"It's Just Not Cricket" is the debut single of

The Twelfth Man The Twelfth Man (also known as The 12th Man) is the name for a series of comedy productions by Australian satirist Billy Birmingham. Birmingham, a skilled impersonator, is generally known for parodying Australian sports commentators' voices. A ...

, a series of comedy productions by skilled impersonator

Billy Birmingham Billy Birmingham (born 18 January 1953) is an Australian humorist and sometimes sports journalist, most noted for his parodies of Australian cricket commentary in recordings under The Twelfth Man name. Early career He wrote the pun-laden comed ...

. The single topping the charts for three weeks in June 1984, and was the second highest selling single in Australia in 1984 behind " Dancing in the Dark" by

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American Rock music, rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Nicknamed "the Boss", Springsteen has released 21 studio albums spanning six decades; most of his albums feature th ...

. The piece is centered around fictitious commentary of a match between Australia and Pakistan. The track has never seen a full-length re-issue since the 2000 release of Wired World of Sports.

Background and release

At the time of "It’s Just Not Cricket's" release, Birmingham was running his own music marketing consultancy and helping manage fellow comedian

Austen Tayshus Alexander Jacob "Sandy" Gutman (born 17 March 1954), better known as Austen Tayshus, is an American-born Jewish Australian comedian. He is best known for the 1983 comedy single "Australiana", a spoken word piece which is filled with Australian ...

. In a 2014 interview with

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

, Birmingham explains "The year before I’d written "

Australiana Australiana is anything pertaining to Australian culture, society, geography and ecology, especially if it is endemic to Australia or has reached iconic status. It includes people, places, flora, fauna and events of Australian origins. Austr ...

" lso a No. 1 hitfor Austen Tayshus and I wanted to see if I could do something for myself. One day I went out in my backyard with a pencil and paper and wrote what would basically become the six or seven minutes of "It’s Just Not Cricket". Some mates came around that night and asked what I'd been doing all day. I played them the dictaphone recording and they got a good laugh out of it". adding "I’d actually worked for

EMI Music EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), c ...

back in 1975 and I had them as a client of my own business, so it was an obvious choice as to where I’d take this thing". A track heavily based on "It's Just Not Cricket" involving a match between England and Sri Lanka was featured on the 1999 UK compilation "It's Just Not Cricket (Volumes 1 and 2)".

Track listing

*Side A "It's Just Not Cricket" (Part 1) - 5:44 *Side B "It's Just Not Cricket" (Part 2) - 4:25

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References