Ricky Ponting in the Australia A team shirt prized by Guardian contributor Adam Collins. There is a lot that’s wrong with cricket at the moment. The longest and oldest format is in a painful death spiral. Franchise leagues are cannibalising the game as the entire ecosystem teeters on collapse. James Vince’s cover drive is still not a regular feature of the England side.
But if I held all the power and could change one thing about the sport I love it would be this: I’d make it easier – much easier – to purchase vintage cricket shirts. I know that’s a pretty selfish desire, like wasting three genie wishes on material acquisitions when eradicating world hunger was an option. But I can’t help it. Acquiring old sports gear satiates me in a way that only a fellow collector could understand.
There’s the nostalgia; jerseys from past decades act as time machines. Simply touching the frayed fabric transports you to a moment in history as your vision is flooded with images from a distant age. A run-out 25 years old. A catch from before you were born.
Then there’s the sense of ownership. Mark McKinley, the late American psychologist and university professor, who also held the official world record for most clocks owned, said “people who collect ‘things’ are at the apex of consumerism”. He argued that the “aristocratic collectors” of the 18th and 19th centuries who hoarded fossils, shells and anthropological plunder were motivated by the same neurological tugs as cricket shirt […]
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