Mind the gap

Generally, I don’t feel my age. Who does? Apart from, for those of us over 40, when an evening of over-indulgence takes until the next evening to recover from, compared to mid-morning in our youth. That said, I’m frequently reminded that neither am I a young person. The latest is this week’s goings-on with the Australian cricket team.

Well, next not just this week’s. It’s long struck me as just plain wrong that in a sport that’s essentially non-violent, like cricket, banter has long since descended into outright personal abuse and threats. It’s troubled me that England get up to this nonsense, but by all accounts the Aussies are the true masters of the petulant and the profane.

What I can’t comprehend the approach that thinks this behaviour is ok. I’m not being naïve – I’m amazed I wasn’t sent off more frequently than I was in my footballing career, and in the heat of some very hot moments, bad words may have escaped my lips. But to embark on a systematic pattern of abuse and intimidation; no, I don’t get it.

What I get even less, however, is firstly the blubbering emotional collapse we’ve seen today by the (now-ex) Australian captain, Steve Smith, when caught doing something he shouldn’t have done, and secondly, the chasm of a contrast between the macho, arrogant mindset that drives one set of behaviours, and the childlike behaviours in that collapse.  Maybe a psychologist could explain to me how they’re closely related.  Perhaps they’re both borne of deep emotional immaturity. But I can no more imagine bleating about in public about how I’ve let my parents down than I can setting out to emotionally destroy someone.

But Steve Smith isn’t the only example. I can’t be the only one of my generation who winces a bit when Princes William and Harry talk about the need to be more open about our mental health, and blokes in particular. I’m not suggesting depression isn’t real or something to be taken seriously, but in common with characteristics that drive the current hideous identity politics, I worry that for some it’s becoming a badge of honour – something that marks them out as special. Because we’ve all got to be special in these days of the selfie and Instagram, even when we’re manifestly not.

You might think I’m wandering from where I started. I’m not. The point is that I just don’t understand or relate to many of the emotional responses of under 35s. I don’t think crying in public is a virtue – I think it’s embarrassing. In my world, it’s like getting drunk; something to be done in private, and while there are times you can’t help it happening, it’s not something to be proud of. I generalise of course – I’m sure there are plenty of under-35s who aren’t emotionally incontinent (e.g. my kids; of course) and there’ve been plenty of examples of middle-aged men blubbing when they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t, but the generalisation feels valid to me.

And there’s the rub – perhaps it is just me. I am, after all, someone who never goes out without a handkerchief in his pocket, would never wear a suit with unpolished shoes or go to work unshaven, and when walking side-by-side with a woman has to be the one closest to the road. I don’t think that children can or should be friends of their parents (though that’s not to say they shouldn’t have a close, healthy, unique relationship), and that age and achievement does buy a degree of respect from kids that’s sometimes lacking.  And I would never think it ok to play my music out loud or have a noisy conversation in a packed train carriage.  I do know how all this sounds by the way.

All this is a bit like looking back at 80s music – was it objectively better, or does it just it feel better because of the time in our lives it happened?  Similarly, will the public-crying, emotion-spilling 28 year olds of today will mature into buttoned-up misanthropes like me?

If they do, there’s hope yet. 

Wiggins, Sky

I don't know any more than the next casual observer about the whole Team Sky, Wiggins 'scandal'. Ok, perhaps just a little bit, but nothing that can't be easily found online or in the press. So I have no insights, and no opinions on his/their guilt or otherwise. I do, however, have some observations:

1. It seems slightly odd to me that the UCI have only really thought fit to comment on the issue (via Brain Cookson's French successor whose name eludes me and I can't be bothered to look up) after the DCMS committee reported.  Were they not that bothered? Did they want someone else to break cover? Are they only reacting now out of embarrassment?
   
2.  It strikes me as a peculiarly British trait for a British Parliamentary body (said DCMS committee) to take it upon itself to denounce a British team and a British winner in international sport for "crossing an ethical line" (note: not breaking the rules). I can't dismiss the suspicion that such an investigation would either never have been instigated by the equivalent Parliamentary body in France, Spain, Italy, and if it had, the findings would either have been kept under wraps, and/or made much less of. Maybe I should be pleased about that, evidence of the continued existence of the British sense of fair play and all that, but I'm not. I don't understand this tendency to seek feet of clay in our own. Especially when the investigating body has no jurisdiction to examine the practices of foreign teams, thus robbing their conclusions of any sense of comparison, context or perspective
   
3. Within the cycle sport-following community, there seems to be disappointment, if less outright condemnation. And whichever reaction it is, it seems to me to be driven by the view that the Sky problem exists not necessarily because of what they did, but because of the song-and-dance they made at the outset about being demonstrably clean and different - and they're not. We don't blame them for that - we know that pro cycling is a rough, tough, unforgiving sport, and working with, even bending, the rules is likely to be widespread and a prerequisite for success - but we do blame them for trying to sell us something. And who knows how many hideously-overpriced jerseys, caps and bidons they shifted on the back of that
   
4. Those people calling for Sky to be disbanded are either massive hypocrites (Landis), or naked opportunists (other pro teams). Investigate every team that's won a Grand Tour or a Classic in the last 8 years to the same level as Sky, then get back to me.

I'm no Sky fanboy. I've never bought or worn their kit or anything endorsed by them, I don't especially identify them as 'British', and all the preceding isn't to defend them. It's just that I don't like humbug, of which there's a lot sloshing around at the moment.