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The cricket team I play for is decidedly posh. We're talking stockbrokers here -- not the landed gentry, admittedly, but in a BBC survey they would show up as "metropolitan elite" rather than the "precariat". At most matches, at least three of the XI will show up wearing cravats and, even with just the vestige of a regional accent, I clearly represent a rogue demographic of which I'm very conscious.
Even when the team's captain selects his field placings for the new bowler, I'm always looking for evidence of sociological bias at work if I'm consigned to fielding at long leg or third man, where most of cricket's manual labour -- the scampering, the retrieval and the chucking -- takes place, as opposed to the distinctly more upper crust positions of, say, first slip, where one can chinwag conspiratorially with the wicketkeeper, or mid-off, where one can give the ball (not a turd, for once) a casual polish and lob it back underarm before offering the bowler skipperly tips.
Stockbrokers like cricket. Many are drawn from the minor public schools that are the bedrock of the nation's cricketing population and, during the summer months, traders spreadbet runs more than stocks. The whole Lords and Oval test match palaver would grind to a halt were they not supported enthusiastically by the corporate entertainment budgets of the broking fraternity.
Playing fields of Eton
It would be ridiculous to stereotype (which, of course, I'm about to) but traders clearly fancy themselves as hard-hitting batsman, the bat an extension of the ego and the punting book. Salesmen excel as all-rounders because they're no good at anything really, just chipping in with a bit of this and that, here and there. Researchers, meanwhile, always seem to think of themselves as slow bowlers, the self-styled masters of spin. Draw no conclusions from this, but the chap who always ends up umpiring for us is a compliance officer.
The one player in our team who is splendidly-attired but utterly...