Cricket is a professional game, we all know this. Some of us may not like it, others hate it with a fiery passion. This is big business now, sponsors are king, image rights are gold and TV deals are oxygen.

Do you know why this is a big business? Because of us. Each and every one of us is why this game is professional – we watch it, read it, smell it and breathe it. We make the game, the players, the officials and the sponsors money and what do we get for all this: slow over-rates. It’s a slap in the face.

Almost all teams do it, whether they have spinners or not. The half-an-hour extra on a Test day is automatic now and we are the ones who miss out.

Instead of watching cricket we see worried looking captains running up from slip pointing in all directions. Bowlers following through past the batsman and then dawdling back to their mark. People running onto the field with everything from moist face washers to complicated mathematical sums. And let us not forget the sightscreen, something that should be idiot proof, but instead we have to wait for faulty electronics to get rid of the ad that is promoting the series sponsor while it delays the series itself.

Enough.

The ICC could stop this. They could suspend captains. They could end people coming on the field between overs, they could initiate the old fool-proof sightscreens.

They don’t. They know how much we hate it but they apply small fines, let captains off the hook and generally contribute towards the problem.

So perhaps we have to do something. You can join the International Jihad on Slow Over Rates or IJSOR for short. Sign here.

Sign the petition and then tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell Tony Greig, just do something, because this is our game, it isn’t some faceless suit at the ICC’s game. We make the game special, without us the players would have no one to admire them and the sponsors would have to find another way to flog their products.

We deserve respect. We deserve cricket.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC