The Spirit of the Game

Dear friends

In a world wracked by wars and rumours of wars, by strife and conflict and international crises, you can trust your faithful correspondents at Two Ways News to tackle the truly weighty issues—like the stumping of Jonny Bairstow. 

Perhaps it’s a symptom of just how comfortable and prosperous we really are that the populations of England and Australia should be so outraged and obsessed about one incident in a five-day cricket match. 

For US and other listeners outside the Commonwealth who have not seen the blanket coverage associated with this incident, up to and including comments by our nations’ leaders, it is a little difficult to explain in a brief space what all the fuss was about. Let us just say that one of the batters was declared ‘out’ in controversial circumstances—that is, the Australians did something that was perfectly legal and within the laws of the game to get the batter out, but the English considered it to be a sneaky and unsportsmanlike crime against the spirit of the cricket. (And it turned out to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the game, which made the emotions run even higher.)

And so this week’s edition is about cricket—partly because we find it hard to pass up any opportunity to talk about cricket, but mainly because the whole incident was a fascinating case study in the idea of ‘law’ versus ‘spirit’, a subject that the Bible says a great deal about. 

Your brother

Tony

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