The oil firm Aramco, which is primarily owned by the Saudi royal family, underwent a discreet rebranding three years ago. The company’s recognizable emblem, a white star on a blue and green backdrop, was left unchanged. However, the blue was made somewhat bluer, the green slightly more green, the typography was changed to grey lowercase, and the term “Saudi” and the Arabic script above it were quietly erased.
Sam Curran stood on this logo as he prepared to bowl for England against Pakistan in their final Twenty20 World Cup warm-up match on Monday, with a small pile of sawdust at his feet.
A belt of Aramco billboards, as blue as the sky and as green as life, glowed into the Brisbane night at the boundary’s edge. Curran inspected the ball in his hands, began his hop-skip approach, and focused his attention on a series of Aramco-branded stumps some 40 yards away.
Does Curran recognize the existence or relevance of these images? Let’s take a chance in the dark: most likely not. Frankly, why would you do that? To be an international cricketer in 2022 is to be innocently decorated with a hodgepodge of nonsensical phrases and symbols: some ironed on the front of your shirt, others painted on the field beneath your feet, and some cluttering the margins of your player-of-the-match check.
This is simply the plant and animal life of your globe. To expect a gamer to question or even examine it would be like asking an ant crawling across Guernica for its opinion.
Instantaneously, unnoticed and undetected, Aramco enters the room, pulls up a chair, and melts into the painting. A few days ago, the International Cricket Council announced it was awarded one of its top-tier sponsorships to a company believed to be responsible for extracting the oil that has produced more than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1965, that has recorded lavish profits as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and that is owned by a regime that has sanctioned the widespread use of torture and murder for its purposes.
Still, the ICC press release focused on the future. Numerous references were made to the emphasis on “sustainability and innovation,” and Aramco recycling devices would be put at each of the seven T20 World Cup venues.
“We are happy to welcome Aramco into the family of ICC worldwide partners,” the chief executive, Geoff Allardice, gushed, with the beaming pride of a man who thinks he is not so much losing the ICC’s moral authority on human rights, gender equality, or the climate problem as he is acquiring a son.
This is not a sea change or the crossing of a line of no return. Nor are we merely discussing the creeping infiltration of contaminated money into cricket by authoritarian countries, huge polluters, and cryptocurrency corporations with a disastrous environmental footprint. One of the consequences of sport’s adoption of immoral money streams is the detachment of words and messages from their meaning, with administrators and governing organizations issuing increasingly ludicrous remarks.
Two terms are conspicuously omitted from the International Criminal Court’s announcement of its Saudi oil financing. The first is “oil,” while the second is “Saudi.” Do you believe they knew? Should anyone inform them?
It is possible that the average World Cup viewer would be mostly unaware of the origin of this harmless lowercase word plastered at midfield, wrapped around the boundary rope, and printed on recycling machines.
This is how the name “Aramco” is easily and innocuously absorbed into the cricket lexicon: the DLF maximum, the Popchips Superchargers, and your Aramco player of the match.
In the 1990s, at its Shaybah oil field, Aramco pioneered horizontal drilling, an uncommon and extremely expensive technology. Instead of drilling many wells in multiple locations, the concept is to establish a lattice of underground wells going sideways from a single bore, some of which are miles long, to tap deep-lying oil reservoirs that would be inaccessible if drilled vertically.
On the surface, there appears to be little activity. The ground beneath your feet is however being steadily drained dry by an invisible network of tentacles and drill bits directed by sophisticated computer modeling.
In this manner the world evolve. Out of sight, out of reach, beyond your understanding and comprehension, and emanating from within.
What you observe – a golf tournament, an Anthony Joshua jab, Bruno Guimares mounting a challenge, and Curran licking his lips and clutching the ball for a cross-seamer – is a minute portion of the entire. A palimpsest of competing words and images whose cumulative effect is utter bewilderment and prevents any alternate vision from arising.
In 37C heat, a Durham one-day international was played. Byju’s. The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. The cooperation between the ICC and Aramco represents a common commitment to innovation and sustainability. Emirates. West Indies require 98 runs from 68 balls. Aramco said in a statement released on Sunday that India has significant long-term growth prospects. Booking.com. Singh against the left-handed batters is a smart matchup.
Close your eyes and you can hear everything simultaneously. Some report that the constant, monotonous, and low-frequency sound of an oil drilling rig helps them sleep.
