We’re hearing more and more about dead people being deep frozen in ice, and then woken up when scientists have found the cure for cancer, dementia, or whatever it was that sent them down to the funeral parlour in the first place.
It seems to me to be a needlessly expensive alternative to sending them off to Fenner’s for the first game of a new cricket season, where the minus 196C required for “cryo-preservation”, as it’s called, can be comfortably achieved every April by the simple expedient of leaving home without your bobble hat and thermos flask.
It’s a shame the technique has only just been properly established, otherwise we could be anticipating a special match at Lord’s in, say, the year 3000, with WG and the Don batting against Larwood and Wilfred Rhodes.
In future, though, given that the Lord’s Museum will eventually run out of space to house all those old bats, gloves and porcelain busts, we’ll be able to file past our heroes down at Iceland – preserved in time next to the ready meals and frozen peas.
There is, by all accounts, a potential drawback to the technique at the moment, in that scientists are slightly concerned that the one part of the body that may not react terribly well to the equivalent of lying for half a century in a Fenner’s deck chair is the brain.
Not to put too fine a point on it, there is some concern that someone who popped their clogs in a perfectly sound state of mind could, upon being woken, have turned into a cauliflower. Or even worse, Donald Trump.
However, this is not going to be much of a problem for the cricket fan, who, after a century or so of suspended animation, finally gets defrosted in time for the 3017 season.
By this time, of course, all cricket matches will be of such short duration – the World Two2 has a certain ring to it – that ending up with a cranium like a bowl of mushy peas shouldn’t prevent you being able to grasp the finer nuances of the game.
England followers could certainly spend quite some time in a deep freezer at the moment without missing much in the way of Test cricket. December 20 was the date of the last delivery sent down in the final Test against India in Chennai, and the date of the next one involving England, against South Africa at Lord’s, will be on July 6.
On July 5, therefore, Joe Root will hold his first preview Press conference since being appointed England’s Test captain, and while it is too soon to anticipate what he might choose to say at this event, with the thick end of half a year having passed in between times, it is probably safe to guess that the phrase: “It hasn’t quite had time to sink in yet,” will not figure too prominently.
In fact, by the time Root gets to lead England out for the first time, he might even look old enough to get served with a drink in the hotel bar.
In that same period, the non-stop programme of T20 and ODI cricket will once again include our old friend the Champions Trophy, which was long since supposed to have been scrapped to accommodate the grand finale of an inaugural world Test championship.
However, since 2009 this proposed competition reads like an airport arrivals and departures board in dodgy weather. “Delayed”. “Postponed”. “Cancelled.”
The broadcasters aren’t really interested, and even if the ICC can finally come up with some kind of properly structured competition for a world Test championship, it is hard to believe that it will result in a T20-style popularity explosion.
It won’t matter whether New Zealand v Pakistan in Wellington is for a place in the semi-final play-offs or to avoid relegation, the caterers still won’t be upping their daily order from three scotch eggs, a couple of Steinlagers, and a bag of crisps.
And for England and Australia, who holds the urn will still resonate more than who tops the table.
There is no magic formula for saving Test cricket, and how to keep fighting to keep it relevant in the context of a modern world which doesn’t really have time for it. To compare Test cricket nowadays with how it was when Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hutton were playing is to compare it with the telephone. Try telling your modern smart phone savvy youngster that he’d once have had to find a red box on a pavement that hadn’t been vandalised, stick four pennies into a slot, press button A, and promptly get cut off.
The game has changed, and no amount of nostalgia will stop it from continuing to change. Look at Ben Stokes. At the age of 25, he’s just been bought for £1.7million or thereabouts for a short-term thrash in the Indian Premier League, which is slightly different from the old-style system which used to prevail for England cricketers hoping to set a bit aside for their retirement pension.
It was called having a “benefit” season, a discretionary award for long service which involved having to stay for at least ten years with the same employer, and ended with 12 months of round-the-clock hard graft trying to persuade pub landlords to plonk their pontoon jars behind the counter to – in the rare event that they sold out and didn’t get pilfered – bring in about a quid a jar.
Then some stalwart supporter would take up the role of chairman of the benefit committee, and organise things like barbecue evenings, pub quizzes, tombolas and raffles. The profit margins were thin and some players, like Surrey’s Graham Roope, even made a loss. And when, out of sympathy, his employer offered him another one, Roope replied: “No, thanks, I can’t afford it.”
In a hundred years’ time, cricket will have changed yet again, and very soon we may have a choice about whether to take a punt on whether we want to be woken up to see what it looks like.
Personally, the way things are going, I think I’ll give the deep freezer a miss and book in at the crematorium.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, March 3 2017
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