<\/p>\n
I<\/span><\/span>f you were listening carefully you might just have learned the answer to an ancient riddle in Melbourne, where Australia finished off their whitewash of England in the Contractual Obligation one-day international series on Tuesday. They won the third game by 221 runs<\/a>, the largest ODI defeat in England\u2019s history. A record, then, and not the game\u2019s only one. There were 10,406 paying spectators in the ground, the smallest recorded audience for an Australia one-day game at the MCG.<\/span><\/p>\n It turns out a team falling down when there\u2019s no one around to hear it do still make a sound and it\u2019s something like Jos Buttler\u2019s maudlin after-match interview. \u201cI\u2019m not fussed at all about the results, to be honest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The old joke is that the English, not being a spiritual people, invented cricket to give themselves an idea of eternity. Buttler looked and sounded like a man who had been condemned to spend a thousand years in purgatory. He could easily have tried to disguise his disdain for the game, but he seemed too weary to conjure up the usual platitudes. \u201cThe landscape of cricket has changed dramatically over the last few years, we\u2019re in a different time,\u201d he said. \u201cLots of people are talking about how to keep bilateral cricket relevant and this is a good example of how not to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n