The Friday Blog: That's the Spirit!
We had just completed the second trip of the morning to the Sandwell Council tip. The bin collectors’ dispute has entered its second month, and, as you might imagine, it was a bit of a free for all. Next stop was Erdington where there was what seemed to be an absolutely massive lighting warehouse, capable of catering for your every need in illumination (we are having things done). Of course, when you get there, it is nothing of the sort, so we had to resort to heading to Ventura Park at Tamworth, arriving just before the Sunday shopping experience turned proper full contact. In the end all we learnt was what we do not like, and that non-replaceable LED lighting units which will last five years, honest, are just a planned obsolescence scam disguised in an eco-warrior cloak.
Anyway, as we were pulling back on to the M5 for the cross-city journey, the build up to the final day’s play in the second Test at Lord’s was just starting on the wireless. The Doctor is indulging me by feigning an interest in cricket. She is asking all sorts of questions, about the conditions, where the umpires are from, who are the best players etc. As play was about to start, she asked me what was going to happen today. “It will be all over in half an hour” I confidently predicted. Of course, it was not, and we had another absolutely unbelievable day of drama and controversy. Later in the afternoon, she asked me the question about Bairstow. Was he out? Simple enough question, but a far from simple answer. Yes, he was out, but… The great thing about cricket, and why so many of us simple minded men can be absorbed in it not just for hours but for days at a time, is that it is never always straight forward. Even being out is not straightforward. At the highest echelons of the game technology is deployed to help answer the question of whether somebody is out or not. It is the same technology that guides missiles down people’s chimney pots. And it does not work very well. You can ask the technology if somebody is out and one of the answers it gives you is “Umpire’s call.” Umpire’s call is the technology’s version of “Well, I don’t really know.” You might be out, you might not be out. It depends on what the Umpire thought originally. If they thought you were out, you are still out. If they thought you were not out you are still not out, even though the technology gives the same answer in both cases.
On Sunday, Bairstow was out. But. He was dismissed by a ploy that might have been devised to remove the best player on the other side in an Under 11s match. One of the reasons I love the game so much is that there is the wonderful intangible that is “The Spirit of Cricket.” Without the Spirit, it is just another game where, when the hormones kick in, skullduggery, sharp practice and cheating take over. In the level of cricket I used to play, it means that if you knew that you had hit the ball and it had been caught but the Umpire had not seen it, you give yourself out anyway and walk off. It means if everybody believes you have taken a clean catch, but you know that it arrived on the half volley, you say so and tell the batter to stay where they are. It can also mean withdrawing an appeal to the Umpire to ask if someone is out if it does not feel quite right. It was what Australia should have done on Sunday with Bairstow. Even the PM thought so.
The Spirit of cricket is fiercely defended in many quarters. If you could nominate the least radical place on the planet, where good manners and politeness are not merely expected but are actually prescribed, it would probably be the Long Room at Lord’s filled with members of the Marylebone Cricket Club on a matchday. Such was the perceived breach of the Spirit on Sunday, that the ultra conservative MCC members greeted the incoming Australian players in a manner more befitting supporters when England play home games at Wembley. There were extraordinary scenes as the Australian players were subjected to a stream of verbal abuse, and, apparently, even some jostling. Let me be clear, making contact with players is absolutely not on, they must feel safe at all times from the crowd, if not each other. Mind you, I am not sure how worried 11 super fit, professional, antipodean athletes were about having their good looks spoilt by a bunch of blazer and tie wearing blokes with an average age some way beyond retirement. The MCC issued an apology to Cricket Australia for the behaviour, but I can not imagine that Cricket Australia will be issuing an apology for breaking the Spirit. It is a shame, because Lord’s was full to capacity, and it being the final day, meant that last minute tickets were available, so many of those there would not have been the usual, well-heeled, champagne quaffing suspects. Leaving the ground, parents would have to explain to children and partners to non-cricketing spouses, why they had been denied a grandstand finish and why three mature gentlemen who might well be retired bank managers or serving magistrates, had been suspended form one of the world’s hardest to join clubs for behaving like drunks in an early Irish novel. They would have given the same answer I gave to the Doctor. It was simply not the Spirit of cricket.
If you had not been following the social media output from ABHI Towers (really?) or the news on just about every print and broadcast media outlet, you may have missed that Wednesday represented the 75th anniversary of the NHS. Personally, I had the enormous privilege of celebrating the day as a Board member of the wonderful Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. If you are an aficionado of LinkedIn, you will have noted that it can never be said that our hospital, which delivers more MSK activity that any other, does not know how to throw a party. Our Medical Director busted some myths about the fine motor skills possessed by orthopaedic surgeons, and delivered an exemplary delicate demonstration of how to remove small pieces of wood and elastic bands from a plastic model torso with a pair of kitchen tongs. Our Exec teams dressed as Land Girls, Home Guard officers and, for some reason, P.G. Wodehouse. There was a test your strength machine, one of those things where you have to pass a hollow device over a wibbly wobbly metal track without the two meeting, and afternoon tea with commemorative NHS75 mug and spoon. The charming live singers orchestrated a communal jitterbug lesson which, happily, started just after we had to return to the Boardroom. Peter Ellingworth joined the great and the good at Westminster Abbey for a moving ceremony of thanks, which featured a spontaneous ovation for Keir Starmer, but not the PM. Make of that what you will.
There were party poopers. As I was trying to come round in the bathroom and remember what report I had to deliver, the Today programme announced the rather sombre news that the Chief Executives of three leading Think Tanks, the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation and the King’s Fund, had sent an open letter to all political leaders with a doom-laden message about the future of the NHS. That piqued my attention because they are three people that can make me feel really stupid. But, interestingly, by the time I had emerged from a day of new license arrangements, productivity initiatives and the saga of our new EPR (I have said too much already), of the open letter there was nothing on the news wires. It took me a little while the next day to look it up, and I can understand why. Bearing in mind that these people are my policy heroes, and Nigel Edwards once talked me out of doing a PhD. He does not know it, but I was set and then I had an hour with him chewing the fat, and thought what is the point, I cannot think at this level. But this letter, which dropped off the news agenda by 7am, said nothing. I was massively underwhelmed. All it said was that everything had gone wrong in the last decade due to a lack of investment and we needed a long-term plan. Hardly Sherlock Holmes, and in fact, we do have a long-term plan for the NHS, it is called the NHS Long Term Plan, and, published in 2019, it is the most coherent piece of policy I have come across in 20 odd years of thinking about these things. We just need to find out what happened to it. Last week we saw a long-term workforce plan, ok there are some holes and a lot of so whats? But it is a plan, and its long-term. Savid Javid (remember him?) said the NHS model was bust, and had some support from Tony Blair. Both are wrong. The model is not bust, but the execution could be an awful lot better. We heard how much better at our Parliamentary reception on Monday evening, and it is all of you that have the solutions to make it better. Please do not ever forget it.
On Tuesday, it was ABHI Board day. Before the business started we were joined by the Chairs and Vice Chairs of 20 of our member groups. Opening up with Robotic Assisted Surgery, who talked about their national work as well as a survey done to assess the effectiveness of the group, we then heard about the incredible work going on and led by you, our members. The conclusion was, overwhelmingly, that there was so much mutual learning to be had between groups, and what we were doing collectively was making a real difference, not least to the patients we serve. Afterwards, over coffee, the ABHI Secretariat and Board members looked at each other and said Wow. It was the best session I can remember being part of at ABHI. It was the Spirit of cricket.
