2001 & A Bit - Plot

Plot

It is a more permissive era, and life has become dull and boring for the world at large. Since everything is now permitted, nothing is exciting, and even the popular violent spectator sport of "rollerball" is treated as passé. Jimmy Hill, who is now a very old man with a long beard, greets sports on his programme with the same level of boredom as the rest of the population.

The New Goodies, led by Bill Brooke-Taylor, want to add some excitement to the lives of the people, and to get them excited about something again. In the attempt to add more excitement to 'rollerball', Graeme Oddie (a leading competitor of violent sports), and some of his equally violent friends, modify the game to 'rolleregg', a combination of an egg and spoon race and 'rollerball'. Graeme Oddie is the leading competitor for 'rolleregg'.

Bill Brooke-Taylor wants to resurrect the ancient game of Cricket, with the idea that that something which is truly boring might be enough of a novelty to be interesting to the population. He asks his father, Tim, about the MCC. Tim decides to take his son to the retirement home for old cricketers the "MCC Sanctuary'", where Bill and Graeme are now residing in their old age. To travel to the retirement home, both Tim and his son, Bill, wear automatic motorised shoes.

At Lord's Cricket Ground, Tim Garden finds a tiny urn full of ashes in a cupboard. Assuming that the urn was full of dust, Tim Garden empties the ashes onto the floor. Then, he finds a discarded cricket box, and, assuming that it is a hat of some sort, he places it on his head. Tim Garden also puts the stumps and cricket bat to a new and novel use.

With help from the former members of the MCC, cricket is revived, and the commentators for the match are Bill Brooke-Taylor, Tim Garden, and a robot. However, people who go to a cricket match to find out what it is like, become quickly bored — they have been reared on far more violent games. So a compromise is reached — the "rolleregg" side, led by Graeme Oddie, is pitted against the aging MCC members.

After being continually struck on the body with cricket balls bowled by the cricket players, the humiliated "rolleregg" players decide to use an enormous robot to bat from, but they are still defeated by the MCC members. After a final searing victory against Graeme Oddie by the aging Tim and Bill, the MCC members inherit the Earth and retain "the Ashes" — and the MCC members are still marching on – somewhere.