The spirit of cricket was murdered in cold blood by sunburnt thugs - and the game might never recover

It’s often said that to win a Test match, you need to take 20 wickets. At Lord’s in 2023, Australia proved that this is not true.

For in the second Test, they did not take 20 wickets: they took 19 wickets, and tore one wicket screaming and wailing from the grief-stricken breast of Mother Cricket herself, as she fell to her knees and wept for the beauty the world had once contained.

That there are those who would defend the unfair, unsportsmanlike, nakedly hostile and frankly racist (yes, English is a race) actions of Australian so-called wicketkeeper Alex Carey and so-called captain Pat Cummins just proves how far we have fallen from the presence of God. Tim Paine must be turning in his grave.

In a way we perhaps should blame England, for it was they who invented the game of cricket, and if they hadn’t, we would not have had to witness the perverted blasphemy of the green-capped goblins on the hallowed turf.

Pat Cummins of Australia and Alex Carey of Australia celebrates the wicket of Jonny Bairstow. (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Image

Let’s recap – as painful as it is to recall the events in question.

First of all, Jonny Bairstow – a decent man of impeccable credentials who is famously so fair-minded that he refuses to even take a catch if he feels that the batsman was trying his best – ducked under a bouncer from Cameron Green, an enormous bully who was deliberately trying to hit Bairstow in the face.

Jonny did not complain about this attempted assault. Turning the other cheek, he merely lowered himself under the ball, smiled in his quietly attractive way, and stepped out of his crease, probably in order to approach Green and enquire after his family’s health or congratulate him on how well he was looking.

Behind the stumps Alex Carey, or as he is known to friends, “Mad Dog”, sensed a chance not so much to take a wicket as to take revenge on the human race for having long ago rejected him for membership. The stump microphone at this point clearly picks up the sound of sinister laughter and Carey shouting in nasal glee, “Time to cheat, boys!” And he hurled the ball viciously at the wicket, which disintegrated as quickly as Commonwealth relations.

Now, it is one thing to throw the stumps down when the batsman is in his crease. That’s just good wholesome fun and a good way to get the umpires some much-needed exercise. But to throw them down while he is out of his crease? That, frankly, smacks of fascism.

It was an utterly revolting piece of wicketkeeping bigotry, but even after Carey’s atrocity, there was still time to make amends. The Australians did not have to appeal. But they immediately remembered the words of Cummins after the defenestration of Justin Langer: “from now on lads, we play to hurt people”, and went up as one, shouting and whooping and hollering like a pack of rabid raccoons.

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Ben Stokes, as gentle a man as ever limped, turned to the umpire and asked politely whether the ball was not dead. Grinning insanely, the umpire replied, “Yes, but my Umpire’s Oath requires me to support Australia at all times”. The video umpire Marais Erasmus, from the Australian state of South Africa, agreed, telling his on-field comrades, “Let’s stick it to these Pommy bastards LOL”.

And so Bairstow had to go. To his credit, he didn’t give even the barest breath of complaint, telling his teammates back in the pavilion, “‘Tis only a game – they will answer for their actions before the Great Judge.”

Had Carey not thrown the stumps down, or had Pat Cummins had any sort of ethical compass, statistically England would have had a 99.9999 percent chance of going on to win, and would therefore have led the series 2-0 after their much-celebrated moral victory at Edgbaston. This was unacceptable to the Australians, who have long rejected the concept of brotherly love, and so they shot Bairstow down like a dog.

Even worse, when some Lord’s members, who had attained their position by living upright lives, mildly expressed their disapproval, the thuggish colonials started a fistfight in the Long Room.

Has there ever been a more disgusting display by an international cricket team? If there has, it was definitely by Australia. This is in their DNA. Whether it’s Trevor Chappell bowling underarm to deny New Zealand a chance, or Mitchell Johnson bowling overarm to deny Jonathan Trott a career, Australia has always chosen the path of hatred.

But why, exactly, was the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow wrong? Non-cricket fans might find it difficult to understand, although even they surely have enough basic humanity in them to sense the innate turpitude in the air. But let us explain it in technical terms.

There are two main elements to cricket. There are the Laws, which must be obeyed lest you be penalised for breaching them. And then there is the Spirit, which must be obeyed lest you spend eternity in the lake of fire.

Now, according to the Laws of Cricket, it is permissible to stump a batsman by throwing the stumps down while he innocently walks away, provided the ball has not been declared dead by the umpire. Which we know it really was, but the lies of umpires are impossible to combat.

However, according to the Spirit of Cricket, doing what Carey did is utterly unacceptable. This is stated clearly in Section 8, Article IV, line 16 of the Spirit of Cricket, which says:

If a batsman goes outside his crease for any purpose other than taking a run, the wicketkeeper shall on no account try to dismiss him because that is mean. Should the wicketkeeper violate this rule, he shall be immediately berated by a middle-aged seamer.

Well, we can’t deny that Carey got his just desserts. But what of Cummins, who when asked about the incident after the game, puffed shamelessly on an enormous cigar and snarled, “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds”?

Perhaps we should expect no better from the man whose captaincy philosophy has always been to ruthlessly pursue victory no matter how many lives he destroys in the process. But that doesn’t make it any less depressing to contemplate the fact that this was indeed the day that Test cricket died. Not of natural causes, but murdered in cold-blood by sunburnt thugs. Cummins and his hyena pack crept up behind cricket and slit its throat before it could even move.

For how can a sport survive, when it ceases to be a healthy, bracing pursuit by fit kind young men, and becomes nothing more than a way for career criminals to enrich themselves at our expense?

And how can the Ashes survive, when they have been corrupted so? A series founded on the pure and simple principle of setting fire to sporting equipment, now nothing more than a sham where results are almost impossible to discern amid the nightmarish blizzard of cheating.

In fact, the Ashes might already be dead. We haven’t had an actual Ashes series since 2019, given the last series in Australia was void because of Covid and this one is now void because Australia cheated to win the second Test. And when you think about, to win the first Test too, since in that game England went to great lengths to move the game on and entertain, and Australia refused to go toe to toe with them, which is cheating in any reasonable interpretation.

Pat Cummins speaks with Ben Stokes after Jonny Bairstow was given out. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

What outrage will Cummins’s brutish stormtroopers pull out of their kitbag of evil in the third test? Mankads? Beamers? Nipple cripples? Nothing seems too despicable, there appears to be no floor to this team’s depravity.

We can only hope that after a good night’s sleep and consultation with his pastor or multi-faith spiritual adviser, Pat Cummins sees the error of his ways, withdraws his appeal, admits that England won the Test, and also the previous one, and the last series, and promises never to let his players throw at the stumps when a batsman is out of his crease ever again.

Only then can the stain on Australia’s soul possibly be cleansed. Only then can cricket be saved from the black tarpit into which it has fallen.

Please God let him do the right thing.