The relevance of independent cricket blogs

Blogging is a terrible word. It’s worse than chillax or yogalates. There is no way of saying “I better blog that” without making it sound like what you’re doing involves something that you shouldn’t do with a crowd watching.

I mean it’s just writing. Bloggers don’t tap the keyboard in a different way to other writers. The structure, opinions and wording might be different, the grammar and spelling are frightening (at least mine is), but bloggers still pull their pants on one leg at a time, if they ever need to leave the house that is. A valid opinion doesn’t need to be formed in an air-conditioned press box, it can be written just as well on a grease-stained keyboard in the basement of your mother’s house.

Blogs offer a sort of freedom that professional writers never get. Few are reading them to start with, so the abuse is going to be less. There are generally no editors, word counts or need to fit inane quotes in. They are just one person’s thoughts; unedited and unruly.

In a blog you can relate a batsman’s mode of batting to his sexual prowess, accuse a former international captain of being a giant alien lizard or suggest that a player goes around killing kittens before matches. Well, that’s what I did. Others probably did it more subtly. But the rule with blogs is that there are no rules.

Over the last few years truly independent blogs have disappeared. Some, like me, have sold out for the seven cents a day I’m paid here; others have been swallowed up by newspapers or major websites who saw blogs as the next big thing.

But there are still some people who remain in the metaphorical mother’s basement furiously typing out their thoughts during a rerun of the Simpsons. They often get little more than one disagreeing comment, and 10 spam messages about natural underarm hair replacement. They do it because they love what they’re blogging about, and because they think they have a different way of looking at things.

One of those blogs is Leg Side Filth. It’s not just a good blog by blog standards; it’s far more than that. It’s just a place for high-quality cricket writing. I fear over the years it’s been visited far less than it deserves to be. But that is what happens to independent blogs. You either sell out, get lucky through a controversy, or have to remain content writing for a few dozen people.

That has never stopped Leg Side Filth (no, I don’t know his real name, but Leg Side Filth sounds better anyway) from writing. So when he saw the Mike Atherton interview of Mohammad Amir, he felt the need to write something about it. Like any intelligent writer, because he was passionate about it, he had no editorial interference and was just doing it because he wanted to write a classy piece. What he wrote was probably one of the best pieces written about the interview that was not written by Atherton himself.

The truly amazing thing was that Atherton felt the need to comment on the piece. There are some in the mainstream press who see blogs as something that got stuck on their shoe as they walked in. Atherton is obviously not one of them.

After putting together his interview of Amir, Atherton went about reading all the blogs and tweets he could for reactions. There is no doubt that some who tweeted negative things have already heard from Atherton directly, especially those who’ve shared a press box with him. It’s not that Atherton just found Leg Side Filth, but that he saw him as someone he could have a discussion with. He wasn’t scolding him, or abusing him, but rather joining a discussion outside the mainstream ones. As Atherton says, “some of the best cricket writing at the moment is on blogs such as yours.”

Atherton’s comments don’t legitimatise cricket blogging. There will be many who don’t care if he reads them, or care if he comments on them. But I think to bloggers, tweeters and all those who chat about cricket for no money, they know that if they produce quality and act like normal human beings, people like Atherton will feel comfortable enough to interact with them.

For some struggling bloggers and tweeters, knowing Athers is watching might inspire them to continue. Conversely, it might scare the hell out of others. Remember, blogging and tweeting might sound like silly words, but Athers is watching you: judging and waiting to pounce. And I think he’s always been there.