When it comes to making friends on foreign fields the Barmy Army plants flags of conquest all over the world. Although it exists primarily to organise overseas tours for followers of the England cricket team, this regiment of happy wanderers is essentially a glee club for people who enjoy watching cricket abroad in the winter months.
Would the Barmy Army have acted so decisively, one wonders, if someone had declared support for the party led by Zack ‘the tit-whisperer’ Polanski?
Established in 1995 by folk who considered themselves ‘barmy’ to support players who lost more Tests on the road than they won, this rag-tag-bobtail operation swiftly developed into a commercial apparatus of some clout. Wherever England played cricket people were drawn like moths to a flame.
‘Everywhere we go-oh’, they sang, ‘people wanna kno-oh’. They still do. The Barmies make cheerful ambassadors, and knock over a few pennies for local charities wherever their chariot takes them. It costs a few bob to follow England round the world, and the players do not always reward such loyalty with winning performances, so they should be commended.
Billy Cooper, the trumpeter, is the most audible foot-soldier. His instrument issues an invitation to the dance, so to speak, and nobody is shy about joining in. From Adelaide to Ahmedabad you will find Englishmen and women cavorting in the stands as wickets tumble and catches go to ground.
In this gathering, for which the adjective ‘diverse’ may be used in its truest sense, all have equal rights of audience. ‘From all walks of life’, as the cliché goes. So it is astonishing that the Barmies have now chosen to disown a man who for two decades held the rank of colonel.
Vic Flowers, a 74-year-old joiner from Oldham, was the regiment’s very own ‘greatest of all time’. Everywhere they roamed he could be found, togged up in an extravagant top hat and a T-shirt that presented the cross of St George as a badge of honour. He was a bit of a show-off, but they all act up when there are cameras around.
Now, however, it is a case of ‘no Flowers, by request’. Because he has put himself forward as a Reform candidate in the local elections on May 7 he has been banished, like Falstaff. A Barmy Army press release has made it clear that his views do not represent theirs, a statement so obvious it hardly needs to be said.
For 30 years Flowers followed England to all corners of the cricketing globe, in the company of fellow Barmarians. It is possible that some of them knew of his views, just as he may have known theirs, but what of it? He voted for Labour when Tony Blair was the party’s leader, he says, and has changed his mind. So have thousands of others, many of whom continue to ‘serve’ in the Barmy Army. Will they be cashiered?
A spokesman let it be known that Flowers was not ‘an active member’, which flies in the face of all available evidence. For as long as people have taken notice of the Barmy Army he has been as active as anybody, and they were happy to receive his support.
The spokesman also said there would be no further comment, which sounds rather grand. Why comment in the first place? Would they have acted so decisively, one wonders, if someone had declared support for the party led by Zack ‘the tit-whisperer’ Polanski?
With cat-like tread the Thought Police are picking their way through the ginnels of cricket. Earlier this year Phillip Hodson, a former president of MCC, was fined £1,000 by something called the Cricket Regulator for making a couple of salty jokes at a dinner at Scarborough CC last summer.
A former vice chairman of Yorkshire, Hodson was also relieved of his position on the county’s cricket board. A poor way to repay a man whose money helped save the club after its most recent period of turbulence. ‘Thank you for your millions. The door is over there.’
As for MCC, which owns Lord’s and still acts as custodian of the Laws of Cricket, it has covered the famous pavilion with a vast cloak of virtue. Diversity is the name of the game, and they want the world to know. Their intentions are not all bad. Neither are they all good. It’s a cricket club, not a social experiment.
The Barmies love the game of bat and ball, as much as they love jolly japes in the bleachers. They’re a happy bunch, who should stick to the Sondheim Doctrine: ‘weighty affairs will just have to wait’. No posing, gentlemen. It just isn’t cricket.
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