Thanks for sharing this article, Jeremy. It was my first reading but found myself quietly laughing over the brotherhood and sisterhood ‘of the bumbling and the hapless’….those who are bad cricketers yet precisely because we ‘delight in our ineptitude’ we form a ‘soul’ for the cricket. I loved the penultimate para:
‘It’s remarkable, is it not, that there so few hated cricketers. Many are mocked and derided but few are loathed the way footballers can be. Because unlike other sports, cricket’s not very good at hatred. It has no real darkness. A sport that stops for bad light can’t really muster much murkiness. And it is also, perhaps, because cricket is a fragile and dwindling beauty, semi-permanently on the cusp of some long-awaited extinction.’
Feels a little disconcerting to be smiling just two hours after seeing so many lighted candles in the windows of Western Sydney. May the diverse community of cricket lovers, Gideon writes about - and who will gather at the Adelaide Oval on Wednesday - remind us of the strengths, mutual respect and simple joys that can be shared.
For me, the idea that any single event or vigil could begin to reckon with the anguish and fear and grief that Jewish Australians and their families and friends are experiencing is quite beyond me. Reading Gideon’s piece and then discovering Robert McLiam Wilson’s article (thanks again Jeremy) has me hoping that during this Third Ashes Test we can reflect and acknowledge and take comfort in the delight that the beautiful game is ‘on’.
After an underdsandalby bleak September mostly spent in New York in September 2001 my spirits were briefly raised by our taxi passing a cricket match on the way to JFK airport prior to my flight home to London
Thank you Gideon for your balanced and compassionate piece. Your thoughtful tone creates space for reflection. I am holding onto the hope that cricket can offer some light.
Thank you, Gideon. Your article encapsulates some of what is unique
about cricket. Your response is sensitive, well-considered and not over the top, unlike some of the political, blame-game responses of others. Cricket can come together, acknowledge the terror, share our grief and respectfully push on.
Only last week I noticed that a little Jewish pre-school in my area now has a security camera, huge wall and an electronic gate where there was once a simple low fence with a Star of David in the iron work of the gate. The new Australia.
Taking a moment to remember yesterday’s victims of Islamic terrorism before play starts in Adelaide is the only decent thing to do. For me test cricket is a link to the past and the old Australia I grew up in.
This has been a most terrible event. Most terrible for the direct victims and the ever-expanding circles of their families, friends and connections and for Jews in Australia and all over the world, who are left looking over their shoulders yet again. Terrible for the Australian community in general which has to come to terms with people who live here doing such a dreadful act. And for everybody who has to put up with the oxygen the event provides to the genocidal war criminal Netanyahu, to the short-fingered vulgarian rapist formerly from New York, now Florida, to pontificating journalists, to grandstanding politicians and to endless multitudes of creators of cliched content. Thank God for Gideon and his rational and humane mind. And thank God for cricket...
John...please!! Now isn't the time for anti-israel sentiments. Please read the room and understand that this is a devastating and terrifying time for Jewish people everywhere. Although you seem and fan of Gideon's as I am, please don't undermine his compassionate, humble and kind sentiments with aggressive, political editorials at this moment.
The only thing I wrote which conceivably could be regarded as 'anti-Israel' was the reference to Netanyahu. My characterisation of him is well-supported by the evidence and by international judgements. He is not Israel and he is certainly not Jewishness. And he certainly has no business telling Australia how to run itself.
John out of respect to Gideon, the et al readership and the game of Cricket, im not going down this rabbit hole with you on this platform. However I'm more than happy to thrash this out with you privately. Email me if you'd like to continue this discussion and I'll describe to you how it feels to consider Australia (my birth country) no longer a safe place to raise my family. Dave@gelbartsgym.com.au
So you get to decide who is anti semitic? Many Jewish people have come out publicly against Israel’s actions. Here in Australia and around the World. Who are you to decide what people can and can’t believe?
thanks Gideon, I subscribed the day they did over Lalor, I've re-subscribed because, well because, these words are worth a decade of subscription. my only issue is that I will die never being able to write a paragraph as good as that last one in this article ....
