British Expats - Pakistan cricketer Haider 'may seek UK asylum'

Cricket & Civilisation Dead at 499 and 3,000, respectively

(with apologies to Winnie)
The New York Times, November 10, 2010
Cricket & Civilisation are Dead at 499 and 3,000; The World Mourns Them; State Funeral Saturday
COMMONS TO MEET
It Will Authorize Rites in St. Paul's -- Burial to be at MCC

By Effingham Huffnagle
Special to The New York Times

London, Nov 10 – Cricket’s and Civilsation’s struggles for life ended this morning, and the people they had nurtured and inspired and led through darkness mourned they as they have no others in this or any other age.

Cricket died just after 8 o'clock, in the 100th day of public anxiety over its condition after a stroke. Civilisation died shortly afterwards. Cricket was in its 499th year, and Civilisation in its 3,000th.

Britons small and great, and those of the former colonies, paid them tribute through the day and this evening. Statesmen around the world joined in homage to the sport they acknowledge as the greatest of any age.

Londoners, during the last struggle, had come to accept Cricket’s death as inevitable. There was little of the shock and horror seen in the reaction to the succumbing of football to thugs, hooligans and yoof.

Many Difficult Moments

Nevertheless, even those who consider themselves unsentimental found that they had difficult moments as they were reminded of the great Cricketing and Civilised days.

The radio followed the announcement of the death with Boby Marley’s “I don’t like Cricket. I Love it”. The opening theme symbolizing the knock of victory- three short notes and a long note evoked memories of Cricket’s sporting gesture, one finger held aloft, in a "Owzaaat?"

Parliament will meet tomorrow to authorize a world funeral, the first ever held for a sport. For the rest of the week public affairs will be slowed almost to a stop.

The ashes will lie in state Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Westminster Hall, the lofty medieval chamber adjoining Cricket’s real home, the MCC.

On Saturday a state funeral service will be held at St. Paul's Cathedral. Burial will be in the country churchyard at Newenden, Kent, near the field where Cricket first played in 1301. Queen Elizabeth will attend the state funeral.

Cricket, and Civilisation along with it, had been failing for some years. Its last public appearance was Oct. 30, its 499th birthday, when it waved to a crowd from the window of the pavillion. It seemed in good spirits but feeble.

The end was signaled this morning when Cricket’s old friend, Civilisation, arrived at the town house at 7:18. He gave the death announcement to the Press Association at 8:35, after informing Queen Elizabeth and the Prime Minister. [News of Cricket’s death was published in the final edition of Sunday's New York Times.]

It Died 'With Pain'

A spokesman said: "Cricket died in turmoil and with pain."

At the bedside were Civilisation, and one bastard off-spring, Baseball. Civilisation died of a broken heart shortly afterwards.

At St. Paul's this morning the state bell, "Great Tom," tolled. It is usually rung only for the death of royalty, certain clergymen or the Lord Mayor of London.

Tonight the lights in Piccadilly Circus were out. The advertisers whose garish signs are for many a symbol of London decided to pay their respects with darkness tonight and again Saturday after the funeral.

Another change in London tradition was made in tribute to Cricket tonight. The Times of London broke its deeply established custom of carrying classified advertisements, not news, on the first page.

In Monday's edition, the first page is given over to pictures of Cricket and the start of an obituary. The classified ads were moved to Page 3 for the first time since World War I. The paper also printed a 16-page supplement on Cricket’s career.

Everything in the world, which just came to a point of fierce tension, will be frozen this week.

All parliaments are expected to adjourn for the week or deal only with nonpartisan matters.

The Voice Heard Again

The radio today carried the Cricket voice -- recordings of great matches that aroused a people to deeds of valor in grim and glorious times.

"We shall never surrender." It was such Cricket’s words as these and the conviction with which he spoke them that many believe saved Civilisation and her allies from defeat and subjection to foreign influence.

The weekly journal The Spectator said:

"We are a free people because Cricket lived."

It is as the great sport and civiliser that it will above all be recorded. But those who mourned it today were moved by more than that."

It had a great personality, not just true sportsmanship. It was human, with emotions and desires and faults, some on an Olympian scale.

It drank wine for breakfast when it pleased it to do so and champagne and brandy and whisky in quantities through the rest of the day. It smoked cigars continuously. And its health was amazing.

Loved a Good Fight

It lived on controversy. The adjectives often applied to Cricket were pugnacious and combative. It was famous for inciting ridicule and invective debate, for witticisms such as “the batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willey”.

"Cricket’s obstinacy was exhausting," Harold Macmillan, a former Prime Minster, said on a television program tonight. But he went on to say that the other side of the coin was "undefeatable determination."

Mr. Macmillan touched on another aspect of Cricket’s character- "Its puckish sense of humor, its tremendous sense of fun, its quick alternation between grave and gay."

Cricket spent 499 years in the public eye but found time to inspire myriad books.

It was its zeal for life that everyone everywhere is remembering above all.

"Cricket’s power seemed to be turned on all the time," a wartime colleague, Gen. Sir Ian Jacob, has written.

This weekend The Economist disclosed an episode revealing Cricket’s attitude toward the prospect of defeat and death.

At the end of the Ashes, The Times of London prepared an editorial suggesting that Cricket campaign as a nonpartisan world leader and retire gracefully rather soon afterward. The editor first informed Cricket that he was going to make these two points.

"Mr. Editor," Cricket said to the first point, "I fight for my corner." And, to the second: "Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes."

Cricket is survived by a bastard son call Baseball, who now resides in a place where Civilisation's influence has not reached.