Equipped with an anecdotally rich, statistically overwhelming and socially diverse game, they resort to making their sport “relevant” to the 1990s with unwanted and intrusive technical frippery (what next? “Box-vision”, giving us close-ups of a Courtney Walsh special hitting Robin Smith in the knackers?).The fan experience as related in books like Peter Tinniswood’s Brigadier series and Marcus Berkmann’s much-acclaimed Rain Man – not to mention the flourishing cricket fanzine Johnny Miller 96 Not Out – is an indication of the humour and vitality of cricket culture in the 1990s as seen by a generation of thirty and fortysomething fans brought up not in the cigarette- card era of cricket but the tabloid era But TV pooh-poohs it all. But such gimmickry perhaps illustrates the lack of progress affecting TV cricket coverage.TV has made great strides in reflecting the depth and breadth of football and its culture beyond packages of highlights, with the likes of Standing Room Only and Fantasy Football League. It’s given us the surreal silliness of cameras in wickets, microphones in the crease, “double-ended” coverage of play from alternate ends, and animated wildfowl appearing on screen when batsmen score ducks.
The BBC (whose cricket coverage is now provided, in association with Sky, by TransWorld International) has spared us that latter gem, but we’ve nonetheless been saddled with the rest of these “innovations”, all in the name, one presumes, of the Packerite motion of “progress”. No matter that the scoffed-at simplicity of existing presentation was perfectly adequate and reflected the essentially understated nature of cricket’s charm. Such lordly and patronising ignorance has characterised TV’s attitude towards the game ever since. As with many English cricketing calamities, one need only look to Australia to apportion blame.

When the perfidious Kerry Packer tore cricket apart in 1977 for the benefit of his TV station Channel 9, he consequently imposed upon the shell-shocked game a form of broadcast presentation which, we were assured, would make cricket “palatable” to a “modern” audience. Cricket on the box has become almost as unwatchable as your average England middle-order batting collapse. Question: what are Englishmen worse at than playing cricket? Answer: televising it. Happy alienation.’The Nightmare World of Franz Kafka’, 2-30 Aug, National Film Theatre, London SE1 (0171 928 3232). But things perk up on Friday with a big-screen outing for Terry Gilliam’s splendid futuristic comedy Brazil (6pm).
Highlights in coming weeks include Jim Goddard’s Metamorphosis (right), the 1958 version of The Fly and two works of the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer (Faust and Alice), plus two movies sure to set film buffs at one another’s throats: Sam Fuller’s tale of a reporter infiltrating a mental hospital, Shock Corridor – cult classic or pretentious tosh, you decide – and Orson Welles’s The Trial, which the director thought “the best film I ever made”, something audiences weren’t so sure about. Sadly, there is no film version of Kafka’s Dick, and Bennett’s Kafka screenplay, The Insurance Man, isn’t on show, but the NFT has dug up 14 films that bear witness to the writer’s influence. On Wednesday, the series begins with the biopic Kafka (8.30pm), Steven Soderbergh’s disappointing follow-up to sex, lies and videotape.

No matter that Kafka had little eye for posterity, the cult of the tubercular Czech shows no sign of abating: the “Nightmare World of Franz Kafka” season is just its latest manifestation. But what does Kafka do?” Sydney: “Find the whole thing a trial.”

In the unlikely event of Kafka being reincarnated at the National Film Theatre this week, expect a similar reaction. Alan Bennett once made a rather good gag about Franz Kafka’s posthumous fame in his play Kafka’s Dick. Kafka, reincarnated in the 1980s in the home of a suburban English insurance clerk called Sydney, discovers that he has become a literary giant. His executor, Max Brod, did not burn his manuscripts as asked Kafka is horrified.