Dear God,

Why this fascination with American politics? You and I both know that God’s Own County is Yorkshire, England. I’m not having a go, America is an alright sort of place, but there really is no comparison.

So come on, God. Focus on things that matter. When is Yorkshire going to win the County Championship?

(For the benefit of your readers: this is about cricket. Cricket is the only thing God still really follows on earth - he said so once in the BBC radio programme Old Harry’s Game.)

- Geoff

Geoff,

American politics interests me because it is a developing, dynamic game. The stakes are quite high, given the power of the United States. There is some aesthetic value to watching the politics that take place within the husks of empires of yesteryear, yes, but in such cases as the quest to find the successor to Tony Blair, global fortunes don’t quite hang in the balance so much.

You’re right that I do follow cricket to some extent, though it’s not the only thing I pay attention to. To claim so is the conceit of the BBC. On a cosmic scale, cricket has about the same consequence as ping pong. That’s not an insult to cricket, really. In the reproductive rituals on some planets, ping pong matters a great deal. Nonetheless, ping pong and cricket don’t have extra special holds on my mind. I am still omnipresent, after all these years, you know.

When will Yorkshire win the County Championship? It’s a simple matter of religion.

Surely, you don’t think that it has escaped my notice that the symbol of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club is the lotus blossom. The lotus blossom is a symbol of the Buddha.

The Buddha preached detachment from the cares of the world, good and bad. Well, that’s not exactly a winning attitude for a cricket club, is it?

You can have a bunch of players contemplating the fundamental lack of a difference between winning and losing, or you can focus on winning. The Yorkshire County Cricket Club has chosen to focus on the transitory nature of victory.

That, and I’ve placed a little curse on Yorkshire cricket just because I am, as the Old Testament suggests, a jealous and angry god. If Yorkshire would just develop a new logo that incorporated a burning bush, I think they’d find that the County Championship would soon be theirs.

- God

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 6:07 am and is filed under All God's Advice, Divine Rivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.