The spirit of cricket was murdered in cold blood by sunburnt thugs – and the game might never recover

It’s often said that to win a Test match, you need to take 20 wickets. At Lord’s in 2023, Australia proved that this is not true.

For in the second Test, they did not take 20 wickets: they took 19 wickets, and tore one wicket screaming and wailing from the grief-stricken breast of Mother Cricket herself, as she fell to her knees and wept for the beauty the world had once contained.

That there are those who would defend the unfair, unsportsmanlike, nakedly hostile and frankly racist (yes, English is a race) actions of Australian so-called wicketkeeper Alex Carey and so-called captain Pat Cummins just proves how far we have fallen from the presence of God. Tim Paine must be turning in his grave.

In a way we perhaps should blame England, for it was they who invented the game of cricket, and if they hadn’t, we would not have had to witness the perverted blasphemy of the green-capped goblins on the hallowed turf.