G Boycott b Philpott 84
R W Barber b Hawke 185

Fall of wickets 1:234 (Boycott) …. England won by an innings and 93 runs

Watching Bob

‘Crikey, were fantastic,
they went everywhere,
smashed all around ground.
I said you can’t play like that,
this is a test match, of course you can’t play like that,
you’ll get out before you’re in and then where will we be?
Only he did, kept playing like that, ball after ball,
over after over, even after I went down wicket an’ told him,
you can’t play like that, no one can, except he did, ball after ball,
over after over, past lunch, right through to tea, smashed them everywhere
without a glimmer of a chance. Crikey, it were fantastic.

‘Made eighty-four. Couple of edges, sharp, mind, at reasonable rate:
batting at test match level is never easy, specially against Australia
at Sydney. Of course the best place to play quicks is at the bowler’s end,
I’ve always said that. Not least when your partner’s making runs for fun,
less work for thyssen. Had the best view in the ground. It were watching heaven.
Crikey, it were fantastic.’

The Dug Out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow’d from the candle’s guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head …..
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

Siegfried Sassoon. St Venant, July 1918

It touches me as much as it did then, nearly forty years ago, when I first studied it for O-level. Two years ago I attended the Armistice Remembrance Parade and service in Bakewell.

11th November 2004

It’s Sunday morning, just beyond early light,
the first frost sharp throughout, enough
to strip each branch of their legion colours.

The sun shines low, a single clear signal
to head a day of remembrance
as Bakewell readies itself to remember.

The town marks time in its market square;
shops, pubs, cars, ourselves near enough still
as gravestones

till we leave.

Those with most to remember or forget
let us follow, in train, behind the lines.
Young lads in uniform, not quite in

or out of step. Their pudding girls grin
at the parlour door, full lace prinnies
ironed starched white, almost waving them off

lest they forget.

The bugler calls,
so we march, and march; sing and sing.
Commands barked against cold bare skin
wreathed more than breathing a long held silence.

Names read out

Their letters addressed in order of dispatch,
the last post and final delivery
They did not rush to catch.

Did it matter if the sun shone
when they went over the top?

Earlier this year I met with Mark O’Connor, a fine Australian poet who took part in the Sydney Olympics – not running a sub-four minute sonnet, Mark was the Olympic poet, reviving a tradition where the muse was part of the ancient games but lost till 2000. Here is an Australian view of 1914-18.

Pozieres Cemetery (WW1 France)

- Our fathers: did they dream as yabbying boys
on their farms in Deniliquin, Horsham, Scotshead, Yass,
of so deep a subsoil waiting for their bones?
. . . Instead two old men hobble down the rows
dreaming of young men whom they knew; while honour and folly
hold the ground under the gently piddling skies of France.

Written on The Somme, 1977 Mark O’Connor

What’s this to do with cricket? Had the French and Germans taken the game at all seriously would it have prevented 1870, 1914-18, 1939-45? Difficult to prove, or disprove.

In all seriousness by the time you read this I’ll probably be wearing a t-shirt inscribed ‘I speak of bats, balls & wickets’ at an Australian Test Match not near you in homage to Virgil’s kick-off line to his classical epic the Aeneid. It’s a way of telling people who I am and what I’m doing. The uniform of an Ashes poet in residence, in the same way cricketers wear whites, stewards florescent jackets or Tommies’ khaki battledress.

 
Who do you reckon will win? People ask me as though I might know. Don’t see how. I’m a poet, not a cricket correspondent, yet they do. And more interestingly they say ‘Don’t come back without the Ashes.’ It means a lot to a great deal of people. Probably far more than poetry.

Their Premier’s XI stuffed us in Canberra, watched by Mark O’Connor amongst others. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said, not needing to say more. Some would say that Howard’s selection for the PM’s XI is the best thing he’s ever done for the country. Could Graveney and Fletcher do worse than Brown and Blair? I couldn’t possibly comment, but note in the traditional equivalent fixture in England, the Australians play the Duke of Norfolk’s XI at Arundel (don’t ask why it’s Norfolk in Sussex.) Class, gentlemen and players, hearts of old England, play up, play the game. Yeoman stock Kevin Pietersen might reflect on duty and Sassoon to cut out the hook shot, but the signs are England have ferried their half-day international form from India to Australia.

