Inverted Pyramid of Piss over Headingley

I have not read “Jake’s Thing” by Kingsley Amis but my curiosity has been sufficiently aroused for me to add it to my reading list. One of the characters of the book, Geoffrey Mabbott, a buyer from a chutney firm, introduces the concept of the “inverted pyramid of piss.” As explained by Rory Sutherland, “The Wiki Man,” in one of his usually engaging articles in the Spectator, the inverted pyramid comprises, “a great parcel of attitudes, rules and catch words, resting on one tiny point.”  In a world or ever-increasing data, Sutherland argues, it becomes increasingly easy to find data to support your preconceptions.  As he put it, “take a small meaningless correlation and build a whole urinary edifice on top.”  We see this process everyday in the silos of social media intercourse.

Anyone taking an interest in the respective discourses of the new Board at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Professional Cricketers Association and, of course, the cross-party Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, led by Julian “Robespierre” Knight MP, cannot but be amazed at the volume of “evidence” arising in support of the allegations of racism at the first organisation on the list.

Take the latest session of the cross-party committee held on Tuesday 8 February with the Professional Cricketers Association, elegantly attired, and taking the stand. As part of my general service training as a General Duties Officer in the Royal Air Force, I was required to know how Air Force Law operated and, in particular, understand the rules of evidence and assumed such niceties would be observed by a body as august as a Parliamentary Committee.  I spent time as an Officer under instruction at Court Martial and I conducted two major accident investigations, one involving the Prince of Wales, no less, so I think I can spot a leading question when I see one or recognise hearsay when I hear it.  Now a lot of the accusations levelled against Yorkshire may be true – I have no idea since I have not seen any particular evidence.  I only know what I have read in the press and in that respect I am no better off than the exquisitely manicured Non-Executive Chair of the PCA, Julian Metherell, who admitted that he didn’t really know what was going on at Yorkshire, only what he had read in the press.  Nevertheless, when Julian Knight bowled an inviting underarm long hop outside the off stump, “what do you think of the people who for their own very particular reasons are trying to derail the (virtuous) process at Yorkshire,” Metherell cut viciously over the in-field and opined that there was no place for such people in the game and that they should be driven out.  Knight concluded the session by saying that Metherall’s reply was “the answer we were looking for.”  Quite so!

Such is the mounting urinary edifice threatening to neutralise the hapless members of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.  I am a member of that Club and I happen to believe that Lord Patel’s proposals to reconstitute the Board are bad for the membership.  Following the debacle of the illegitimate Emergency General Meeting, if the proposals are put to the membership in the future I will vote against.  I wish to make clear that my attitude has nothing to do with the allegations of racism and the inverted pyramid of piss above them – that is another matter.  But if cricket’s officialdom wish to conflate the two issues then, Julian Metherall, please don’t bother to drive me out, I know where the door is, thank you.