Boris Johnson & cricket. A different world
Boris Johnson has backed Sports Minister Oliver Dowden’s view that the England and Wales Cricket Board’s suspension of Ollie Robinson for a series of racist and sexist tweets he made when he was 18 was over the top.
Former England batsman Mark Ramprakash has expressed a different perspective:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/57398052
In 2020 Boris Johnson blocked a return of recreational (grassroots) cricket in the Commons arguing the cricket ball is allegedly a ‘vector of disease’. Was this because he knows nothing of the game?
He was of course a member of the Bullingdon Club which was founded in 1805 to play cricket whatever else it may have gone on to do.
Johnson was not around in 1805 but there is ample evidence of him not only watching cricket (he was booed at the Oval Test in 2018 when he was a backbench MP as he’d been spotted asleep, surely a perfectly acceptable afternoon pursuit at a cricket match) but also playing it.
Indeed he has been the captain of the Spectator cricket team in its annual game against Lord Althorp (see below). It would seem that these matches contain a good deal of gamesmanship (or cheating as its generally known) and it may well be that Johnson was not that clear on how a cricket ball can be safely used in the current moment (sanitiser, regular cleaning etc).
Its fair to say that cricket and Black Lives Matter simply do not compute in the mental world of Boris Johnson and he sees no reason why they should.
Boris Johnson & cricket
My week began with the annual Earl Spencer v Boris Johnson cricket match, held at Charles Spencer’s Althorp House in Northamptonshire. This is a truly wonderful event in a wonderful setting. Boris’s team has not yet notched up a victory, even though we once fielded Kevin Pietersen. This year, we actually came close to winning. The Johnson team made 127. Charles Spencer’s, with one over left, was on 123. It was a nail-biting finish, and they finally beat us with only two balls left to bowl.
Stanley Johnson Diary 20th July 2017
Lord Spencer’s ringer
Sir: Charles Moore is right to draw attention to Boris Johnson’s appalling behaviour in bringing on Kevin Pietersen as a ringer for a friendly against Lord Spencer’s XI at Althorp (Notes, 21 June). But to be fair, there is history there. I once played for Boris’s ramshackle team in this fixture and was appalled to see who the cad Spencer had persuaded to open the batting for the home side: Jimmy Adams, the former West Indies captain.
Nigel Farndale
Liss, Hampshire
Spectator 28th June 2014
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