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The series that Australian cricket doesn't care about

17th October, 2013
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George Bailey should be given another shot in the ODI team. (AFP PHOTO/ANDREW YATES)
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17th October, 2013
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I don’t know if you are aware of this, but right now, there are Australian cricketers in India. I know what you’re thinking: why are these pampered nancies gallivanting off on an exotic holiday when they should be preparing for the Ashes?

But perhaps you misunderstand: these Australian cricketers are in India, playing cricket.

Because Cricket Australia made them go.

This is a seriously worrying development. Playing cricket in India carries with it many risks, including:

1. Being poked in the eye by James Faulkner.

2. Being humiliated by your opponents successfully completing the second-highest run chase ever, with only one wicket down and six and a half overs to spare.

3. Gastro.

4. Having nobody in Australia care in the slightest.

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The first three are bad enough, but the last one is particularly insidious and damaging.

A lot of people talk about how there is too much pointless, meaningless one-day cricket played around the world, but it’s important to look at the issue calmly and rationally and agree with them.

I do wonder if there was some talented young executive at Cricket Australia, in a meeting to decide what to do about the waning popularity of the 50-over format, who had a lightbulb come on over his head and excitedly suggested to his colleagues:

“I’ve got it! The way to make 50-over cricket more popular is to put on a lengthy series in India in the lead-up to the Ashes that most people won’t even realise is happening!”

I’m sure it is working a treat.

Look, there is just no justification for this series. By which I mean, there is justification, but it’s a horrible justification to do with pay TV and doing whatever India tells us.

It is a series which will not tell us anything – no questions of sporting supremacy will be settled, no ferocious and storied rivalries will be continued or ignited, no selection dilemmas will be resolved.

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No international goodwill will be spread by the series, no dissemination of the gospel of cricket will take place.

Apparently the result could have some effect on the international ICC rankings, which is to say, this series which nobody cares about may, possibly, if things go a certain way, have an impact upon something else that nobody cares about.

But the thing that kills me is that I do care. I was actually really chuffed when Australia won the first game, and really sad when they lost the second to that absurd run chase.

But I shouldn’t care. It’s a series we shouldn’t care about, and which should never have existed, but I’m such a lost cause I still find myself investing emotional capital in the result.

How can I not care? I’m an Australian cricket fan: I care when Australia plays cricket. I’m not saying that losing an ODI in Jaipur has the same effect on my soul as surrendering the Ashes, but I do care.

And hopefully the players do too – they’re representing their country after all.

Tell the player who manages just the one game for his nation in his career that he shouldn’t have cared about it because it was in India in October, or in Dubai during football season. Or any of the other times and places that tend to host games of minuscule relevance to anyone and mainly exist to provide easy pickings for illegal gambling syndicates.

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Moreover, of course, selectors are still watching, and a pointless game can be the difference between being allowed to play in an important one or not.

So yes, I care, and I think though I’m in the minority, I’m not alone. But I don’t want to care.

I don’t think it’s right that I care.

Sport, even at its apex, is a frivolous and essentially meaningless pursuit: it doesn’t, in any real sense, matter.

But there’s not mattering and not mattering – good sport nourishes our spirit through its very not-mattering: the unimportance is what makes it important.

But there’s a point at which sport reaches a sort of critical mass of irrelevance: it’s now so unimportant that it becomes an offence to the intellect.

In the world of limited-overs cricket we long ago reached this critical mass.

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So for the love of god, bring our boys home. I can’t go on feeling this dirty sense of shame from caring so deeply about something I care so little about.

Don’t risk any more poked eyes. End it now, and let’s concentrate on the real thing: Twenty20 cricket.

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