The most unbearable thing about this entire Ashes series has been having to put up with Dean Jones’ incessantly rank expression of his opinion on umpiring. He feels a desperate need for the blanket use of technology. He says he seeks justice and the truth. His obnoxious, ignorant and frightening brand of rationalism is enough to make any cricket lover fear for the game that is held so dear – cricket is never rational. Cricket has never had anything to do with truth and the justice in which it deals is not a justice that can be easily pinned down, it can not be arbitrated from anywhere but within the immediacy of the game itself. Surely someone who has been involved in cricket as much as Jones understands the athleticism of the umpire, and the ability the umpire holds to lapse. As does a batsman or a fielder (unless they’re Dean Jones of course – if only the selectors had chosen him to bat at 4 for Australia they would have had no trouble retaining the Ashes. I think Deano may be the only player in the history of cricket never to have been dismissed for less than 150, his average must be huge). Sure the umpires’ errors effect the game, as do the errors of the batsman or fielder or bowler or groundsman or selector or coach. But it is never determinable how the game is changed. It is easy to say Warne dropped the Ashes when he put KP down during the last test, but its only wishful, frustrating speculation. Warne should be replaced by a robot, then we would know the truth. Geraint Jones would do well to call for the institution of electric wicky. The electric wicket keeper would bring justice back to test cricket, making it just like how it is in the backyard. The beauty of cricket is multifaceted, it is crystal – one of these facets is the magnificent occasion of having a philosophical uncertainty over the two states of being in or out. A batsman is, in practice, only ever in or out but one can be theoretically out while still being in, or theoretically still in while reading magazines on the balcony. Take this facet away in the interest of truth and justice and the game is nearing implosion. Jones’ technological rationalism, while clearly terrifying in prospect, is also deeply flawed in itself. And this is comforting. During the last test Warne bowled a ball that turned to such a degree that Hawkeye (one of the priests of truth and justice) did not recognise it as a delivery, it stated fervently that the delivery did not exist. Time and time again, throughout the series, Jones himself was heard to overrule the technologically based presumption of in or outness. A clear edge that the snickometer (p.o.t & j)failed to record as such was still, to Jones, a clear edge. Which brings us to what Jones’ really believes (he is too stupid to know this himself) – the only truly just arbiter of in or outness is Dean Jones himself. What Jones’ desire really demands is that at every stadium around the world there be built a throne, high up behind the bowlers arm, atop columns. In this throne sits the emperor. From this vantage point, behind balustrades, Dean Jones raises his thumb, or turns it to point to the ground so far below.
When I was playing u/14s cricket for the Merimbula Cricket Club in 1989, Dean Jones came to our presentation evening. I won the batting aggregate trophy and had my photo taken with the emperor himself. That photo sat, and probably still does sit, proudly on top of a bookshelf at my parents’ house. Now all I ask is, not that it be burned, for that is the stuff of great contests such as the Ashes, but that it be fed to the silverfish. I wash my hands of you Dean Jones. You are a traitor to cricket. Usually I’d be all for a bit of betrayal but you are in no way a traitor who commands respect (you are no Brutus, no Judas, no Aguirre) – based only in lame stupidity and arrogance your turncoat beliefs hold no value.
