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JOHN KINGSMILL

The best thing about radio cricket
is that you know that it is on and that
you don’t have to watch each delivery,
each ponderous over. Radio lets

you get on with your life. When life pauses,
you flick a switch and it’s usually just
at the right moment. The game is poised
at a delicate stage, they say. Of course

these masters of spin say that. It’s a long
eight hour gig – before, during and after
the events of the day. Of course, each
moment is more interesting than the

one before it, or the one that’s about
to happen. Cricket is an endless love
affair between now and then. It’s a drug,
an addiction to the variable gap

between guessing and knowing. Its only
real difference from any other sport
is that it goes on for ever. That’s fine.
So do our lives. Cricket can keep us

intact, through radio, for four of five days
without the economy grinding to a halt.
Football, the weekend activity, can
generate an economy of its own.

Test cricket is a strange thing when it is
midweek, out of season and overseas.
TV doesn’t want to know about it;
only radio serves teenagers and

the old through lonely Australian nights.
Those teenagers fail their tests next day;
the old are reinvigorated. Life is worth
living again. They are in front of the world

for once. They have something they didn’t
think would come their way again.

Comments

  1. John Butler says

    Splendid JAWK

    You can take the tranny anywhere, unlike the tv. Do something productive while you listen.

    You also don’t have to endure some of Channel 9’s more tedious commentators.

    Or the KFC/Gatorade propaganda.

  2. Tranny ? Adelaide JB.

  3. John Kingsmill says

    Leave Adelaide out of it. Tranny is a Brizzy word.

  4. Plenty of trannys in Melbourne Phantom.

  5. With or without batteries.

  6. Red hotpants?

  7. Whatever your fancy.

  8. Peter Flynn says

    What is this all about?

    Single entendre I say.

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