Big Albert from England has a gem of a gripe. This is worth a read....
Cricket is undergoing a revival in the UK at present with the best Ashes series for many years. Cricket along with other sports has been in decline recently in British schools mainly due to the Governments incredible discovery that competitive sport produces winners and losers. Now, that wont do will it? Every competition in Blair’s nirvana should end in a dead heat of all the participants. At the very least the person who comes in after all the others is a deferred winner and equally entitled to our praise and admiration as the person who came first, (or won in old English).
But I digress. Back to cricket; the coverage from the UK’s Channel 4 TV network has been excellent and viewing figures have exceeded all expectations. So what does the English Cricket Board (ECB) decide to do to capitalize on this new found interest? It sells the television rights to all future cricket matches to subscription channel Sky TV. thus denying access, for a majority of the population, to the national team.
Unfortunately this is another symptom of the grandiose egos that overtake the administrators of sport. We see demands for film star life styles, authoritarian rules made that benefit neither players nor spectators. We have seen our leading football matches sold off to Sky along with the national football team. My question is who gave it to the men in suits to sell? What made them think it was theirs to sell? Also how did we let them get away with it?
Individual clubs these days are run as businesses so they may choose to sell off their own viewing rights but the national teams belong to nobody and everybody. Access to their matches should be on terrestrial television for the whole nation to watch should they choose to. But no, our new Barons of sport decide we cannot see these encounters, when, where, were these decisions taken? and by whom?
I often wonder if these Barons of our sport have ever watched the game on the terraces as an entrance-fee paying supporter let alone have they ever played the sport. They expect the deference and respect demanded of an ancient Roman emperor; indeed the head of the Olympic movement has the pretentious title Ambassador! Now they are key figures to be seen with by politicians and minor celebrities alike, no meat pie and tea for them canapés and champers is the order of the day.
That is besides the ludicrous rules they introduce. Watching a football match recently a player was booked for “over enthusiastic celebrations” this after his team scored am equalizing goal with just a minute of the match remaining. Anyone who has played competitive sport at any level will understand the emotion and joy of winning a tournament, match or race etc. Quite clearly the man in the suit who introduced this rule has never played football and felt the joy of the ball hitting the back of the net. We see players booked for lifting their shirts above their heads after scoring a goal, obviously such a heinous crime cannot go unpunished and I’m sure many old people sleep easier knowing that a “sportsman” in a suit somewhere is cracking down on this behaviour.
Sport belongs to the people but more and more the ridiculous men in suits are treating it as their personal fiefdom with little or no regard for the watching public.
