Three spots of rain on a cigarette paper – a litmus test all the way from the Ministry of Works. Back in the golden era of New Zealand boomer entitlement (and compulsory unionism), if it started to feel like rain a manual labourer could place a cigarette paper on the ground and if three spots of rain hit it over the space of a minute he could pack up and go home.
Lots of people think Ministry of Works slacker culture died when the infamous government department was privatised, deunionised, dehumanised and transformed into a model of neoliberal pothole-filling success in 1988. Not so. It lives on in organised cricket.
Don’t get me wrong, the Ministry of Works was cool. We had full employment and there’s nothing wrong with getting to slack off and spend some weekday time doing whatever you want while the kids are at school. Besides, when you’ve eventually finished filling the pothole you were working on, there are 10,000 others just like it. And when you’ve filled all those, the one you filled yesterday will have opened right back up again. So what’s the damn hurry?
Sport doesn’t really work like that though. Seasons are finite. When cricket matches get abandoned we never find out who would have won – and that’s inhumane. I for one can’t live with that kind of disappointment.
Thankfully, not all sports are like that. Take rugby league for example. If cricket is the Ministry of Works, league is a Victorian coal mine.
Again, don’t get me wrong. The last thing I’d dream of doing is glorifying Victorian coal mines. I don’t advocate sending the Cornwall Cricket Club u12s down a mine shaft on their hands and knees with a trolley tethered to their backs. Tempting as it may seem.
I do, however, advocate making the Cornwall Prems play in a few spits of rain.
Nothing stops league. Avalanche, tsunami, nuclear attack, plague of locusts, visiting politicians – you better believe they are completing that set of six before even contemplating the mere possibility of making for the nearest shelter. I respect that. Nothing stops me either. It’s a little thing called commitment.
Watching sport in the rain makes you feel good about yourself. So does finishing what you start. I came here to watch a game and come hell or literal high water, I’m jolly well going to do it. Water might be trickling down my back, along my sleeves, into my pockets, down my legs, into my eyes, leaking through my brain… Do I need an umbrella? No sir I do not. Can you clap your hands while holding an umbrella? No you cannot. And if you cannot clap your hands you cannot be a sports fan, can you?
What happened in the game? What was the score? Who won? I have no idea. My glasses were fogged up and I couldn’t see a bloody thing. I can’t even look it up because my phone is waterlogged. But I was there – from kickoff to final whistle.
Of course, a class analysis of the origins of cricket and league would yield a pretty good understanding of where these two sporting cultures come from. You would probably discover that league players were the people the cricketers sent down coal mines. But that’s ok. We can still appreciate both sports – one for its uncompromising work ethic and the other for its almost comical lack thereof.
Te Atatu Roosters 10, Glenora Bears 30
The Fox and the Crow 