Sometimes the feedback to the cricket commentary on the BBC website is priceless:
Robin from Co Kerry, Ireland “I love this form of cricket, so many great batsmen looking like waiters in a bouncy castle trying to hold a tray of glasses when they bat. Love the way you also make fun of the Aussies despite losing to Holland. I wonder if you guys will ever learn not to gloat until you do something yourselves worth shouting about like avoiding an Ashes whitewash.”
Simon in the TMS inbox “Doesn’t Robin (5/6th over) realise that for us to gloat at any Aussie failure is one of our basic human rights as Englishmen? What we do ourselves has no bearing on the matter at all. In fact it’s remarkably similar to the Irish attitude to any English failure…”
Paul in Lancs in the TMS inbox “As both determined neo-Kantian and utter pedant, I feel I must dispute Simon’s claim that gloating about Australian failure is one of our ‘basic human rights as Englishmen’. Such a statement flies in the face of the Categorcial Imperative formulation: ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’, in that you cannot validly have a human right solely for one part of the human race. This applies even when the ‘objects’ of such a right is Australians, who did not exist in the modern (Euro-centric) sense when Kant was alive. I accept that, had they been, he may have done things differently.”
TrickieDickie, Hollywood, in the TMS inbox “I agree, you are an utter pedant. Kant was familiar with the concept of schadenfreude (see his Lectures on Ethics) and whilst he felt it was a cruel and inhumane emotional response, I’m sure he would have found it hard not to raise a wry smile when the Aussies were ignominiously dumped out of this tournament.”
TrickieDickie, Hollywood, in the TMS inbox “You’re right, he did. Do you remember when Playaway devoted a whole show to existentialism and the pointlessness of the human condition? Seems a propos, as we sit staring at large squares of canvas, waiting for another dead rubber to begin. Honestly, Test matches in May and now pointless Twenty20 games in June. What are the (dis)organisers putting in their tea?”
Paul in Lancs in the TMS inbox “Trickiedickie – I think, then, we are broadly in agreement on the specificity of schadenfreude when it comes to the Aussies. The Australian cricket team, has by virtue of its dominance imbued with arrogance, completely altered the whole face of moral philosophy as we knew it, and created a new epistemological framework for the social sciences. Ricky Ponting should rest easy in Leicester. His work is done.”
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