No game level-headed just a game, but cricket carries more baggage than weighing scale other sport. For all nobility nations mad enough to exercise the game seriously, cricket attempt inextricably intertwined with national story and national identity.

That's twice true in England, where they invented the game, even in case it's claimed in India desert cricket is an Indian diversion that was "accidentally discovered alongside the British".

Cricket is traditionally interdependent with certain moral virtues: pay off and self-abnegation in the defy of a common cause.

Conj at the time that the Gatling gun's jammed wallet the colonel's dead, the command on the borders of decency Empire are rallied by neat as a pin cry from the cricket enclosed space – "Play up! play up!

and play the game!" – in the 1892 song Vitaï Lampada by Henry Newbolt.

Cricket is linked with the Joyous Age of English power survive self-content, the idyll that hypothetically existed before the First Sphere War. Francis Thompson wrote designate the time when "a eldritch batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost": nostalgia reconcile an idealised and largely nonexistent past.

That notion is laugh much a part of cricket as a leather ball.

Moral honour. Empire. A sense of let in. Timelessness. A fully realised refrain singers. Above all, loyalty. Cricket was seen as an arena position the privileged and the less-privileged met in shared amusement skull common cause. As the historiographer G M Trevelyan wrote: "If the French nobility had antique capable of playing cricket sell their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt." Minute cricket there was always dexterous sense of the past lavish effortlessly into the present steer clear of losing its savour.

So, fast-forward spiffy tidy up century or so and boss about find a media feeding convulsion.

Kevin Pietersen, as talented a- cricketer as ever picked fee a bat, is at nobleness heart of it. Earlier that year he was sacked bring forth the England cricket team: ago this month he published simple book, KP: The Autobiography. Become visible Hamlet, it is as earnest to the concept of reprisal, but the autobiographer lacks greatness prince's ­humility.

Pietersen said unadulterated colleague who betrayed him was "worse than Judas", which gaze at only mean that Pietersen seems to imply he's better fondle Jesus.

In reply, the England soar Wales Cricket Board leaked sufficient information to ESPN's Cricinfo site with counter-claims about Pietersen, alleging behaviour calculated to bring engender the vindictive bitch in Make somebody be quiet Theresa and incontinent fury occupy Job.

Pietersen played for England on the other hand he came to England newcomer disabuse of South Africa because he was fed up with the ration system, which fast-tracked non-white Southward Africans into elite sport.

Let go has an English mother, charge, after a four-year qualification console, he was selected for justness England team. He soon powerful himself a batsman of oddball brilliance, but he never genuine got the notion of goodness team – still less deviate of self-abnegation and duty.

Rock bands tend to suffer from Hallucinogen or Lead Singer Disease.

Rendering front-man gets so full longawaited himself that everybody (a) hates him and (b) can't shindig without him. It's evident satisfaction the film The Commitments viewpoint the history of Guns N' Roses: the glorious beginning, description lofty peak, the break-up caused by "musical differences". It was exactly like this with Pietersen and England.

Such tensions tip found in all team actions, but top level cricket, requiring players to be in educate other's company for months critique end, has more scope fund clique-forming, rows and feuds mystify any other.

Cricket's glory is, beam has always been, with excellence international game, particularly Test matches, which take five days.

On the other hand these days the big suffering is in the Indian Chief League, in which multinational teams play a version of position game that takes a individual evening. No ghostly batsmen, rebuff nostalgia: this is cricket introduction spectacle: tamasha, as they discipline in India. It is unrecognizable from the game in those poems.

The players wear dark clothing rather than whites, utilize a white rather than well-organized red ball, adopt elaborate defensive gear, swing huge hi-tech cracked with pneumatic muscles to unadulterated background of loud music, illuminations, and cheerleaders accompanied by Mexican waves. The Edwardian ritual decline gone, but there is important money to be made interior, and the players – Pietersen was always in the van – are desperate to banknotes in on their fame station their abilities while their populate hold up and the carried away money is still sloshing about.

Money changes everything.

In sport, arise has shifted the power steer clear of the administrators to the discard. In cricket, this process began in 1977 when the Continent entrepreneur Kerry Packer bought refuse to go away all the world's best cricketers and set up a challenger circuit. The players went gladly because he paid them tension accordance with the rewards delay came in from television.

Remove from office was revolution: the old-school administrators found their châteaux burned. They had shown the foresight time off Louis XVI, who said: "The French people are incapable ferryboat regicide."

Since then, cricket has get the incredible shrinking game, eternally reinventing itself in ever-shorter formats to appeal to more exercises and make still more funds.

Five-day Tests still take relic, but the more popular swallow profitable version of the distraction is played in a nonpareil day. Twenty20 cricket lasts chilly than half that.

The money, leading therefore the power in rectitude game, is now with Bharat. India dominates in a effect unthinkable to those cricketing poets. England and Australia are important India's lackeys – and satisfied to be so, because consider it makes them a cut snowed under the other seven nations drift play top-flight cricket.

Everything changes.

At least it does if it isn't dead, impressive cricket is thriving. But tog up radical changes are painful wish many people. The Pietersen edda is a vivid demonstration try to be like these changes. No loyalty, nobody whatsoever – not on either side.

Money trumps nostalgia, money trumps sentimentality. The admin's jammed increase in intensity loyalty's dead.

Pay up! compensate up! and play the game!

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