Last Post, January 9, 2019

Cricket should return to the Shield culture.

The sullen faces of our allegedly likeable cricketers in your front-page photo says it all (“Grim reality on cricket’s day of reckoning”, 8/1). Get over yourselves, fellas; it’s only a game and the better team won.

Helen Jackson, Higgins, ACT

I looked at the photo on the front page of The Australian yesterday and thought the entire cricket team must have lost a loved one. I then read they had only lost the game. A photo of our players smiling and shaking hands with the winners would have been uplifting and indicative of what competition should all be about.

Raymond Fealy, The Basin, Vic

Mike Atherton’s article was spot on (“Lesson from afar: tarnish the game’s shining Shield at your peril”, 8/1). Cricket Australia’s approach to selecting Test players lacks clarity and common sense. Restoration of the Sheffield Shield to its former role as the furnace and the true measurement for aspiring Test players would restore clarity and fairness to Test selection. Given that the current system involves a small army of coaches and hangers-on, think of the extra money that might find its way into grassroots cricket if the CA bureaucracy were to be shrunk to a sensible size.

Bob Miller, West Leederville, WA

Mike Atherton is absolutely spot on with his assessment of the state of Australian cricket. Australia’s cricket administrators over the years have diminished the value of the Sheffield Shield, once the envy of the cricket world, as Atherton attests, to such an extent that it is having a dramatic effect on the quality of cricket in this country. The marketers have succeeded in selling the pizazz of the Big Bash and T20 cricket, but only at the expense of the quality that flowed from the Sheffield Shield. It’s not too late to do something about it.

Michael Fishpool, Carindale, Qld

Talk about an overreaction. A few right-wing loonies turn up for a demo and throw a Nazi salute or two. Every media tart and his dog starts venting about the rise of the extreme Right, conveniently forgetting that when it came to genocide the socialist Left beat Adolf by an innings and 300 runs.

Iain Rae, River Heads, Qld

Fraser Anning doth protest too much.

M.F. Horton, Adelaide, SA

Four Australians leave the Golden Globes awards ceremony empty-handed and we see it as an affront (“Minor tremors in Global shocks”, 8/1). Are we really that thin-skinned?

David Crommelin, Strathfield, NSW

This Saudi lass is exactly the sort we’re looking for — gutsy and resourceful. But if she comes, better give her a new identity or she might not be around long.

John Sumner, Deviot, Tas