A Mad World My Masters

As the pace of change quickens, the good things can get obscured by the avalanche of the inane and the downright immoral that make up so much of modern life. You will not, of course, be surprised if I allude to Donald Trump and his wicked cohorts being at the forefront of much that is bad. However I will steer clear of pontificating on the Donald for now. If, like me, you are a gob-smacked Trump watcher, you will perhaps join me in hoping that he will be brought low by his own glaring crassness. I wish I was more optimistic.

Let us, then, steer clear of global politics. Instead let us consider the precarious state of my two favourite team games - rugby union and cricket. I was passably competent at the former and an occasional fumbler at the latter but it is cricket that I prefer watching. Both games stand at a precipice of commercial oblivion. And when I say this, I am talking about the two sports in their pure forms.

A fanciful imagining of BFP in his prime

Rugby Union Football has been worn down by professionalism to a mere shadow of the glorious, muddied oafdom that was so deliciously available to earlier generations. Fifth team rugby is now a thing of distant memories and it will never return. BDR used to say that if a game is worth playing, it is worth playing badly. This ostensibly glib remark masks a lost truth. I am partly to blame because I played and coached rugby with a distinct desire to win. However I hope I never quite lost the instinct that it does a man (or indeed a woman) no moral harm to be bested every now and again. That is part of sport/growing up. Myriad genies are out of the rugby bottle and cannot be put back: misplaced professionalism; tactical substitutions; impact players; the advancement of the interest of the paying spectator over that of the players. The latest new kid on the block is the wrteched R360, a devil-child rugby version of the woeful and divisive LIV Golf. Shame on you Mike Tindall. I am glad I played when I did, from my early efforts at prop aged eleven to my final joyous season at No. 8 for the fourths at AOE at the age of forty-eight.

As I write this I am listening to commentary of the first day of the World Test Championship between Australia and South Africa at Lord's. I am delighted to say that there is a full-house and will allow prejudice to prompt me to add that South Africa seem to be getting the better of it - I can't be doing with that Steve Smith, brilliant as he can be.

Have you ever tried to watch the entirety of an IPL game? It takes for ever. The ingenuity of the batting, I will grant you, is staggering. The fielding is sublime. But it is nothing more than glorified (very glorified) pub cricket. Pop has eaten itself. Enjoy test cricket while you can - it will not be re-invented.