Abio-secure bubble, with its science-fiction sound effect, suggests something out of Arthur C Clarke. Or, a succinctly smart dystopian vision portrayed by Anthony Burgess. Either way, you think it is futuristic, not something humanity is menaced by as of date.
But, as cricket lovers the world over know now, it happens to be part of the Covid-19 defiant game’s new normal: the supposedly fool-proof coop where players must be for mandatory periods so commercial plans hit upon by lounge-suited busybodies in the corridors of power are not endangered or affected in the slightest way.
Tests follow tests, contacts with the world, inclusive of their own folks, are strictly prohibited and on-site accommodation implies movement only to and from the ground. Five Test matches in this abnormal setting have already been gone through and a sixth one is being staged now, with England hosting Pakistan. Indian Premier League cricketers are being sought to be cocooned similarly in West Asia. So far so bad.
But the fact that some Australians, by the time they join their national peers in England after the IPL, will have spent quite a long while in such officially devised captivity, has wrung the assurance from captain Aaron Finch that cricketers’ mental well-being will henceforth be closely monitored by professionals on the right side of the men calling the shots in the boardroom. It is of no consequence that Finch’s was a statement basically made on behalf of Cricket Australia, and the game was given away when he, going on, said that if the bubble were not to be lived in, however hard it might be to be in the squeeze there, the players would lose their jobs.
It may not be Auschwitz yet, but you do not see a vignette of paradise here either. And policies twist your arms even if you have managed to hold the novel coronavirus off. It apparently matters little that the absolutely abnormal situation, which can never accord well with sport of any kind, professional or amateur, makes huge psychological demands on players who always knew cricket, out there in the middle, was a lonely game but had never budgeted for value-added imprisonment off it.
Independent expert opinion has spoken of the serious mental damage the restrictive orders can inflict on individuals who like the life lived outdoors, chilling after feeling the heat of the competition through the stress-filled day. That explains why Jofra Archer flew away after England’s first Test against the West Indies in the none too distant past. He copped it all right but that was all about authority cracking down on disobedience with so much cash at stake.
Thus spectators are barred, cricketers are diminished to a do-as-you-are-told existence and hermetically sealed entrances ensure the Press is never close by and all of it combines to spawn a situation in which only officialdom grows in self-importance. How’s that?