"Pyjama Cricket through a Black Mirror"

Thanks for watching and welcome to Part 10 from my self-published book in August 2023, "The Spirit of Cricket".

Please see the link below for the paperback version of this, my fourth self-published book, and three ways in which you could support me and poke the traditional publishers in the eye who refused to even read my manuscript!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF4FRKSH

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.me/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

Here follows a snippet from the chapter being read here, and chapter number 22 of a total of 41 from a book I'm immensely proud of:

"It was a little past 7pm and with the dust settling at Lord’s in London after a wonderful 4th day’s play in the Men’s Ashes that sees Australia on the brink of a dominating victory, we crossed to Edgbaston in Birmingham for the 2nd match in the ladies Ashes Series. In our delayed absence the visitors had won the toss, inserted their hosts into bat, and 9 overs into their 20 over stint with the willow England were 58–3 with Sophia Dunkley an impressive 35 not out. The 24 year old from Lambeth in South London would ultimately reach her half century from just 42 balls received before falling shortly thereafter for a well played 56 runs from 48 balls before watching her wicket-keeper Amy Jones rattle 40 quick-fire runs from just 21 balls received as England set their Australian visitors 154 runs for victory. During the brief changeover between innings I mused on the hours of cricket I’d already watched so far today (I was approaching my ninth hour with still another hour and a half to go at least) and thoughts turned, as they always do when watching cricket, to my dear old Mum and the “pyjama cricket” she’d call the one-day version, memories of first seeing this colourful alternative in the early 1980’s but, more memorably, on England’s 1987 Ashes triumph “down under” as well as the controversy laden 1992 World Cup when I first purchased an official light blue England one-day jersey.

My Dad’s favourite player Imran Khan broke my heart in the Final as he led his Pakistan team to World Cup glory, but three decades on the ladies game has continued to change radically beyond recognition with an almost full house in Birmingham loudly cheering on the now darker blue and red of England against the pleasingly green and gold of Australia. With the English weather now returned to a more seasonal mix of Summertime daylight and colder Spring like temperatures, I’ve hunkered down and away (for the time being) from my adventures beside the canals and rivers of central England and in the absence of any new films worth my late night time, I’ve disappeared back into the dystopian world of Charlie Brooker and the “Black Mirror” he pertinently shines on the upside down world around us. It’s hard to believe that a decade has now past since I first became hooked on Brooker’s alternate reality and the ever increasing merger with the machines that now, a decade on, largely control so many aspects of our lives as to be wholly forgotten about in an ever quickening pace of life that sees these digital gadgets, dystopian or otherwise, ruling our lives. From the apparently apocryphal story of a British Prime Minister and a pig’s head, Brooker blends the real with the unreal, the imagined to the unimaginable, and of people cycling for digital credits, being constantly credit scored on their social performance or living with a robot replacement for a dearly departed member of the family. Everything is up for grabs as a dark mirror is shone on our digital merger, life after death, synthetic and simulated lives or, as in the case of the latest season, five episodes ranging from being the unwilling participant in a life broadcast to the entire world through alternate universes in the late 1960’s and 1970’s before one of the weakest episodes to date explodes in a fury under a full moon and the howling of a werewolf!"

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