I don't mind them going at all.
I just remember all the hand wringing and humming and hawwing before they went back to India a few weeks ago.
Mr Cricketer, please let me get this straight.,
You are worried about your safety when you are playing for your country, but not when you are playing in some tin pot tournament for oodles of cash.
Excuse me if I don't have any sympathy for you next time you have a so called dilemma.
a) they are more liekyl to be attacked being a england cricketer vs being a representative of a team like the bengali beavers
b) the media circle in cricket is so enormous. My cousin played first-class cricket for Notts and was wicket-keeper for England for a couple of years on and off, and he would regale so many horror stories of what he was/wasn't allowed to say to the media. This was all before these central contracts, but even before then, it was a mssive issue. Most of the stuff they say, isn't what they really want to say, and they really are hounded to say whatever the board wants them to represent.
If they were being honest, they would say "yeah the money was shite with england, but the $1m a year I can get from india is worth it".. and if they said that, the england naysayers would insult them relentlessly for just caring about the money.
I would have thought security would be much tighter for an England Tour a few days after a major terrorist attack than for a Bengali Beavers v Mumbai Muffdivers clash.
I think honesty from sportsmen is a rare and prized commodity. We aren't stupid, just tell us what really matters and forget the bs.
I personally think there is a very small segment of society that really appreciates honestly and ignores the BS. Imagine if for example kaka went to Man City and said to the papers "yeah I went there coz I get £500k a week and that extra £370k a week means so much to me that I can spend it on my family. I dont really give a shit whether or not Man City do any good, but that fat gold in my pocket is all that mattered"... the entire media/society would be a frenzy. I personally would much prefer them to say stuff like that, and I can tell you would as well, but I dont think that stuff like that would go down well in this country as a whole.
edit, and as for security, yup, maybe security would be tighter as a whole, but Id say that the desire of these murderous terrorists would be a lot higher if they can off an england player vs a player that represents a team in a league based in their own country. I dont think security matters that much, the animals will always win over the protectors because they want to hurt more than the protectors want to protect, and I'd venture to say that its a much bigger feather-in-the-cap for someone to off a player on england duty vs someone repping an indian cricket side.
I really, really hated it when Alex Ferguson called Man City's offer for Kaka "silly money".
And £30 million for Berbatov isn't silly money, you've drunken bigotted old fool?
you are right, but when your club can afford it, the transfer fee's etc dont matter at all. I'm with you, I would love, love, love it if these players said explicitly why they did what they did in terms of transfers. I'd love to be a fly on christiano Ronaldo's wall for example.
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