There are times when it\u2019s possible to keep sport in a sensible perspective, and then there are weeks it challenges your very sanity. This has felt like one of those.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the US president erecting a cage\u2011fighting octagon in his back garden<\/a> is \u2013 given the state of the world \u2013 not that crazy. After all, it\u2019s probably less tacky than paving over the Rose Garden<\/a>, or the proposed ballroom\u2011slash\u2011droneport<\/a>\u2011slash\u2011triumphal\u2011arch<\/a>. You say a World Cup referee has been denied entry to the US<\/a> because he\u2019s from Somalia? Well, really. Anyone who didn\u2019t see that coming hasn\u2019t been paying attention.<\/p>\n No, I submit that the truly mindboggling performance of the week goes to England cricket alone. The Test captain, Ben Stokes, stayed out too late<\/a> and broke his own curfew after his team\u2019s much-needed win against New Zealand. He might have got away with it if it weren\u2019t for a pesky Saracens rugby player throwing a punch that landed on the England team\u2019s security guard. Without that inciting incident, would we even have known he\u2019d stayed an hour past his bedtime?<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible not to feel sympathy for the man. It was his birthday last week. He\u2019d been teetotal for the best part of a year. The curfew was in place because of his teammates\u2019 indiscretions, not his own. And when he was suspended pending investigation, the first person in line to replace him as leader was Harry Brook: the very person fined and given a final warning for clashing with a nightclub bouncer in New Zealand<\/a> and then lying about it.<\/p>\n Even the ECB, which decided to face out an Ashes defeat without calling anyone to account, wasn\u2019t prepared to do that. Instead, it falls to Joe Root to take the reins of the England team<\/a> once more. Generous soul as he is, it\u2019s unlikely he is thanking them for the opportunity. He has already had his fill of a gruelling role in which failure \u2013 an entirely unavoidable part of any sport \u2013 is treated like a crime against the people.<\/p>\n So, if you\u2019ve found the Stokes story utterly wearying, you\u2019re not alone. There\u2019s a sense of familiarity and inevitability about it. England cricket has a long tradition of shooting itself in the foot; it\u2019s also well versed in dropping leaders for the wrong things. Just ask Mike Gatting, who lost the captaincy in 1988 on the flimsiest of pretexts: a tabloid sting rumoured he had spent the night with a barmaid during a Test against West Indies and despite Gatting\u2019s protestations of innocence the chairman of selectors used the excuse to give him the boot.<\/p>\n Ben Stokes\u2019s heroics helped England to win the World Cup final in July 2019. Photograph: Matt Dunham\/AP<\/p>\n Perhaps it is cricket\u2019s class-ridden origins that have made the game especially censorious about individual moral failings, often while allowing institutional ones to continue unchecked. Lord Harris once described it as \u201cmore free from anything sordid than any game in the world\u201d and the Victorian attitude that the sport is somehow a virtue in itself still prevails in endless references to the numinous Spirit of Cricket<\/a>. Being an England captain \u2013 or even just a top player \u2013 has always come with an intense scrutiny, as any of those who lined up at Lord\u2019s for the ground\u2019s 150th Test celebrations would tell you.<\/p>\n