously coloured blazers, the Adam's apples the size of cricket balls, the crafty snooze beneath the peak of a weathered trilby - I'm sure I speak for football fans everywhere who watched the beautiful game turn ugly, when I say we are sorry for your loss old boys. Still, you had a good innings.





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