It's Just Not Cricket

"It's Just Not Cricket" is the debut single of The Twelfth Man, a series of comedy productions by skilled impersonator Billy Birmingham. 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. The piece is centered around fictitious commentary of a match between Australia and Pakistan.

"It's Just Not Cricket"
Single by The Twelfth Man
from the album Wired World of Sports
Released1984
Recorded1983-1984
GenreComedy
LabelEMI
Songwriter(s)Billy Birmingham
Producer(s)Billy Birmingham
The Twelfth Man singles chronology
"It's Just Not Cricket"
(1984)		 "Marvellous!"
(1993)

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. In a 2014 interview with Sydney Morning Herald, Birmingham explains "The year before I’d written "Australiana" [also a No. 1 hit] for 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 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".[1]

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
Chart (1984) Position
Australian (Kent Music Report)[2] 1

Year-end charts
Chart (1984) Position
Australian (Kent Music Report)[3] 2
gollark: *That* much? To be honest that seems kind of excessive.
gollark: Hmm, that seems like a more sensible way to do it than my check-every-10-minutes idea, actually.
gollark: Oh, that's okay then.
gollark: Running an individual process for all of them sounds really inefficient.
gollark: I would just have a process check the database for 4-hour-old ones every 10 minutes or something.

See also

References
  1. "It's Just Not Cricket: when The 12th Man went No. 1". The Sydney Morning Herald. 23 June 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  2. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, NSW: Australian Chart Book. p. 315. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. NOTE: Used for Australian Singles and Albums charting from 1970 until ARIA created their own charts in mid-1988.
  3. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, NSW: Australian Chart Book. p. 436. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.


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