A lovely piece, thanks Gideon. I’ve been consuming too much media since last night’s tragic events, so it was something of a relief to switch on the BBL tonight. I’m not really watching closely, it just feels reassuringly normal.
A nicely considered article, Gideon. Not sure how any sport would help ‘get through’ such a horror. However, the cricket is sure to remind us that life goes on and we have got to deal with some awful happenings away from the game. It is like a constant, steadying star in the universe, perhaps
Am l being optimistic when l take heart from the fact a dad of young children, who just happened to be a Muslim, put his life on the line to save others of the Jewish faith, celebrating a Jewish festival?
As someone from the community targeted who is heart broken, and after crossing paths with some of the victims at my hospital workplace yesterday , I can’t tell you how soothing watching bowlers targeting the off bail will be. Something more trivial to focus my
Not really sure what the game can do - but it was nice being able to flick over to the Big Bash last night, finding a small oasis that was as yet uninterrupted by unfolding realities.
Your thoughtful article took me back to a decade ago, when Robert McLiam Wilson penned a piece in the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris, which I still regard as the most moving piece on cricket that I have ever read. I can but commend it to you all https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/20/the-solace-of-an-australian-summer-when-cricket-brought-hope-and-light
Thanks for reminding me of that piece. You're right - it was fantastic.
Thanks for sharing this article, Jeremy. It was my first reading but found myself quietly laughing over the brotherhood and sisterhood ‘of the bumbling and the hapless’….those who are bad cricketers yet precisely because we ‘delight in our ineptitude’ we form a ‘soul’ for the cricket. I loved the penultimate para:
‘It’s remarkable, is it not, that there so few hated cricketers. Many are mocked and derided but few are loathed the way footballers can be. Because unlike other sports, cricket’s not very good at hatred. It has no real darkness. A sport that stops for bad light can’t really muster much murkiness. And it is also, perhaps, because cricket is a fragile and dwindling beauty, semi-permanently on the cusp of some long-awaited extinction.’
Feels a little disconcerting to be smiling just two hours after seeing so many lighted candles in the windows of Western Sydney. May the diverse community of cricket lovers, Gideon writes about - and who will gather at the Adelaide Oval on Wednesday - remind us of the strengths, mutual respect and simple joys that can be shared.
For me, the idea that any single event or vigil could begin to reckon with the anguish and fear and grief that Jewish Australians and their families and friends are experiencing is quite beyond me. Reading Gideon’s piece and then discovering Robert McLiam Wilson’s article (thanks again Jeremy) has me hoping that during this Third Ashes Test we can reflect and acknowledge and take comfort in the delight that the beautiful game is ‘on’.
After an underdsandalby bleak September mostly spent in New York in September 2001 my spirits were briefly raised by our taxi passing a cricket match on the way to JFK airport prior to my flight home to London
Thank you Gideon for your balanced and compassionate piece. Your thoughtful tone creates space for reflection. I am holding onto the hope that cricket can offer some light.
Thank you, Gideon. Your article encapsulates some of what is unique
about cricket. Your response is sensitive, well-considered and not over the top, unlike some of the political, blame-game responses of others. Cricket can come together, acknowledge the terror, share our grief and respectfully push on.
Interesting that the bloke who grabbed the gun from the terrorist Is an Arab & a true hero unlike a person who takes a fifer or scores a ton
Only last week I noticed that a little Jewish pre-school in my area now has a security camera, huge wall and an electronic gate where there was once a simple low fence with a Star of David in the iron work of the gate. The new Australia.
Taking a moment to remember yesterday’s victims of Islamic terrorism before play starts in Adelaide is the only decent thing to do. For me test cricket is a link to the past and the old Australia I grew up in.
