My Flag's Bigger Than Yours

There’s no point denying it, something unpleasant is creeping into the crevices and crannies of Cricinfo, creeping in like a nasty creeping thing, like that cold clammy feeling Giles Clarke started to get about two weeks ago. But just like Mr Clarke, I’m confident we can all shake off all the unpleasantness and return to our former selves.

I’m talking about nationalism. Or patriotism. Pro Patria Mori. That sort of thing. The same kind of manly (and it invariably is men we’re talking about) sensitivity to the merest whisper of a hint of a sleight aimed at the lump of rock whereupon we were spawned.

Now I’m as patriotic as the next man, though the next man in this case is probably serving a life sentence for high treason. Life is too complicated and fragile a thing to be carrying on your back a bagful of rocklike grievances which you solemnly unpack and hurl at anyone who questions your motherland (or fatherland, if that’s your thing).
But that’s just me. I’m a traitor to good old Blighty.

The Barmy Army? Face-painting? Booing Shane Warne? Well, if you must, but there are few sights less attractive than a bunch of boorish drunks singing badly transposed football songs that don’t scan in the general direction of a game they aren’t really watching. For six hours.

But I digress. And actually there is a less attractive sight than the aforementioned Englanders boiling in the Barbadian sun. It is the angry scrawl of a bile-inspired invective fired into the comments thread of a Cricinfo article. In the past week two perfectly reasonable articles, one about the Aussie tradition of the victory song and another about the Karachi wicket, have trailed in their wake such a litany of hate and unreason, you’d have thought we were in the middle of a cricket war.

Have we now reached the stage where it is not possible for members of one cricketing nation to discuss matters pertaining to another? Do we really only watch cricket to revel in the triumphs of our nation? Was George Orwell right about sport? Are we to look forward to another bout of flag-wrestling when the IPL begins and Cricinfo is deemed to be insufficiently critical/supportive?

So enough dear reader, restrain the angry patriotic beast that stirs in your breast, because like most beasts, he has no table manners, he urinates in the street and he will make you look foolish in public.