Cricket’s cancel culture is an existential crisis

The Kiwis fled and England cancelled Pakistan, the Indians cut on England and the Ashes are under threat. How much more can cricket sustain?

England allrounder Sam Curran at Old Trafford before the fifth Test match between England and India was been cancelled due to Covid-19 concerns Picture: AFP

In the space of a few days New Zealand abandoned a tour of Pakistan and England refused to embark on one to the same neglected cricket destination.

This development comes hot on the heels of India’s decision to hoof it and abandon the fifth Test against England in Manchester.

News the Taliban has replaced the Afghanistan board’s executive director with the nephew of a government leader fills nobody with confidence about its future fixtures. The Taliban has reportedly also blocked the IPL from being broadcast there because its fireworks and dancing girls are an affront to the fundamentalists.

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Things are in such an agitated state ahead of Afghanistan’s first Australian Test match this November it will be a shock if it does go ahead.

Cricket is afflicted with cancel culture.

Not playing is the new norm, not that there is anything new in these recent developments, more a confirmation that things are possibly getting worse not better.

Before Christmas England fled South Africa. After Christmas Australia refused to go to South Africa. In between times India caused Australian administrators peptic ulcers with its reluctance to play the third and fourth Tests of the Border Gavaskar trophy.

The Australian domestic summer of 2021-22 is stuck in the starting blocks as plans are made, changed, made again and changed again. State pandemic politics have rendered the Sheffield Shield, Marsh Cups, WNCL’s and the like almost impossible to plan.

NSW and Victoria are the leper states. Western Australia a forbidden land. Queensland so skittish its government almost wrecked the 2020-21 Border Gavaskar trophy before it began.

The past two years are full of series aborted or abandoned. There’s a warehouse full of merchandise for the 2020 T20 World Cup that never eventuated in Australia. Even the IPL was postponed and then suspended.

Cricket got its first taste of that when New Zealand scurried home as the pandemic hit Australia in March 2020 after one match at an empty SCG.

How innocent those times seem. How desperate these by comparison. Cricket is facing an existential crisis. Covid and politics have brought the exhausted game to its knees.

If the past and present provide any indication of the future then the Ashes is an uncertain event. Even if England arrive — that is no certainty — fans arriving at grounds cannot be guaranteed they will see any play.

India pulled out of the Old Trafford Test match on the morning of the game.

New Zealand pulled out of the Pakistan series on the morning of the first ODI.

By the time news had filtered through fans had travelled to venues expecting to see the game unfold before them.

International cricket teams — Australia excluded — are jet lagged travellers forced into a life on the road, pushing through fog in airports they can’t name headed for destinations they can’t remember. The game is being lost in transit.

It’s not just teams. It’s players too. Despite playing a fraction of the international cricket other Test nations have in the past two years — not one Test match overseas — at least half a dozen Australians pulled out of the recent white ball series in West Indies and Bangladesh.

Ben Stokes pulled out of the India series, senior teammates are threatening to do the same come Ashes time.

You know things are getting real when players pull out of the IPL — as a number have.

There is no comment so naive as the one which maintains politics has no place in sport. Sport and politics cannot be separated whether it is an issue of government quarantine restrictions and closed state borders in Australia, quotas in South Africa, the Taliban in Afghanistan, security in Pakistan, farmers protests in India, India and Pakistan’s historical enmity, institutional racism, fundamental sexism … the list goes on.

For Pakistan, who are just getting cricket started in the country again, the decision by England to withdraw so soon after New Zealand left was heart breaking, financially crippling and infuriating. Australia, who is the most timid of touring nations, must now be considered highly unlikely to show up for its return tour in the New Year.

The Kiwis, at least, cited security, the English announced on Tuesday they were staying home because “going ahead will add further pressure to the playing group who have already coped with a long period of operating in restricted Covid environments … we believe that touring under these conditions will not be ideal preparation for the Men’s T20 World Cup”.

New chairman Ramiz Raja — who has to also deal with an Indian blockade — slammed the Anglosphere’s reluctant participants.

Policemen stand guard outside the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium after New Zealand withdrew from a series of one-day internationals Picture: AFP

“I am severely disappointed in England’s withdrawal but it was expected because this western bloc gets united unfortunately and tries to back each other,” Ramiz said. “So you can take any decision on the basis of security threat and perception. There was a sense of anger because first New Zealand got away without sharing information about the threat they were facing.

“Now, this (England) was expected but this is a lesson for us because we go out of our way to accommodate and pamper these sides when they visit. And when we go there, we undergo strict quarantines and we tolerate their admonishments, but there is a lesson in this. That is, that from now on we will only go as far as is in our interest.

“Our interest is that cricket will not stop in our country and if the cricket fraternity will not take care of each other then there’s no point to it. New Zealand, then England, now we have a West Indies series that can also be hit, and Australia who is already reconsidering. This — England, Australia, New Zealand — is all one block. Who can we complain to? We thought they were our own but they haven’t accepted us as theirs.”

The worst of this pandemic is the proliferation of selfish behaviours it has sparked, the every man for themselves approach and cricket has proven itself to be as guilty of this as any politician, party or person.