Deep Backward Point

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s cutting tests or scared of losing their contracts. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; boards are going bust; players keep a gun under the counter; fixers are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the sport is unfit to watch. And we sit watching our TVs while some commentator tells us that today we had fifteen T20s and sixty-three fixes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go the stadiums any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my local team and my remote and my LCD, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Boards, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the coup and the corruption and the broadcasters and the gambling in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a fan, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

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