The English cricketers’ pranks on The Oval pitch shouldn’t be simply dismissed as high jinks associated with sportsmen after a victory. Their celebration of their Ashes triumph went well over the top when a few team members were spotted “watering” the pitch long after stumps had been drawn on the series.
Late-night partying may have been deemed appropriate by the English cricket authorities, who generally frown upon any invasion of the game’s sanctums. The cricketers made it worse by urinating on the very pitch they had displayed a high level of skill at the willow game that makes them famous as celebrity sportsmen who earn handsomely from the sport.
Such behaviour is, perhaps, consistent with atrocities such as in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places where troops from developed countries, generally ruled by Anglo-Saxon descendants, have been known to desecrate enemy corpses or holy books by urinating on them. And yet we are often reminded that the game is particularly proud of its English origins and that the genteel game in that country is the very epitome of grace and good manners.
Among the culprits caught by Australian writers working away into the night to catch their Tuesday afternoon editions Down Under with Test roundups are some top names in the England team. Is it not time for the game’s establishment to come down on the pranksters after having been projected as the saviours of the good name of the game from the depredations of lesser, read Asian, mortals?