It will be a strange new world for fans, players and officials alike. New systems, new processes, new lingo. But it might at least mean the long wait for some cricket can finally be over
Cricket fans are used to waiting. Waiting for rain to stop. Waiting for fielding sides to get their over rates above the turtle-paced. Waiting for Steve Smith to stop fidgeting and face his next delivery. Waiting to ever get Steve Smith out. Waiting eagerly, and now futilely (at least until 2021), for The Hundred to start. Well, perhaps the ‘eagerly’ part of the last sentence is up for debate.
For these most patient of sports supporters, the Coronavirus-induced pause in cricket is still proving a difficult time. The early summer British sun has cruelly and unusually beaten down on empty cricket grounds, yet cooped up at home fans have had nothing to watch except the lengthening shadows outside their own windows. Even cricket’s most frustrating aspects have become much longed after.
Fans miss waiting for rain. They miss fielders faffing about arguing with umpires over whether the seam has become suitably damaged for a lifeless ball to be replaced. They miss Smith and others’ funny little idiosyncrasies and routines, even his relentless dashing of English dreams. They miss everything about the game, maybe even those glossy free bets ads that still pop up when the players are off the field, cricket being almost unique in its results often being dependent on the changing weather. As the old saying goes, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s been postponed indefinitely due to a global pandemic”.
Despite all the chaos surrounding cricket and sport in general, there are still hopes that later in the summer England’s Test series against both the West Indies and Pakistan can go ahead. If they do, fans will have to become familiar with a whole new `set of vocabulary. Due to the ongoing threat of Coronavirus, the ECB is valiantly taking measures to ensure players and officials are safe both on and off the field. This inevitably means the ECB, something of a master of the artform, has also come up with a rich new range of terminology.
The least problematic area safety-wise appears to be out in the middle. The actual playing of cricket is naturally socially distanced, although the proximity of wicket-keepers and close fielders needs to be addressed. It is the off-field logistics that are proving more troublesome and leading to cricket’s already rich lexicon unfortunately but necessarily being enhanced.
We are used to hearing about players being in “a huddle” before they cross the boundary line to start a session. Now we will apparently hear about players being in a “contact cluster”, keeping them in hotel and training environments where they will be near to only a very limited number of people. Training facilities and hotels will have to become “bio-secure island sites” and “bubbles”.
All serious stuff, though a further one of these clinical phrases might well be enthusiastically embraced by another possible visiting group. Australia's ODI team, who arrive in the British summer with the inevitability of cloud, are also due this year. The opportunity to talk about a “circle of trust”, the term for a group of players whose clean bill of health has been guaranteed, would certainly please the homeopathy-tinged management style of their coach, Justin Langer.
It will be a strange new world for fans, players and officials alike. New systems, new processes, new lingo. But it might at least mean the long wait for some cricket can finally be over.