Testing Times

You might think that cricket is an odd subject for me to write about at Christmas. But that would be very Northern-hemispheric thinking. In Australia it is summer and the height of the cricket season. And this year it’s also the Ashes.

By the way I’m not a particular fan of cricket. Learning to play the game at school was like studying Latin. Both were an obligation that everyone had to apply themselves to, involving a subject that was obscure, had complex rules (the ablative case, the LBW law) and was unlikely to be of much use to you later life. Since the forced Wednesday afternoon sessions at school, I have never played cricket, though I once went on a cricketing tour of the Home Counties with a university team. More accurately it was a drinking tour that involved the occasional game of cricket. As I wasn’t a cricketer the team appointed me as their umpire, without bothering to enquire whether I was fully familiar with the laws of the game. I wasn’t, but I didn’t let this deter me from giving my team mates out LBW on a regular basis. I took a perverse pleasure in being able to impose arbitrary authority on them, back in the days when the umpire’s decision was final (even if the said official didn’t actually understand the rules he was applying).