KEY POINTS:
I empathise with John Roughan who, as he revealed last week, has fallen out of love with cricket.
In my case it was crime fiction. After several decades as a fan, I went off the genre virtually overnight. These days I rarely pick up a crime novel and, when I do, I find it all too easy to put down.
Such abrupt disaffections are troubling, especially when the precise cause isn't readily apparent. Like someone in a long-term relationship which has suddenly soured, you brood on it trying to pinpoint the cause. Has the other party changed or have I? And if it's me, what have I become?
Well, cricket has changed and not always for the better. While all sports have been forced to reach an accommodation with commercialism and modernity, cricket's compromise has proved particularly jarring.
The repackaging of the game to suit television and strengthen its appeal to an audience demanding instant gratification has eroded some of its subtle charm and led to an emphasis on hyperactivity and brute force at the expense of its unique rhythm and traditional skills.
It sometimes seems cricket is being slowly but inexorably Americanised. If Australia's new 20/20 batting sensation David Warner, who is yet to play a first-class match, fails to make the transition to the longer forms of the game, he should consider switching to baseball since his technique seems more closely modelled on Willie Mays than Peter May.
Despite that, I still find cricket irresistible. No other sport can match its capacity to generate controversy, drama and comedy.
English cricket is still trying to get its collective head around the Kevin Pietersen fiasco, a riot of egotism and bitchiness that makes America's Next Top Model seem like Country Calendar. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose a coach may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both captain and coach and lay bare divisions in the dressing room for all the cricketing world to see looks like folly on a scale George W. Bush could relate to.
Meanwhile we were treated to another episode of our home-grown soap opera starring Jesse Ryder as the man who, to employ another Wildeism, can resist everything except temptation.
The news that Big Jessie had got on the grog and missed a team meeting triggered an orgy of self-flagellation. We were told that we're a nation of drunks, to which the obvious response is: speak for yourself.
A Dominion Post editorial asserted that a stroll around Courtenay Place late on a Friday night makes it obvious that "New Zealand remains a booze-sodden culture", when of course all it really demonstrates is that there's a downside to the inner-city vibrancy of which the capital is so proud and which features so prominently in its self-promotion.
The editorial began thus: "Today Jesse Ryder begins the task of winning back the faith of his fellow Black Caps and the New Zealand fans - again," as if he was a criminal on parole. In fact Ryder's burgeoning folk hero status suggests the fans aren't nearly as exercised about his lapses as the hand-wringers in the media.
I was living overseas at the time so I don't know whether a similar level of angst attended the Black Caps' dope smoking scandal in South Africa in 1995. I do know that one of the young ratbags packed home in disgrace went on to captain his country with great distinction and is now a figure of such reassuring, suburban normality that he fronts an advertising campaign aimed squarely at middle New Zealand. Another is a national selector.
As Roughan alluded to, part of cricket's appeal is its capacity to make even the most accomplished players look foolish. After being clean bowled in a one-day international whilst squatting like a toad to avoid a loopy full toss, the fiercely competitive John Bracewell was left lamenting that his humiliation would feature on the Minties Moments pratfalls reel for years to come.
Australian Mike Hussey's teammates call him "Mr Cricket" in acknowledgement of his unobtrusive mastery. It will be interesting to see if the nickname survives his Minties Moment last month when he panicked under a high catch like a one-armed man with severe cataracts.
My own Minties Moment occurred at primary school when I was bowled middle stump by my mother, who had never played the game before and who delivered the ball via a diffident underarm, in front of what felt like a throng of onlookers, every one of whom, to my certain knowledge, was convulsed with laughter.
Once cricket and I had put that behind us, it was plain sailing.