One day we will lose. At least we’re consistent and consistency is everything, like they say about custard.

I’m not saying Freddie Flintoff and the Barmy Army would’ve finished off the Trojan wars inside three days, nor that injury-struck England on current form could do with Hector, Ajax, Achilles and Agamemnon on their side. More that cricket isn’t war. George Orwell said ‘sport is war without weapons’ perhaps because as Eric Blair he won a scholarship to Eton, with its regime of rugger, cold showers and the Eton Wall game – where the cream of the upper classes run straight into a brick wall. Deuced good practice for going over the top and running straight into a hail of machine gun bullets. You need leaders in those situations.

Jardine went to Eton. If sport is war without weapons, I think war is sport without love. Douglas Jardine led England on their notorious bodyline series, where within the laws of the game England bowled straight at Australian batsmens’ hearts – literally. Justification came from the same logic as the carnage of the trenches: it lay within the rules of war. Officer and a gentleman, leader of men etc etc but no sense of feeling, not even animosity. World War One and The Ashes were just something to be won.

The abiding image of last year’s series is Flintoff consoling Bret Lee at Edgbaston after losing two runs short of an amazing victory which would’ve all but kept the Ashes with Australia.

Some good, some bad, and some ordinary
people the wrong side of the law to hold
their breath against the creak of deck, rope and
canvas; fixed blank stars slowly alter course
to form a rough southern cross. Realign antipodes

Of lives, destiny and political aspirations.
Now history. Not then. No recompense,
No going back to a dense world of pre-Dickensian
poverty and country-house cricket, a betting game
played for highish stakes fixed by judge and jury
to add to their amusement. A stay of execution
meant no return till the end of each testing sentence

Whose surf, shore and hinterland are unknown,
prime and aboriginal – not the first southern cross,
secret rivers more muddied and altered by distant secrets.
Imprisoned by nothing but the land’s fresh horizons
how could all survive, endure and flourish?

Today twenty-two flannelled fools replay
Australia, set to court failure
on no other grounds.

‘We’re the right side, we’re the right side, we’re the right side over here.
We’re the left side, we’re the left side, we’re the left side over here.
We’re the middle, we’re the middle, we’re the middle over here.
You’re the convicts, You’re the convicts, you’re the convicts over there.’
Barmy Army Chant 2006-7 Ashes Series

Woolloongabba

Woolloongabba they come from far
they come from far to play to play
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

Waters whirling winds in our hearts
Wind still whirling whirling waters
Whirling fight talk place noisome boys
Warriors outdo warriors outdo out do

place to talk fight die share and drown
warrior-boy lacerated placentas
of fight-talk-hope in whirling waters
Woolloongabba Woolloongabba

According to Cricket Australia’s official guide to the Ashes Series, The Gabba, venue of the First Test at Brisbane, derives its name from Woolloongabba, which may mean “whirling waters” or “fight talk place” in the Aboriginal language of Woolloongabba

The Blacksmith and The Dancer
End of Day One Australia 346 for 3 A Flintoff 2 for 42 R T Ponting 137no

Thor’s great maul hurls down from the north
Red-hot ingots which bounce and spit
Off the anvil to thud pain and fury
Even into the cuffed gloves of his keeper
Three pitches distant from the beginning.

Glen’s Song
Day Three England 157 all out GD McGrath 6-50

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every small mistake, every risk you take
I’ll be watching you

Every single run
Every sledge when you turn
Every game we play, every ball you stay
I’ll be watching you

Oh, can’t you see
You belong to me?
How my hard heart aches
With every play and miss
Every waft you make
Every edge it takes
Every smile you fake, every aim I take
You’ll be watching me

Since you can’t play you’re lost without a trace
I yell alright, appeal straight in your face
You look askance, but your life you can’t replace
It feels so cold, walking back to your disgrace
Keep on trying, bunny, to touch my accuracy.

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every small mistake, every risk you take
I’ll be watching you

With apologies to The Police ‘Every Breath You Take’

The Lap Of The Gods

Andy’s on the blower to his missus in Jakarta
To accelerate the thunder due tomorrow afternoon.
She knows a rain doctor who dries out golf courses
To pilot this bad weather which can’t come too soon.

