Common Sense and the Spirit of The Game.

As featured on Radio2, The Jeremy Vine Show

There was a wonderful moment yesterday when, in the second test at Trent Bridge, Bell emerged from the pavilion, to resume batting after tea.

            For non-cricketers, it was wonderful because sportsmanship and common sense had prevailed, and in the world in which we live, this so rarely happens.

            To the unenlightened, or for those of you with no interest in cricket, Bell (on 137) had been given out – correctly but somewhat unjustly – for an act of crass stupidity on the last ball before the tea break. Having stroked the ball for what he thought was another boundary, he walked off for a cuppa, only to find that he had been given out when an Indian fielder threw back the ball and another removed the bails. The ball had not crossed the boundary and was still live, so technically the umpires had no choice but to uphold the touring side’s half-hearted appeal.

            This could have resulted in a pretty nasty escalation of hostilities and would almost certainly have ruined an excellent series between the two top test sides which has been as good-spirited as it has been competitive.

            And this brings me on to the situation in Libya, which was got absolutely nothing to do with cricket; in fact, it is one of the few countries where cricket is not played. But what it has to do with is Common Sense and The Spirit of The Game.

            Can anybody tell me, what the heck are we doing interfering in the politics of Libya? Ostensibly the involvement of our military forces is to protect civilians – nothing more. But the government of this country, and that of France, have made it perfectly clear that the only outcome they will accept is to see the back of Muammar Gaddafi. Dead or alive, he has to go from office, although we’ve backed down a bit so he may now be permitted to live out his remaining years in his homeland and not face trial for whatever crimes the international community can throw at him. They can justify this by the UN resolution which specifies – nice and vaguely – that their secondary mandate is to prevent “…destabilisation of the region.”

            And the best way to do that, of course, is to give political and militaristic endorsement to a bunch of rebels who we know nothing about. Well, that’s not entirely true: we know that they dispense summary justice by murdering their own leaders if things don’t work out how they had planned.

            I have two questions about our intervention. Firstly why, and secondly why now?

            Personally, I don’t think we should be there at all.

            I had hoped that we had heard the last of William Hague’s whinny minor public schoolboy prefect’s voice when he lost tenure as leader of the Conservative party. John Humphries ran rings around him on this morning’s Radio4 Today programme. The only reasonably plausible argument he could come up with for this huge waste of tax-payers’ money is this: if we stood back and did nothing, Libyan refugees would flood the shores of southern Europe, and by that, we mean Britain. Bollox – it will happen anyway, because we don’t have either an equitable or an enforceable immigration policy. And as for the justification of freeing up Libyan assets to give to these rebels, the mind just boggles! Where this cash will go is straight into the back pocket of Al Qaeda. 

            Giving legitimacy to the rebels as “freedom fighters” is absurd. Perhaps we should we follow this logic and recognise the Real IRA or the UFF as well?

            There is, of course, the issue of lives of innocent civilians. I’m sorry, but that is just not our problem. We didn’t interfere in any of the other “Arab Spring” insurrections so why Libya?

            However it is the question as to “why now?” that really makes my blood boil.

            Gaddafi came to power in a bloodless coup in 1969 and has remained the undemocratic but undisputed leader of Libya ever since. But what is so great about democracy that we, in the West, feel we have to impose it on every banana republic or tin-pot state that we don’t like? Democracy has only brought us corruption in the form of expense fiddling, phone and computer hacking and thousands of quangos that cannot make a decision without cog-oiling levels of bribery. And look at Belgium for goodness sake: they cannot even be bothered to sort out a cabinet.  On 1 June 2011, Belgium matched the record for time taken to form a new democratic government after an election, at 353 days, held until then by Cambodia in 2003-04. Democracy really works for them, doesn’t it?

            The way in which Gaddafi has run Libya has changed little over the past forty or so years. Sure, it’s an unpleasant repressive regime based on autocratic rule and the subjugation of the masses, but his level of unacceptability has not changed over that time.

            Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. In 1985, with the miners’ strike in its second year, he formed an unlikely alliance with Arthur Scargill. The purpose of this was regime change – namely to bring down Margaret Thatcher. And then in 1987, a shipment of arms was discovered on-board the Eksund bound for Ireland and use by the PIRA. It turned out, that Gaddafi had been supplying the IRA since 1972.

            So why on earth did we not do something about these flagrant breeches of diplomatic relations? Both of these policies could have been considered acts of aggression and a threat to the citizens of this country. And yet we sat back and did absolutely nothing!

            And then, of course, we sent home Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, in August 2009. This was for no better reason than that we didn’t have the stomach to have him die in a British jail – not that he has shown the remotest intention of dying since touching down on Libyan soil.

            And so we come back to Common Sense and the Spirit of The Game.  Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss trooped off to the Indian dressing room yesterday, cup of tea in hand, to enquire of MS Dhoni if he really wanted to stand by his appeal. There were no umpires present. They didn’t need to be, as they had done their bit – they had upheld the laws of the game.

            We, the British, have taken upon ourselves the onus of umpiring every conflict that occurs even although it is not our job to do so. Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya…and, of course, Iraq have all become theatres of conflict which have absolutely nothing to do with us and are policed by Western interventionists for the most spurious of reasons. And now, perhaps, Syria – why not?

            So my solution to problems in the Middle East (and elsewhere) is very simple. Let the players sort it out themselves. It is not our problem.

            That way Common Sense and the Spirit of the Game will prevail. Fat chance!