Cricket dead at 464: The demise of the gentleman’s game

Excellent !!

AND that is what I am trying to point out on Rev's FTP thread  :

The DEAD has NO FUTURE 

Test match cricket just won’t survive in the long term. The future I see is one where 20/20 cricket or maybe 30/30 cricket takes over and the money/power is on the sub continent.  How this plays out, we will see. I think cricket out of any sport is the one that has struggled the most to adapt to the shift in the new 21st century world we live in. Whatever the case it has to streamline it’s rules to give us a game which we are all familiar with. There are so many different formats in cricket that I don’t know what the main game is anymore.

it wasn’t dead with Bodyline in 1932 or the infamous gaming on matches on the 1720s and 1730s involving the Duke of Richmond and others?
Too much sentimentality gets attached to these things. Sport had always been a money making enterprise. Yes probably more obviously so now, but part of the reason for this is due to a lot of carry on not being covered in the past (ie. persistent rumours that Aus captain Herbie Collins, a well known gambler and bookie threw a test in 1926.
Never be fooled into thinking such things are new or never happened. A lot of popular sports history is over romanticised

Wonderful summary. I was laughing the entire time as I read your post. You may have put it in a way that makes it funny but you are so right. It is not only cricket in my opinion but all sports in general have become more about the money and not the game. Football for example and the Olympics in my view are purely about the money these days and the administrators are the ones pocketing the most. The spirit of cricket and the pride of playing the game has long died. The ipl was probable the final nail in the coffin but the recent icc take over by India, England and Australia may just be the sealing of the grave.

all sport is struggling at the moment under capitalist neo-liberalism... under a grocery bag of exploitative angles applied for long now. 

they are all under bureaucratic globalisation for the purpose of max exploitation..and soccer provides the most extreme example:  maximum profit is the goal and that means maximum debt heaped on the backs of the people to extract interest charges. 

all soccer, everywhere is boondoggle: huge stadia at huge costs ending up as national debt, while the FIFA walks away with profit.  and to facilitate this the most massive centralization has taken place that has shifted all the power in the soccer world to FIFA.  FiFA is like a UN bureaucracy dictating to countries.  there is no country on the planet that can oppose FIFA.  NONE perhaps save the USA, China, Russia.  FIFA has power to make them pay heavily for any opposition.

Tennis likewise.  and now cricket is approaching this same level..seeking global power so that ICC dictates. 

that is the model..one man one vote, democracy they call it.  but what it is, is the creating of bureaucratic models of social control to centralise power so that a minority can infiltrate at the top, corrupt the bureaucratic officials and exploit all the power vested in the bureaucracy by the constitution. 

the constitution establishes the central power in law, in the hands of a president/prime minister.  so control him and his cabinet and political access to those positions, and they got us all by the balls because that is the form of governance we accept.

all games would evolve according to, and in concert with, natural social evolution, driven by scientific/technological advance and relevant social development.  but that is not what is taking place. 

the normal drive of technological advance is twisted into financial slavery, and all that humanity does, including sport is twisted to suit financial exploitation. that is why all games not just cricket are losing their natural appeal to the people..the people who are also losing individual and collective financial viability under deliberate capitalist economic reduction and austerity programs.. and so will not be able to participate in sports at their current level, by attendance at games..even watching at home as things like electricity become too expensive for ordinary folk delivered to their homes.

that is why I hate soccer now.  soccer is the most shiitty, regimented and uniform game now totally devoid of individual flair..like a military drill that is dominated by defence.

the team I hate most is the Italian one that is so defensive they used to make me cry.  soccer is also dominated by a ridiculous european lolita attitude, flopping all over the place..an attitude that has subsumed even the Latins now.  the more the physical/technical level of players improve the more it is harnessed to safety first defensive soccer, that goal-scoring is a dead art and games are decided by penalties..even the really important ones

I have not watched one game of this current world cup..and what is worse I have not felt like watching any.  I have become completely turned off by international soccer..to soccer as it is now played.. period.  and I am almost there with cricket.

west indies had the most wonderful game of cricket...a brilliant flair that had captured the planet.  but since 1995 the west indies have done what..BUILT A BUREAUCRACY TO RUN THE CRICKET.  and the results could have been predicted once the bureaucracy came in..THE MASSIVE INCREASE IN STAFF..10 PEOPLE TO RUN WHAT USED TO REQUIRE 1 PERSON..ALMOST 100 PEOPLE DIRECTLY AT THE WICB SECRETARIAT WHERE THERE USED TO BE JUST A FEW..ALL WITH A MASSIVE RECURRING BUDGET FOR STAFF SALARIES THAT SUBSUMES/SUBSTITUTES THE PURPOSE OF WHY THEY ARE THERE... WHICH WAS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF WEST INDIES CRICKET.  THE PURPOSE OF THE WICB NOW BECOMES THE DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE OF THE CRICKET BUREAUCRACY..NOT THE CRICKET OR THE WELFARE OF THE PLAYERS.

A SUBTLE BUT FUNDAMENTAL SWITCH OF PURPOSE HAS TAKEN PLACE UNDER THE GUISE OF THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE FOR THE BEING OF THE INSTITUTION.  THE REAL CRICKET INTEREST IS NO LONGER BEING SERVED AND THE CRICKET FAILS AS A RESULT..AND WILL CONTINUE TO FAIL FOR THAT IS NO LONGER THE PURPOSE OF THE WICB.  HOWEVER AS LONG AS THERE IS CRICKET IN ANY STATE OR CONDITION OF BEING THEY CAN KEEP THE BUREAUCRACY GOING AND SO JOBS, POWER, PRESTIGE AND MONEY ARE THEIRS.  IT IS NO LONGER IMPORTANT TO WIN.  THEY DO NOT NEED TO WIN TO SURVIVE..JUST KEEP THE BUREAUCRACY GOING

THAT IS NOW THE PURPOSE OF THE CRICKET..FEEDING THE BUREAUCRACY THAT HAS GROWN UP AROUND IT

This is the way bureaucracy grows to control everything we do.  and the more bureaucracy we have the more they combine to elongate a comprehensive social control over all ordinary people.  we all have a creeping global police state now as a result of the growth of international bureaucracy.  BUREAUCRACY produces no wealth at all but are parasitic, in total dependence of taxing those work and produce the wealth for their subsistence and power.  that is why they shut the people down, enslave them...because the people must work so they can be taxed.

this is what those Indian dudes at the BCCI AND THE ICC represent..concentration of the power in cricket for the purpose of the total exploitation of the game in ways they see fit..then the same with the people.

NGOs have taken over  :

It was written 

it was indeed..by Karl Marx.  it is written in Marxism..a very useful scientific method of social analysis

The alienation of the sport is happening as we speak/write Maps.  Will the proletariat fans from around the world rise up against these greedy capitalists bourgeois and take back their sport?

well a good sign was the opposition of Brazilians to the world cup itself and their reason for opposing it..their case against it.  all things being equal there will be greater opposition to the next world cup which may not come off at all..stopped by popular intervention.

that would be the best development for soccer and a huge blow to the established way.

I don't know where the next world cup will be held..likely in a european city after africa and latin america.  you guys prolly know where but I dont yet.

but we should see opposition where ever it is scheduled