The Barmy Army take the Gabba with gamps and umbrellas
To make the most of Ricky Ponting batting way past his bedtime.
Queensland and England desperately need precipitation,
State and nation wager all on the imminent arrival of their Cloud Nine.

Of course it doesn’t come on schedule, ignoring devout Christian prayer.
Level Four drought measures squeeze the last drops of moisture from the bone-dry air.
“Conserve natural resources, drink tinnies to piss on those dirty washed-out poms”
Won’t help out-of-town dried-up apple farmers avec ces pommes sans terre.

Maybe a scientific warning of incipient global warming
Could turn Brisbane’s Gabba into a tidal lagoon.
Climatic chronology and geomorphology
Might well lead to underwater cricket all too soon.

Tomorrow it’s onto Adelaide, Mighty Mighty England already one down.
Drought restrictions still enforced; one side or the other about to drown.

England 2nd innings 293-5 overnight, still over 300 runs behind.
“Only rain can save Australia now” Barmy Army chant
“All Sunday they prayed in churches in Queensland for rain” ABC producer

I shan’t get out to this man,
It’s not just I’m English and he’s Australian,
I shan’t get out to this man.
It’s not just he’s done me too often before,
(last match a century in reach, just needing a four)
It’s hard enough to hit the ball, never mind score,
I shan’t get out to this man.
Earplug his incessant chatter,
concentrate on being a batter.
But don’t get too clever, over after over
I shan’t get out to this man.

Even if I reach fifty or more,
will I ever feel secure?
Australia’s most venomous creature
spits and coils with every ball,
I shan’t get out to this man.
Bones soak under a long hot shower,
having defended hour after hour.
The splash of water reechoes the mantra,
I shan’t get out to this man.

Catches Win Matches
Adelaide Day Three – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 312-5

I swear I saw it come straight off the bat
A small red dot growing to fill the sky
and ready myself to hold its descent,
feet well apart, steady, hand-eye practiced
co-ordination triggered to make the catch.
Arms above my head, a high-board
diver sure to end the ball’s spin, tuck
and revolutions with a perfect re-entry
to soft sweatless cushioned pail-like palms. Welcome
a mob of celebration. Mates stare. I dropped it.
I don’t see how. A safe pair of hands,
maybe I lost it coming out of the stands,
the red and white flags of Saint George
a dragon of distraction that swallowed
opportunity in a fiery display of Engerland.

Ponting’s hook was dropped at the boundary when he was his own age, early thirties.
He completed a big century. That miss probably lost England any chance of winning.

Hoggard
Adelaide Day Four – end of play England 551-6 dec Australia 513 England 59-1

At times it must be like climbing onto the moors,
dog tugging the lead when mists and rain slip paws.
Hard to see, know where you are,
stumbling into rocks, bogs, uncertain of paths
that could lead to nowhere or circles,
worried you’ll be out here beyond nightfall.
Whatever you do the elements take their toll,
sap the spirit till it seems easier to give up;
the familiar world twists cruelly strange.
You climb each hill, break its back before
it breaks yours, seven times
for one hundred and nine long runs, dogged
against these hounds you never let off the leash

Matthew Hoggard, a qualified vet, loves to take his collie onto the Yorkshire moors.

The Sick Team

Adelaide Day Five – Australia won by six wickets

Has spun out thy draw
Of English joy;
the Green Baggies’ will
Does thy life destroy

With apologies to William Blake The Sick Rose

Has found out thy bed
Of Crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Blake also wrote, of course, Jerusalem.

The English Disease

Like syphilitic medieval kings, England
suddenly went mad. No apparent cause,
no seeming attempt to stem noble pause
in bedlam’s frenzy to lose without stand.
Fumbling wickets tumbled from their own hand,
Misery’s drubbing unconceived before
they gouged their own wounds to bone. Running sores
of needless cuts, hooks, pulls and slashes banned
by dressing room: empty-headed retarded
births within teeming middle of crisis
induced by syphilis’s half-brother, hubris.
The day’s sure draw before all this started:
licentious defeats grow infectious,
chaste play’s honour fouled by these haughty lechers.

