All the talk about getting kids back into a love and a desire to play Test Cricket … Talk wont do it. What they mean is how do they get the crowds back to the long game? How do you teach kids to build innings or to learn the nous to take wickets when you’re being belted all around the neighbourhood?

I hear that today in Junior Cricket – and in Australia, juniors I’m told, don’t play red ball cricket anymore! – the kids have to retire when they’ve faced either 20 balls or they’ve scored 20 runs. With rules like that what do they learn? Not endurance, not persistence,, not how to deal with pain and fear. Doesn’t sound like a rule that would have gained much acceptance back when I was a kid. If we’d had that sort of rule then then no one would be playing once they’d reached their quota and the little kids wouldn’t have wanted to play with the bigger kids. And the little kids always wanted to play with the bigger kids!

I hear also that in India, juniors don’t play white ball cricket .. and especially they dont play T20 until they’re no longer juniors. Sounds smart .. sounds like a good way to get kids into cricket. And I mean real Cricket and by that I mean the long game which ends up being Test Cricket. In India they still play Street Cricket. And you can’t get belted around the park or the street if you can’t play in the street or the park. You can’t play Cricket if you’re not allowed to get hurt – physically and emotionally. If you’re not prepared to get hurt then you don’t play Cricket.

Street Cricket isn’t the same as playing with Dad in the backyard – Dad’s too soft. The kids need to get back into, or on to, the street. They’ve got to take the risks and they’ve got to learn the moving fields. They’ve got to play with the other kids where Mum or Dad aren’t there to mollify the rules.

Everyone admits that Test Cricket is the highest form of the game.

Street Cricket .. I remember Street Cricket – 10 or more revolving kids of various sizes, of various ages, 6 and out, and the game was over only when someone hit a pedestrian on the full .. Yes those were the days. Sometimes I remember no LBW rules (but you knew you were out when the ball hit your legs, oh you knew.) .. I didn’t like no LB, I bowled. I remember rules like you couldn’t be out first ball. But you could be out second! I remember running the wicket of the road when a car was coming and running it straight back on as the car went past, I remember a sort of round robin two overs and someone else’s go but you always got another over if you took a wicket and you didnt want a bat – everyone got a go, if you took a catch then you got to bat. Tip and run and when you were out you were out and no chucking. We didn’t need umpires we were the umpires.

If you were batting and you were good you kept batting and if you were older then you gave your wicket away when you knew you should .. but you never gave it away by being bowled! I never liked the no LB rule especially when we were playing with a taped-up ball but we often had a rule that you were out if you were hit on the legs consecutively .. or if you kept getting hit on the legs. The group made the rules but we played Cricket. We played fair .. but we played it in the street. We practiced in the backyard with Dad but we played in the street.

What changed that we can’t play in the street anymore .. aren’t cars meant to be safer these days? Better brakes, less drunks? What’s changed? Why can’t we play in the streets? What’s stopped us?

Stuey Clarke says we live in a world were we want perfection. I think we live in a world where we insist on protection. Fairs not good enough anymore … Its not fair.

Neo-liberalism tenet: Give minority power. Protect it. Protect minority rights, if they are yours.