‘Cricket must be seen in its social context’: I’d love a dollar for every time that I’ve heard that pseudo-profundity, as hackneyed now as ‘catches win matches’ and ‘it’s a funny game’. I mean, whoever said cricket shouldn’t be seen in social context? And whose context, among many, is it anyway?
Ben Dobson has had a bright idea. Take the Ashes of 1981, endlessly dramatic and mythologised, and relate them to the times, which are within memory but long enough ago that some perspective is possible. It’s easy, innit? Just present Ian Botham as a change maker analogous to Margaret Thatcher, call it Something Changed to save you saying exactly what, and aver solemnly that sport has a ‘surreal tendency to mirror the mood of the times’.
Hmmm, bad start.
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