Raises all the important issues without (inevitably) answering or (sadly) even prognosicating much about the direction of travel or end game for test cricket and the sport broadly. Hopefully that will be in future pieces.
For mine the popular culture references for our future are "aye it's cricket Jim, but not as we know it". Sport is the continuation of politics and business (now inseparable) by other means. "It's the economy, stupid". Follow the money.
What India wants, India gets. Its population, eyeballs and economic heft dictate that. Modi and MBS in Saudi are the swing states in the looming economic, cultural and physical wars between the West (US, UK, Western Europe, Oz et al) and the authoritarian China and Russia empires.
I'm not optimistic about Test cricket having a shelf life beyond 10 years in that world. Concentrated private wealth and shorter time and attention spans mitigate against it.
Geopolitics and the entertainment/media industry will shape cricket and other sports much more than any administrators, boards or the ICC.
Pezza writes about history’s constant concern about test cricket’s demise. Yet it survives. Maybe it survives because enough of us care about it to keep writing about it, commenting, and fighting back. Keep it up!
Raises all the important issues without (inevitably) answering or (sadly) even prognosicating much about the direction of travel or end game for test cricket and the sport broadly. Hopefully that will be in future pieces.
For mine the popular culture references for our future are "aye it's cricket Jim, but not as we know it". Sport is the continuation of politics and business (now inseparable) by other means. "It's the economy, stupid". Follow the money.
What India wants, India gets. Its population, eyeballs and economic heft dictate that. Modi and MBS in Saudi are the swing states in the looming economic, cultural and physical wars between the West (US, UK, Western Europe, Oz et al) and the authoritarian China and Russia empires.
I'm not optimistic about Test cricket having a shelf life beyond 10 years in that world. Concentrated private wealth and shorter time and attention spans mitigate against it.
Geopolitics and the entertainment/media industry will shape cricket and other sports much more than any administrators, boards or the ICC.
Kricket and Kapital, by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Pezza writes about history’s constant concern about test cricket’s demise. Yet it survives. Maybe it survives because enough of us care about it to keep writing about it, commenting, and fighting back. Keep it up!