Not Cricket...

It might be a bad bit of British black humour but it’s tempting to look at the tragic news from Pakistan this morning and say: that’s just not cricket! Of course it is not a laughing matter. Sport is often held up to be an apolitical symbol of how we can all get along, although at times it seems hardly dissimilar to the colourful armies of old venturing into battle. And while occasionally a sports personality will use their position to make a political point you don’t expect them to have guns pointed and fired at them.

It was only last night that we were discussing sports in our language lessons, trying, I think unsuccessfully, to explain cricket. It’s not a sport easily described, especially when using limited vocabulary in a new language. There is, of course, a huge common ground of football in this part of the world, although that can be dangerously tribalistic in this town – but I guess that’s not unlike Liverpool or Glasgow. As for a local cricket equivalent, perhaps it’s rukomet – handball – inasmuch as it’s got a strong fan base but the uninitiated will not understand it. At some point we need to get ourselves an education!