We’re continually looking at our watch waiting for the New Zealand – England Test series to start but in the meantime we’re having to make do with what the cat dragged in, namely the T20 series. We haven’t managed to watch an awful lot of it owing to being busy socialite types (at least that’s the persona we’re trying to perpetuate), but what we have seen of it has been absolutely woeful. Here’s why:

Playing cricket on rugby grounds may get people through the gates but it is a crime against sporting decency. We recall a couple of ill-fated exhibition games played at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, in 2002, which rewarded teams with (in addition to usual fours and sixes) eight runs for getting the ball into the second tier, ten for the top tier and twelve for hitting the roof. It went down about as well as a horsemeat and sawdust ‘beef’ burger and quickly sank without a trace, although T20 followed the next year and was rather better thought out. However, the New Zealanders, being about ten years behind everyone else, seem to have only just cottoned onto the idea and are playing cricket on grounds with 20-yard boundaries. It’s an utterly cynical degradation of cricket – when the merest tap can sail 30 yards over the boundary for six, there’s something wrong. In the first game, there were sixteen sixes in England’s innings alone. Donald Bradman only ever hit six sixes in international cricket. Nuff said. It’s dire.
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