Cricket: politics, money, racism
It’s been a difficult day cricket wise for those who argue that politics should be kept out of sport because today’s cricket headlines have been all about various kinds of politics
First came the announcement that India were pulling out of the 5th Test at Old Trafford, 2 hours before the start of play. Good timing if you want to make it impossible to do anything to resolve it and get the match on.
India said they couldn’t field a team. However none of the players had tested positive for COVID in the last 24 hours so that seems rather questionable. Some members of the Indian backroom team have COVID (and in most cases since the Oval Test) and the media reported that the players were worried about catching it. Indeed anyone should be worried about this but with vaccination one hopes the impact will be limited.
The context of course is that the rescheduled IPL starts again in 10 days and if any player tested positive that would rule them out (at least initially). Whether the players were that seized on that is one thing but the BCCI who run Indian cricket certainly would be. The IPL is the world’s biggest cricket tournament and has big money behind it.
In other words what is really being said here is the IPL is more important than a Test series. Perhaps that’s where we are. If so it might have been sensible to say so and call the match off some days back.
Meanwhile as all this was making the news Yorkshire released their much-delayed report into racism at the club:
There are some fine words and good intentions at the end but no one appears to be in line for disciplinary action and there are no specific actions or targets to sort matters out either….Not really work in progress
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