Initiated by Greg Baum’s remark on venereal disease and England batsmen the following day in The Sydney Morning Herald

Return To Understand
The Adelaide Oval Wednesday 7th December 2007 – the Day After

seats tipped-up, crowd roar gone
a cockatoo, songbirds call above
drumble of traffic, clang of scaffolders
dismantling temporary stands
you demolished with your batting

Day of The Dead

on the occasion of the 8th Baggy Green Dinner, Saturday 2nd December, 2006 Adelaide and in commemoration of the Fourth Test 1929

Seven days hard yakka, they rise from the Ashes,
individual heroes all in teams to test their
undivided mettle. Close finish at the close,
seven days hard yakka, still they rise for the occasion.

We worship the memory, the more their breaths are done
short or long in the field, Jackson to Bradman,
White to Hammond, all eleven of each side
split by a dozen runs after seven days hard yakka

in a field near a river watched by many,
attended by empire from a different era,
depression and bodyline still to come,
Adelaide will always welcome its heroes

whose ghostly sprigs clatter down
and up pavilion steps. Some quick, some slow,
some two at a time, some quiet, near funereal,
a tattoo as sure as any scorecard of exploits

to become players of today. You may say
they do not bear compare with yesteryears’
titans, god-bestowed elegance of performance
to mist over the grind of seven days hard yakka.

Turn for confirmation and you shall hear nothing.
Nothing from them, for other matters call
at the end of their days, boots, pads, bats
sweated armoury, undone yet not yet stowed away,

half-abandoned, stranded in an unwashed canvas
of labour against dressing room tiers
bear witness to these invisible spectres
off to share a few cool ones with posterity they created.

A Statto’s Note From The Fridaliser
“The highlight of England’s second innings of 383 was a 262-run partnership for the third wicket between Hammond (177) and Douglas Jardine (98) – on the least controversial of his two tours of Australia.” Cric-info. Hammond’s 177 was the highest score by any English batsman at Adelaide until Collingwood’s 206

If you’ve not seen it for yourself
think Worcester New Road, the view
across the River Severn, Torrens,
sun catching the water in its safe
hands, cathedral behind, an inspiring
article of sporting faith,
then add some. Disneyland
which folk round here rate England’s chances
between slim and Buckley’s

We shall see, shan’t we?

Left, deserted, undefeated
how might you have done more?

Chance your arm, get out sooner
yet not your fault for other’s failures
to heed circumstances as found.

The innings end might seem a rescue
from a desert island you never wanted to leave
but like Robinson Crusoe you too had to depart
having grown accustomed to a place and its ways.

Mike Hussey 74 no out, top score of 244

The driving gavel of Pietersen
sends leather to the benches
and silence in court.

Kevin Pietersen, 70, top score of 215

The Art of Batsmanship by Matthew Hoggard MBE

1. Play Straight
2. No fancy stuff
3. Hold the stroke
4. Especially if you miss
5. Don’t forget to tell ’em
Sod off

Every Australian

Second Innings Hayden hits 92.

Adam Gilchrist
Has often played and missed.
It’s when he connects
That the bowler regrets
ever bowling
into the hurdy-gurdy
whirligig six-hitting
machine.

Second dig Gillie hits 102 not out, the second fastest test century ever.

Grump, grump, grump I’m Glen McGrath,
Grump, grump, galumph, galgrumpalumph, I’m Glen McGrath,
I’ll bend your ear from here to the dressing room
And back again, over after over till you edge or miss
The point of my delivery.

Essex  Shoreline

Harwich, Frinton, Clacton,
Brightlingsea, West Mersea,
Maldon, Burnham, Southend.
From the scapula of the Stour
to the humerous of the Naze
and the Thames phalanges

Essex player Cook scored 116 second time round.

Rage and fear routs the calm certainty
behind all due care and attention
in adjudication summoning
benefit of the doubt
not to give you out.

Umpires’ fingers sawed Andrew Strauss’s legs at least twice during the series.
In other words made a mistake in firing him out. He accepts this without demur.
Methinks he protesteth too little.

