The "apology" issued on behalf of England's players was one of the worst I've ever seen public figures issue (and that's saying something) and it is right castigate it as Mark Baldwin does very well in today's Times. To manage to apologise (sort of) for something without saying what you are apologising for is a new low in PR. This summer has been blighted with the dreadful overhype of The Ashes with the preposterous and entirely unnecessary #RISE promotion. The England and Wales Cricket Board clearly take us for fools who need to be pushed to support England by pseudo-patriotic overkill, a plethora of patriotic songs and overt suggestion that The Ashes is about grudge. The packed Test Match grounds showed that the cricket loving public doesn't need simplistic and barely concealed anti Australian tub-thumping to buy a ticket! We'll come and support our team and don't need to be told to do so, or why.
Virtually every statement of the ECB is nuanced, sanitised and full of obfuscation. The statement on the incident at The Oval is a classic of its type. Of course it is not the Players' statement at all. It was drafted by some PR suit who was told by the ECB apparatchiks to draft something which failed to admit the offence!
I actually don't think that the players peeing on The Oval pitch (if that is what they did) when pissed as farts is a particularly heinous crime. Unpleasant, juvenile and dim-witted perhaps but few of us have not done things we regret when one over the eight! Far more serious is the ECB's predeliction for cover-up and their assumption throughout this summer that we the spectators can be patronised and lied to. That's the truth, but don't expect an apology!
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