It's just not cricket

A one-day game, over eight hundred runs in only one hundred overs, a tense, close finish.

It's just not cricket. It really isn't. Not as I know it. India beat Sri Lanka by three runs earlier today and I'm sure a nation went wild. I'm also fairly certain that many people in the cricket world were raising an eyebrow or two to a game that lacks subtlety and replaces it with might.

This match in 1981 took four days and had 787 runs. England beat Australia by 29 runs. It didn't go down to the last ball or even the last day but probably contained more twists and greater tension.

The test series between South Africa and England starts in the morning. Up to twenty days of cricket. Glorious.

I could make some point about how the preference for one-day cricket and now 20/20 (T20, Twenty20, Twenty twenty, whatever) is symptomatic of the modern trend towards a short-term, eat me now culture, how it's a metaphor for the shrill shouts of a Jeremy Kyle friendly culture that wants instant gratification or the right to moan if it's not forthcoming immediately.

But you know what? I can't be bothered. It'll take too much time.