Captain’s Dilemma

I need to bat well
bowl well, field well,
take all my catches,
help choose the team,
set fields, raise morale
when we’re down,
enthuse, cajole, console
and kick arse, royally
whenever necessary
and appropriately.

Ensure I do all I can
to ensure we play as a team
where everyone does the best they can
to win, or at least draw.
What on earth have I let myself in for?

A task that Hercules
would leave for others
more knowing of a hero’s
frailty..

Ode To Contest

Behind the bowler’s arm, scoreboard obscured,
Cloudy day, rain forecast but unlikely,
England’s prayers rest with God Almighty.
Two tall hopes nearly out before they’ve scored,
Fred survives, a tide of drives floods the boards,
Stupendous risk for six hooked off Brett Lee,
None down at drinks, game on, yet unlikely.
Braced danger-laced half-centuries yield applause
That courts the final strike. Five quick blows
Ends it all. All Australia rejoices;
Reclaims their men who reclaimed the Ashes
Against time and England’s proudest voices
Stilled. Half by half by half each candle’s ghost
Bleakens the dark hearth burnt out by your host.

Or better just to ride his mean machine
in hope of greater things to come
from their green and golden cockatoo’s coxcomb?

Warnie’s balls turn square, KP hit ’em in the air.
A six or out, there is no doubt.
You get a funny feeling one side’ll be reeling
Ev’ry time Warnie’s balls turn square.

A leggie of Clarrie Grimmett’s accuracy (+ some hair)
The wrong ’un, hard to pick, howzat when flummoxed through the air,
The flipper and the toppie, zooter and the slider
Plus the chatter: yells with looks, asides and pleas,
(the only time the bloke’s down on his knees.)
A Clarence Darrow George Carman at the crease,
No umpire on earth however stoney could say no,
Another baffled if reluctant victim tries to dilly-dally but he has to go.

Next-man-in’s almost out before he’s in.
The legendary magician’s mesmeric legerdemain’s sure to snuff him.
He knows he’ll have to face a flighty camisole tease:
A sinner’s glimpse of fleshy orbed fruit rouged to tantalise
Unveils a hirsute off-the-shoulder Australian hero’s chest
Full of tricks the antipodean baccus of temptation doesn’t divest
Before the silly fool with bat and pads knows he’s transgressed
The blond cherubim’s spinning finger umps him to rest.

Warne, S. K., made his Ashes debut in 1993.
A burgeoning waistline ever since indicates increasingly adequate social activity.
Shoulder strapped, lucky charms, his daughter’s bracelet,
The bald truth’s patently clear, he should really try to face it;
Whatever schemes and dreams of schemes are whirling on within,
The top of his head is not quite what it used to be.
(In fact qua this rhyme, each attempted betting shop remedy to hold back follicular entropy,
His pate, contra fullsome midriffs, pulls or appeals, is ready to turn woefully thin.)
Harum-scarums with mobiles and diuretics,
His simple way with words schtums clever-dick critics,
Through thick and thin he’s always gone back
To his mark: A three-card trick-sy four-step run

That flummoxed Fat Gatt with the ball of last century,
At the lees of his career, the ikon’s tank’s pretty near empty.
Lo, he gambols past Strauss, A. J., namely Seven Hundred
And another One. (Parade-book poms mentioned in dispatches:
A walk-on, walk-off part to line-up in honour of his last five-for.)
Forget the waist and the hair or your age. Heed guru Terry Jenner’s old adage
If you’re good enough, you’re old enough – Let him rip his ripper one last rip:
We’re all sure to miss all its extra extra supradextrous wristily hot-digity extra
mischievous zip.

Admidst chuntering trundling, The Grauniad’s Nietzsche-in-Chief
Metaphysical Mighty Mike Selvey sniffs
‘No game’s over till the fat boy spins.’
I’ll buy that, gimme me one more, Skip.
Good on yer, Warnie, hands ready on knees at slip,
Rub haloes with Saint Richie
At the end of any spell in the commentary box above.
May it please Father Time
To both Bless and Love
How your balls turned square!

aussie cars come with muscle for extra hustle
to cover the ground across the states.

Capitulation

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts. The moving hand
Having writ will move on. Each stroke of the pen
Is a mark to be recorded but not taken back.
It is edgier than the blade.