This has been a most terrible event. Most terrible for the direct victims and the ever-expanding circles of their families, friends and connections and for Jews in Australia and all over the world, who are left looking over their shoulders yet again. Terrible for the Australian community in general which has to come to terms with people who live here doing such a dreadful act. And for everybody who has to put up with the oxygen the event provides to the genocidal war criminal Netanyahu, to the short-fingered vulgarian rapist formerly from New York, now Florida, to pontificating journalists, to grandstanding politicians and to endless multitudes of creators of cliched content. Thank God for Gideon and his rational and humane mind. And thank God for cricket...
John...please!! Now isn't the time for anti-israel sentiments. Please read the room and understand that this is a devastating and terrifying time for Jewish people everywhere. Although you seem and fan of Gideon's as I am, please don't undermine his compassionate, humble and kind sentiments with aggressive, political editorials at this moment.
The only thing I wrote which conceivably could be regarded as 'anti-Israel' was the reference to Netanyahu. My characterisation of him is well-supported by the evidence and by international judgements. He is not Israel and he is certainly not Jewishness. And he certainly has no business telling Australia how to run itself.
John out of respect to Gideon, the et al readership and the game of Cricket, im not going down this rabbit hole with you on this platform. However I'm more than happy to thrash this out with you privately. Email me if you'd like to continue this discussion and I'll describe to you how it feels to consider Australia (my birth country) no longer a safe place to raise my family. Dave@gelbartsgym.com.au
If you are anti-Israel you are an anti-Semite. (Full stop)
So you get to decide who is anti semitic? Many Jewish people have come out publicly against Israel’s actions. Here in Australia and around the World. Who are you to decide what people can and can’t believe?
You should head to the doctor champ
Chris, by all means be critical of Israel. But the criticism should not deny Israel’s right to existence. The right of Jews to have a home.
Anti-Israel and anti-Zionism = antisemitism!
And yes I do get to decide what is antisemitic! Because I am a Jew and I am a Zionist and I am an Australian.
thanks Gideon, I subscribed the day they did over Lalor, I've re-subscribed because, well because, these words are worth a decade of subscription. my only issue is that I will die never being able to write a paragraph as good as that last one in this article ....
Thank you G Haigh.
On Monday morning, full of tumult, I walked my ex’s dog (a long-ago granted favour) around an empty soccer field.
Later, when I caught the tram I noticed the trip and the people on that trip. People in the process of being.
Perhaps the stillness of cricket provides chances for that or for the observance of that.
Here are my observations from “the morning after” https://eregnans.substack.com/p/the-morning-after
Great article. Articulated much of why we love the game. Many thanks.
Simply excellent article, Gideon
A lovely piece, thanks Gideon. I’ve been consuming too much media since last night’s tragic events, so it was something of a relief to switch on the BBL tonight. I’m not really watching closely, it just feels reassuringly normal.
A nicely considered article, Gideon. Not sure how any sport would help ‘get through’ such a horror. However, the cricket is sure to remind us that life goes on and we have got to deal with some awful happenings away from the game. It is like a constant, steadying star in the universe, perhaps
Am l being optimistic when l take heart from the fact a dad of young children, who just happened to be a Muslim, put his life on the line to save others of the Jewish faith, celebrating a Jewish festival?
As someone from the community targeted who is heart broken, and after crossing paths with some of the victims at my hospital workplace yesterday , I can’t tell you how soothing watching bowlers targeting the off bail will be. Something more trivial to focus my
mind on. Thank you Gideon.
L'chaim Derek.
Oh dear. This must have been written at that half way stage between dreaming and fully waking up.
IMO - it's mainly utter bilge.
PK
The man in the arena.
This is why I have blocked Peter's abusive emails. He is a troll.
Not really sure what the game can do - but it was nice being able to flick over to the Big Bash last night, finding a small oasis that was as yet uninterrupted by unfolding realities.