LEFT ARM OVER
NEIL MANTHORP: Messing with Mother Cricket is not good karma
It is puerile and uncharitable to take pleasure in the humiliation handed out to the Australian ODI team in England over the past two weeks. But it is undeniable that millions of neutral cricket followers around the world are doing exactly that. Judging by readers’ comments under the majority of match reports in the Australian media, a good proportion of that country’s cricket watching public are also wallowing in a decadent pool of schadenfreude. Most sports and their participants are bound by myth and superstition, and the role of karma in the final outcome is rarely downplayed. But cricket and its players are more prone to these whimsies than most. They even have a name for it: "Mother Cricket". Don’t upset her, they say, because she has a habit of hitting back. Respect the game and take nothing for granted. Accept your bad luck because the wheel turns and there will be enough good fortune to balance it out.From humble club level to fiercely contested Test series, bowlers remembe...
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