Ashes 2009 - a victory over rationality

Cricket is perhaps the last bastion of what we might call 'irrationality' in marketable sport. Football, baseball, athletics, tennis, all these sports are inherently marketable. Not only are their rules fairly easy to follow, they also have global appeal (particularly to youth) and - crucially - individual matches or games do not last too long.

It is assumed that the concentration span of 'consumers' is quite short (which is why American sports have to have intervals very often - these are then used to bombard viewers with adverts and similar junk), so a sport where test matches (i.e. the important matches!) can last up to five days with up to eight hours of play a day (or not if it happens to rain) without being able to determine a winner really doesn't sit that well with the idea of rationality or marketable events.

The Ashes takes this absurdity one welcome step further. Two teams play each other every 1.5 and 2.5 years respectively and then play a maximum of 25 days over five weeks after which it is decided whether one team regains ro retains the Ashes.

The main time for playing is during normal working days (notwithstanding both weekend days) and thus stands in opposition to what our capitalist system is built on: Work not 'fun' (In this sense, it is a bit like Ramadan in its opposition to the capitalist time-work ethic).

Cricket (and the Ashes) leaves so much to chance, so much to factors that are not calculable: The weather (if it rains, then no one plays, no one watches Sky, no one spends money in and around the ground or in pubs...the perfect antidote to consumerism), the pitch, the deteriorating ball, the judgement of the umpire involving lbw decisions. All this is utterly irrational and not easily compatible with consumerism.

Every four summers and winters, cricket fans in England (and Australia) nonetheless engage in what is essentially a wonderfully irrational and non-(perhaps even anti-)consumerist sport. They listen for hours on end to chatter on Radio or the internet, or drink shandies in pubs watching the slow progress on the pitch, enduring the rain breaks, the lunch and drink breaks, the endless maiden overs. Or they buy tickets to be in the ground without knowing how much cricket will be played.

It really is wonderfully irrational. It's just what is needed as a counter to the non-plus-ultra position of rationality and consumerism. This is why the IPL (the Indian Premier League, which is cricket light) is so problematic. It is an attempt to make cricket rational and integrate it more into the consumerist mould and make it more marketable (because it is shorter and far less complex). England's victory today over Australia (greetings to any potential Aussie readers...hi parallax) should at least be seen as an allegory (even if it's an irrational hope) for opposition against the ever-growing rationalisation for consumerism. If only Andrew Strauss knew what his team's performance meant...