On 2 September a mock obituary appeared in The Sporting Times. It read:
In Affectionate Remembrance
of
ENGLISH CRICKET,
which died at the Oval
on
29 August 1882,
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing
friends and acquaintances
R.I.P.
N.B.—The body will be cremated and the
ashes taken to Australia.
I mused about this today as I searched for the results of cricket’s county championship, realising it if not dead, is terminally Ill, largely surviving as a relic from a golden age. A new ‘modern’ game is emerging. This is at present labelled as the one day game, as opposed to the classical version.
A brief comparison with chess shows how the classical game is differentiated from a developing set of related games in which speed is one variable, fast chess from rapid, to blitz to bullet time limits.
My suspicion is both chess and cricket will re-stabilise with a ‘classical’ structure, perhaps with a sense of history and high status, and numerous variants of low status but attracting large numbers of enthusiasts and promotional money.