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These are the things that keep us together

25 Aug 09 | Re: Misdirected Ashes moaning

Congratulations to the England cricket team on winning the Ashes! In the last test I was particularly pleased to see Trott doing well - one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it’s always good to see a new batting option emerge and his scores didn’t look like beginner’s luck: if anything, he was unlucky not to make more.

But various people are deciding that it’s pertinent to bring up Trott’s ties to South Africa. This is tedious: in the time I’ve been following cricket Robin Smith, Allan Lamb, Graeme Hick, Mark Butcher, Andy Caddick, Kevin Pietersen (of course) and no doubt several others have all had links to one rival nation or another, and people have gone on about it to varying degrees.

Perhaps these people should consider the reason why these rival countries play cricket in the first place: since the days of the Empire, they’ve maintained close cultural and political links with Britain, and there’s been reasonably free movement of people between these countries as another result of that. It would actually be pretty amazing if a random sample of English cricketers didn’t include a few people with ties to one cricketing nation or another. So when we play international cricket, we should celebrate the links between our countries, not moan about something that is bound to happen every once in a while.

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