tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6606798.post4143646303919553553..comments2024-03-28T22:32:50.562+00:00Comments on Liberal England: England vs Pakistan 1979 and the genius of Mike BrearleyJonathan Calderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00730157683743989696noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6606798.post-43374181738577717682009-07-13T11:14:13.296+01:002009-07-13T11:14:13.296+01:00Hmmm. I've always thought that Test cricket is...Hmmm. I've always thought that Test cricket is to limited over cricket (including one-day formats really) as the Great Dionysia in ancient Athens would be to a one-hour television cop show. An apparent arc over several days with daily crises and possibly some fun or silly stuff at the end and a putatively cosmological totality, versus some synthetic excitement along predictable lines with the odd upset.<br /><br />As a smallish child I used to watch Essex at home in the John Player (one-day fixed over) League. It was rather horribly like baseball -- the only interesting thing was to calculate the run rate, and the only possible excitement was when a particular batsman or bowler looked as if they might be performing atypically, which might affect how long it took for the result to be inevitable. But I often knew by mid afternoon from simple arithmetic what the result would be, at which point there was nothing to do except start whinging and demanding a choc ice.HE Elsomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03923699019741758255noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6606798.post-87280008052924542152009-07-13T00:06:23.089+01:002009-07-13T00:06:23.089+01:00Sadly of course he then went on to decide that a c...Sadly of course he then went on to decide that a combination of Boycott/Gooch/Larkins was an adequate replacement as a fifth bowler for the injured Willis.Hywelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16094171587140185827noreply@blogger.com