麻豆社

I doubt I鈥檒l make it into next year鈥檚 Wisden鈥檚 Almanac, but this broadcast constitutes the announcement of my retirement from cricket. To be honest, with the pressure on my diary, plus time鈥檚 remorseless advance, I haven鈥檛 played a competitive match for three years. But I can look back on my final game as one to remember. Borrowing a ground in the constituency of the murdered MP Jo Cox, our mixed group of Christian and Muslim clergy from Lancashire, faced by our Yorkshire based equivalents, asserted our belief that our shared love of sport could unite across barriers of religion or race.

As the present stream of allegations of racism in cricket flows on, dragging in its wake an increasing count of resignations from governing bodies, that final game feels more significant and more poignant than ever. I find it particularly disillusioning that the game I love, one long meant to epitomise fair play, has been found to have embraced and accepted racist language and racist attitudes among its most senior figures.

Disillusioned I may be, but I shan鈥檛 stop loving cricket, any more than I would stop loving my country or my Church, even though they too exhibit some pretty disillusioning behaviours and attitudes, especially around how minorities are treated. Rather, I鈥檒l draw from one of the core elements of my Christian faith, that, in Jesus Christ, God himself loves the unlovely and those many deem unlovable, and through that love, shown supremely on the Cross, saves what would otherwise be lost.

Belief in the converting power of love is not confined to Christians, it shapes the story of many a novel or film. Yet, in fact as well as fiction, the work of love is, I would argue, not to change anyone into a different person, but to draw them to become their true, best self. And if that is true for an individual, why should it not equally be true for an institution, a nation or a sport?

So I鈥檒l go on loving our system of parliamentary democracy, even when some of its elected members break the rules and governments, of whatever colour, fail to maintain agreed standards. This week, as the members of the General Synod gather in London, I may need to work especially hard go on loving my Church, whose members and ministers often fall short of the sacred trust they carry, or mince their words in the face of injustice. Yet here, and in all else that I鈥檓 committed to, I鈥檒l try to direct the power of my love, strengthened by God鈥檚 love for me, to making things more as they should be.

And I鈥檒l do the same for cricket too, though in future from a seat safely behind the boundary rope.

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