The English batsmen, nothing to lose
Having lost the greatest prize, play at playing.
Their strokes not worthy of themselves
nor their imagination. Out.

Bat under arm, an envelope sealed of a letter
They never wished to write:
An imposition in detention,
It is signed, sealed and delivered.
The long slow empty walk to a lost pavilion.

Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts,
The originals swear under their breaths
To weep real enough tears.

It’s bad to be defeated
All too easily.
We travelled here with such high hopes
To end in misery.
It could have been much worse though how
I cannot see.
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

Maybe it doesn’t matter
If we go and lose five nil.
We’ve already lost what we
aimed to fulfill. We can’t change
Those first three games,
There must be fifty ways
To lose the Ashes.
Fifty ways to lose the Ashes.

chorus:

Play the Australians.
Pick Geraint Jones
Ahead of Chris Read.
Don’t prepare for the Gabba,
Ignore Monty Panesar,
Madness at Adelaide,
Led t(w)o the Waca.

No village green or country paddock,
the mower misses the long grass wrapped
around the roller and peeling sight screens
pushed over for winter, benches tipped up,
in brass-plated memory of Roger or Ethel
who spent many a long afternoon
eskie or thermos to hand and oblivion
their world conversed by, yet reflected in the blank
replay lcd switched off from instant history
far above the swaying tree line
in Section Gods of this immense roman gladiatorial
arena past and future argue the toss with Janus
who should put thumbs up or down. At the heart of it all
lies an empty field; meadow hay scythed, grass grazed out.
Twenty-two yards, wicket to wicket,
tenth of a furlong, a chain
to tie bat to ball, a landscape
of former empire, medieval origins,
acres ploughed through the mind,
one hundred and five thousand assemble
here to worship.

Sydney
a city and land defined by sea, a far greater bridge:
Flinders’ circumnavigation barely left its moorings
from Donnington dominion. Seventy-five years
is nothing more than a life-time bearings.

Over and under, each passage changes yours
a fraction of a second or degrees more abruptly.
Switch clocks to a different time on the far shore;
the click of rail tracks, ferry boards and
circular quay calendar make each journey
a new year for someone far or near;
Greek, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Mediterranean, Slav, Thai
the city a pell-melled canteen of tongues,
not just UK nor colonial Australia,
an anglo-celtic nuptial ring,
a two century skin to countless millennia
of aboriginal lands: hard to come to terms with
what Cook first saw when missing harbour
or original cooks sixty thousand years earlier,
each passage bearing changed their being.

Every one of us history.

Today
after commissioned fireworks and similar paraphernalia
are dustcarted and dumped without the trace of sulphur,
the world becomes again what it was before,
edged on a little further from its origins.
Rail meets gunnel, steel the sea,
Kirribilli, Neutral Bay, Karra Point,
Mosman, Manly, Watson’s,
Pyrmont, Balmain, Parramatta,
all points compass Circular Quay.

Nothing’s left
in the dark seasons’ wind, rain, flood
tides and fogs, steamer horns stygian
clatter trains anchor chains stretch rust
knuckling the bridge under. Till there’s no memory
of loss to see. No arch, no towers, only the initial trade
from rock to rock to haul the heady scent of cargo;
oils, ghosts of spices, wheat, sheep, cattle, carts,
hides and fleeces, unwashed, chaffed, settlers too,
awash within the pattern book of antiquity’s development
the bridge paid its tolls to. Behind these knolls
spectral churches ring in celestial didgeridoo.

From the mist
watch the ferries dance their first footings
to dawn’s indigenous tune.

Not that you’d notice him for seeing,
the sort of bloke in the office
who always comes to work on time
to a tidy desk all parts done efficiently
yesterday.
Pays the drinks kitty and sweepstake
promptly
and tells the sharpest stories about the bosses
secretly
(not that you notice him for seeing.)

An Old Scorebox Operator Laments

The game isn’t what it used to be,
nor the creaking knees for climbing creaking stairs
to ring the changes, today they score too damn quickly
for me. Joints need regular lubrication and maintenance,
mine, not just the machinery.

