Cricket is supposed to be a game

but, at some point, it became something else.
It is no longer a game. It is big business. It is win at all cost.
I remember cricket as - well, cricket. 
First of all it was the game that the "big kids" played in the back road that went past the railway cottages down to the railway line. The ball would sometimes land on the tracks - if it had not landed in someone's back yard.  Someone would be sent to get it - often the  "little kids" after one of the older boys had looked to see if there was a train anywhere. (There were not that many trains.)
Hours were spent playing this form of cricket. There weren't enough children for  two cricket teams, sometimes not even enough for one. Children would come and go. I can remember the one occasion on which the ball actually landed near me and I was allowed to pick it up, put it in the little red tray on the back of my tricycle and pedal it over to the bowler - to cheers from all concerned. The "big kids" must have been feeling very kind that day. 
When we moved my brother and I discovered that "cricket" was now played in the back lane behind the house we were living in. It was the lane that the local baker used to get to the small area where he kept his delivery horses. There were corrugated iron fences on either side of the laneway and there was the endless symphony of the ball being hit against the fence...a dull thud for the tennis ball and a sharper, deeper sound for an actual cricket ball. My brother and I were not welcome at these games. I was, of course, a girl and totally  hopeless anyway but my brother was considered "too small". All the other boys his size (he had yet to start school) were also too small. Girls were tolerated only if there were not enough boys to do the fielding. (Girls were never allowed to bat or bowl.)
My paternal grandfather would listen (or doze) to the cricket commentary on the radio occasionally. The Senior Cat dislocated his shoulder trying to bowl to one of the boys in the class he was teaching at the local school. 
We moved again. The Senior Cat was supposed to teach games but the boys taught him the finer rules of cricket and gave up completely trying to explain football. He left them and one of the local farmers to it. My brother was always the last "man" on the cricket team and the last resort on the football team. 
And so it went on. Cricket was played everywhere. It wasn't always  a full team. The quality and length of the pitch varied. Balls got lost in the bog and the water marshes in one place. Someone nearly trod on a snake getting the ball from a ditch and one boy fell off the shoulders of another trying to get the ball from the roof of a garden shed.  There were bumps and bruises and arguments.
It was all cricket.
I didn't actually play cricket of course - until I went off to the summer camps for physically disabled children. As one of the Guides I had responsibilities there and one of those was a very serious one indeed. We had the all important "Ashes" match - against the national team. Sir Donald Bradman would organise this.  Every child who wanted to participate was on the team of course but not all of them could even throw a ball. If they couldn't throw the ball that was my job. Everyone thought that was fair because I couldn't throw a ball as well as some of the children who could throw a ball. (There was one boy in a wheelchair who was a positive demon for getting the ball where he wanted it to go.) 
So, I played "cricket" - I "bowled" one day for a long, lanky lad who had no control over any of his limbs. Sir Donald was batting. Just as I let the ball go his attention was distracted by someone in the surrounding crowd. He turned and the ball landed just where it should have landed. He was out! There was an almighty roar from the crowd and M... nearly fell out of his wheelchair with excitement. 
It is the only time in my life I have managed to actually get the ball to go where it was intended to go. I know I'll never manage it again. I didn't cheat. It was just sheer good fortune. Sir Donald didn't cheat either. He gave a little bow and a shamefaced sort of smile and handed the bat to, I think, one of the Chappell brothers. Under the rules of that cricket game M... and I moved on too. I don't remember the rest of the match except that it was good fun. It was real cricket in that sense. Nobody cheated. It was just a game.