Ashes Poetry

Australians need not go much further than this. Winning is joy shared by all, except the loser. Loss is more private, if not personal….

First few overs Pietersen and Flintoff play and miss, then suddenly just before the half-hour Freddie goes beserk. Hitting straight and hard, no meaningless wafts. Thirteen off Lee’s first over, thirty-odd in two dozen or so balls, three hundred up. Enter Warne.

Forget Dr Fiffle-Faffle’s fiffle-faffle.
Best hope is the poms to bowl like drains and bat like kings, relying on Ponting’s Declaration Manifest to eke out a draw.

144- 2 another Ponting century and Aussie win in the offing, when he drives at a quick one from Harmison ct Jones 75. Hope once more springs eternal.
On the way in I bump into a waist-coated Liverpudlian widow from Adelaide and Paul Burnham, capo of The Barmy Army. ‘Where have you been?’ he asks. Busy [...]

A 11.30 kick off is leisurely, certainly compared to 10am at The Gabba. For fans this makes a big difference. It means more drinking in the evening, and yet more drinking in the morning too.

All confusion – the tickets say 10.30 start, the official Cricket Australia official Ashes Tour Book 11.00, we kick off at 11.30. The Waca (not Aborigine but Western Australian Cricket Association) is ramshackle. More Headingley with decent weather and palm trees. If The Gabba was the Strineship Enterprise, then The Waca is Thunderbirds Are Go. [...]

For the England cricket team and supporters, the first two test matches of this series have been the worst of times, and the worst of times.
The game at The Gabba was bad enough, the team clearly underprepared, but they’d batted well from the second innings at Brisbane till the last morning at Adelaide where they [...]

I cannot tell a lie. Unlike England I didn’t lose anything at the Adelaide Oval yesterday, and certainly not my mobile phone. Drop-kicked straight out over the George Giffen Stand one bounce into the River Torrens with my trusty left thong, weaker foot too.

In Acerbic Rememberance
of
English Cricket
which died at The Adelaide Oval
on
Tuesday 6th December 2007

Bitterly lamented by a large circle
of sorrowing friends
and acquaintances

RIP

n.b. The body will be cremated
and its ashes retained by Australia

if its spirit fails to fight back

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sick Team
Red Rose, thou are sick!
The Indivisible Warne
That beats you in flight
When you bat without gorm
Has spun out [...]

The analysis of a body in order to establish cause of death, and thereby prevent similar recurrences
“Like medieval royals with syphilis, they went suddenly mad… But the real crumbling was in the English minds.”
So wrote Greg Baum in Wednesday’s Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/columns/how-could-it-be-england-falls-apart/2006/12/05/1165080950737.html
I took this to start my sonnet The English Disease in Requiem for [...]