O how I yearn my Slasher MacKay
and Bill Lawry. You could open, pour, lubricate a long cool one
before they dreamt of hitting off the square. Put your feet up.
O my MacKay and my Lawry of not so long ago!
Maybe fifty between lunch and tea, maybe.
Well-oiled by then, time enough
to find the papers, makings,
roll a gasper to inhale each ball
safe in the surety it’d die on my lips

before they turned the old scoreboard over.

Last week they pinned a sign above my head.
‘Living legends don’t smoke’ without mention
to Boof or Warnie – two of the worst.
Gilchrist, Symonds. Hayden and Langer
started it all under the gimlet eye of Waugh.
They score too damn quickly. Rickety
old me ricketing up those rickety stairs,
reels, numbers and boards. And sometimes
I forget to move on the score;
lost, staring at the beauty of it all.

No tears in their eyes
As they say their goodbyes.

Cartwheels

Dad, spend more time with us.
Pick up from school, act the fool,
be the long one instead of mum
when we don’t do what we should’ve done.

You’ve missed us, we’ve missed you.
Watch us grow up,
achieve the new.

Run, skip and dance
from dreams and memory
to your final match, here.

Born after you first tugged down
the baggie green:
stare beneath its brow
at the games we play on the pitch,
your last catch
our farewell to you.

Shane, Glen, Justin
your turn to watch,
spectate, not make the spectacle.

Our turn to show
what we can do,
a little girl
her blue dress cartwheel

Cartwheel Cartwheel Cartwheel.

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow’d from the candle’s guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head …..
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

Siegfried Sassoon. St Venant, July 1918

It touches me as much as it did then, nearly forty years ago, when I first studied it for O-level. Two years ago I attended the Armistice Remembrance Parade and service in Bakewell.

11th November 2004
It’s Sunday morning, just beyond early light,
the first frost sharp throughout, enough
to strip each branch of their legion colours.

The sun shines low, a single clear signal
to head a day of remembrance
as Bakewell readies itself to remember.

The town marks time in its market square;
shops, pubs, cars, ourselves near enough still
as gravestones

till we leave.

Those with most to remember or forget
let us follow, in train, behind the lines.
Young lads in uniform, not quite in

or out of step. Their pudding girls grin
at the parlour door, full lace prinnies
ironed starched white, almost waving them off

lest they forget.

The bugler calls,
so we march, and march; sing and sing.
Commands barked against cold bare skin
wreathed more than breathing a long held silence.

Names read out

Their letters addressed in order of dispatch,
the last post and final delivery
They did not rush to catch.

Did it matter if the sun shone
when they went over the top?

Earlier this year I met with Mark O’Connor, a fine Australian poet who took part in the Sydney Olympics – not running a sub-four minute sonnet, Mark was the Olympic poet, reviving a tradition where the muse was part of the ancient games but lost till 2000. Here is an Australian view of 1914-18.

Pozieres Cemetery (WW1 France)

- Our fathers: did they dream as yabbying boys
on their farms in Deniliquin, Horsham, Scotshead, Yass,
of so deep a subsoil waiting for their bones?
. . . Instead two old men hobble down the rows
dreaming of young men whom they knew; while honour and folly
hold the ground under the gently piddling skies of France.

Written on The Somme, 1977 Mark O’Connor

What’s this to do with cricket? Had the French and Germans taken the game at all seriously would it have prevented 1870, 1914-18, 1939-45? Difficult to prove, or disprove.

In all seriousness by the time you read this I’ll probably be wearing a t-shirt inscribed ‘I speak of bats, balls & wickets’ at an Australian Test Match not near you in homage to Virgil’s kick-off line to his classical epic the Aeneid. It’s a way of telling people who I am and what I’m doing. The uniform of an Ashes poet in residence, in the same way cricketers wear whites, stewards florescent jackets or Tommies’ khaki battledress.

I’m not saying Freddie Flintoff and the Barmy Army would’ve finished off the Trojan wars inside three days, nor that injury-struck England on current form could do with Hector, Ajax, Achilles and Agamemnon on their side. More that cricket isn’t war. George Orwell said ‘sport is war without weapons’ perhaps because as Eric Blair he won a scholarship to Eton, with its regime of rugger, cold showers and the Eton Wall game – where the cream of the upper classes run straight into a brick wall. Deuced good practice for going over the top and running straight into a hail of machine gun bullets. You need leaders in those situations.

