Why tradition is all-important in cricket

When I was young I used to believe that every human being who wanders the surface of this spinning rock does so with an open and enquiring mind and that life is a wonderful journey of discovery in which your ideas evolve with experience.

Life is, of course, no such thing. Generally speaking, what happens is that as a youngster, you are donated certain ideas by your parents, your school friends, music magazines, internet celebrities or random people on television, and then you wear this eclectic collection of second-hand principles for the remainder of your life.

There are exceptions. If you were brought up in a remote rural community founded on the idea that the giant cheese monster that created the universe would return to bring on the fondue apocalypse in 1996, then the arrival of 1997 would have been something of a disappointment, requiring you to at least consider re-evaluating your life's guiding principle.

But you can be sure that even in this fictional cheese-worshipping community there would be a faction claiming that the cheese monster did not grace us with his presence because he was angry at us for inventing the cheese string, and that when this heresy is abolished, the cheese monster will return, and life will be gouda.

Perhaps this reluctance to give up our most cherished principles derives from our species' early experiences, which required us to reach some snappy yet reliable judgements. For instance, if you're a Cro-Magnon cave dweller, you can safely depend on the principle that sabre-toothed tigers are bad news. This may not be entirely fair on the marginalised vegetarian sabre-toothed tiger community, but for survival purposes it's a useful rule of thumb to steer clear of the cats with the big pointy teeth.

We can be a little more flexible in the 21st century, but true to genetics we prefer to hang on to our favourite ideas, like long-lost cardigans that no longer fit around our tummies but which still make us feel all warm and snuggly when we sniff them. Even a sport as modern and forward-thinking as cricket has its share of recurring beliefs that certain of our community will cling to, some of which were aired this week.

Let's take county cricket (stop yawning, this won't take long). It has been speculated that there might be changes to the English domestic game, inspired by the Big Bash League's success and popularity, despite the fact that, as everyone knows, county cricket is entirely impervious to success and popularity.

There will never be any significant changes in English cricket, because English cricket is built around one simple, abiding, zombie principle: whatever happens, county cricket must always, always be preserved. The precise reasons why this should be will vary from year to year, and there are some inventive ones around at the moment, including the idea that we shouldn't seek big audiences, lest the existing small audiences become disgruntled.

But the bottom line is that for large numbers of English cricket folk, preserving county cricket is non-negotiable.

Even when the rest of humanity is playing laser-guided inter-planetary Galactic Mega Cricket with the inhabitants of the Andromeda galaxy, you can be sure that the English game will still kick off every April with Snoozeshire taking on Sleepchester, a rash of complaints about how vital it is not to let people take away our 700-year-old county game, and three imminent county bankruptcies.

Expecting anything, particularly anything that happens in Australia, to shake this founding principle of English cricket is like waiting for the wind to blow Mount Everest over, or for an economist to correctly predict something.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Ricky Ponting has been employing an imaginative invocation of the spirit of cricket to explain why it is important that cricketers don't stop threatening to break each other's arms:

"In his speech at the funeral, Michael talked about the spirit of the game, and to me that spirit is a really aggressive nature and attitude."

Quite right, Ricky, that's exactly what he meant. The last thing we want in the wake of a tragedy is for cricketers to start treating one another with respect, or giving consideration to anything other than winning at all costs. Like politics, bare-knuckle boxing, and dogfighting, cricket has always been synonymous with verbal abuse and threats of physical violence. It's what the game is all about, and long may it continue.