Bigger than the Ashes

It is at this point in the cricket cycle, as we tremble on the brink of another World Cup, that you are most likely to hear the distinctive, discordant cry of the Parochial Cricket (Anglianus Tedious Barmiarmius), an island-dwelling species that comes out of hibernation every couple of years or so to feed on a peculiar diet of ashes and lager, though in a lean year can survive entirely on bitter vine fruit.

And right on schedule, just as the cricket world is getting ready to party, our internet forums are once more infested with comments of a dot uk persuasion, decrying the World Cup and asserting the greater importance of an Ashes win. This in a year when a team of suitably motivated lemurs could have taken home the little urn, given that they'd have been up against the sorriest bunch of Aussies ever to put spit to palm.

This "Ashes is best" cry is a variant of the "Test is best" dogma, which has never made sense to me. I do enjoy Test cricket. It is more like real life than sport; it can be stupefyingly boring for hours on end, but is threaded through with bursts of gut-twisting tension and throat-stopping surprise. But let's be honest, it's pretty strange too. A popular sporting event that lasts a whole working week? It's as anachronistic as asbestos garages, riding to work on a penny farthing, and shooting tigers for fun.

So why is it held to be the only true religion and the 50-over game a shabby, heretical cult? Do football fans insist that the only proper version of their sport is the one that prevailed a couple of hundred years ago? The one in which entire villages competed over a long weekend and the occasional death was all part of the fun? Yes, Mr Messi, you may be able to run up and down for 90 minutes in your fancy gloves and your silk shirt, but the real test is how nimble you are at retrieving a swollen pig's bladder from an icy stream with 120 burly villagers trying to stamp on your head.

Ah, it's a true test, this Test cricket, they say. But a test of what? Of endurance, certainly, and patience. But one-day cricket tests nerve, ingenuity, and occasionally, mental arithmetic. The soul of cricket is a bat, a ball and a field. Beyond this there are many variations and five-day isn't the only fruit in the cricket orchard. It isn't even the oldest variety. In 18th century London and 19th century Lancashire, the game that packed 'em in was done in a long afternoon. One-day cricket came first.

And why, in any case, must we accept that Australia versus England perches at the top of the Test ecosystem? The history? These two first tangled in 1877, which is about 133 years worth of history. But then England played South Africa in 1889. So by that reckoning the Anglo-South African rivalry is only 9% less historic. Besides, it isn't as though the Ashes regularly rocks our socks. Familiarity often breeds tedium, either one-sided tedium (1989-2002) or scrappy, evenly matched tedium (2009).

Now I am not one of those people who suggest that some England fans' disdain for the World Cup is in any way related to the relatively small number of occasions upon which their team has triumphed in said tournament. That would be cynical. We all want our team to do well, but the true cricket lover, and there are plenty in England, can also appreciate the game for its own sake, for those fleeting moments of joy such as a Ponting pull shot, a Tendulkar cover drive or a hilarious slapstick overthrow.

A hundred and fifty years ago those Victorian gentlemen could have chosen Saturday cricket for their new-fangled county championship. It would have drawn the crowds. But they didn't want their sport spoiled by riff-raff. Their snobbery lingers. But they were wrong and those who rate the Ashes as more important than the World Cup are also wrong, by the only measurement that counts: bottoms. Quite simply, more bottoms will be planted on sofas, plastic seats, bean bags, saggy mattresses and creaky hotel beds in honour of the four-yearly international cricket festival than will ever come to rest in front of the biennial dust-up between those old Ashes foes.