Jardine went to Eton. If sport is war without weapons, I think war is sport without love. Douglas Jardine led England on their notorious bodyline series, where within the laws of the game England bowled straight at Australian batsmens’ hearts – literally. Justification came from the same logic as the carnage of the trenches: it lay within the rules of war. Officer and a gentleman, leader of men etc etc but no sense of feeling, not even animosity. World War One and The Ashes were just something to be won.

The abiding image of last year’s series is Flintoff consoling Bret Lee at Edgbaston after losing two runs short of an amazing victory which would’ve all but kept the Ashes with Australia.

Sport is war with love because winning isn’t everything.

Who do you reckon will win? People ask me as though I might know. Don’t see how. I’m a poet, not a cricket correspondent, yet they do. And more interestingly they say ‘Don’t come back without the Ashes.’ It means a lot to a great deal of people. Probably far more than poetry.

Their Premier’s XI stuffed us in Canberra, watched by Mark O’Connor amongst others. ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said, not needing to say more. Some would say that Howard’s selection for the PM’s XI is the best thing he’s ever done for the country. Could Graveney and Fletcher do worse than Brown and Blair? I couldn’t possibly comment, but note in the traditional equivalent fixture in England, the Australians play the Duke of Norfolk’s XI at Arundel (don’t ask why it’s Norfolk in Sussex.) Class, gentlemen and players, hearts of old England, play up, play the game. Yeoman stock Kevin Pietersen might reflect on duty and Sassoon to cut out the hook shot, but the signs are England have ferried their half-day international form from India to Australia.

One day we will lose. At least we’re consistent and consistency is everything, like they say about custard.

But Professor Fiffle-Faffle has devised equipment to help England supporters in the one day games for the rest of the tour – The Rose-Tinted Raybans

They turn blue caps into green, and green into blue – and they work for Australians too, as their team of world-beaters disintegrates before their eyes. A prototype has already been tested by the England team manager but alas he remains ever dismal.

The game is quickly over. Third ball Pietersen half-forward hangs his bat out to edge McGrath to Gilchrist. John Arlott once described a beaten batsman as looking like a Henry Moore statue. KP is one of those ghost buccaneers crewing The Black Pearl from Pirates of The Caribbean, all powers drained from body and soul.

England yet to score, Read calls Panesar for a quick single, Monty run out by a foot, failing to ground his bat as Symonds’ throw uproots off-stump.

My ticket states Obstructed Brewongle, which sounds too painful for words, so playing seat-hookey I’m surrounded by blokes in check shirts, the Paddington Chess Club, who don’t play chess. It is a means to secure bookings at pubs and clubs – chess players aren’t reckoned to wreck the joint or welch on bills. I see their point, thinking of the look I received at the desk of the Bowls Club Sydney (an honoured guest at the 23rd dinner of the Sydney Cricket Writers) when asked where I was staying in Sydney. Don’t think the Redfern Ex-Crims Association would find it quite as easy as the PCC to make bookings. Their Chief Oppo, King Louis and their blues singer Delilah sign my hat. I like the Paddington Chess Club, there is something of Guys and Dolls, Damon Runyon, about them. When I get back to Blighty must put them in touch with the Serious Cricket Watchers Society, of which I’m the founder member.

Couple of streaky fours, Read ct Ponting b Lee 4, “That’s how to do it, Justin,” his captain might say “Remember the next time you play.” England +20 for 8

Billy the Trumpet plays ‘Yesterday’

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Half the problem with English cricket is a belief only in yesterday.

From about that time Billy goes into the Manfred Mann number Pretty Flamingo…

Win Back The Ashes

Back home you’re sure to ask how we lost the Ashes
Were our players not as good?
Didn’t they play as they should?
All quite true, doesn’t say why we lost the Ashes.
Negativity wasn’t right
It let them tonk us out of sight.
It’s a dream all of Australia realised,
We should try it, cos then we wouldn’t be so surprised
At what might come true.

One sweet day we’ll learn how to win back the Ashes
Then Australia will envy us
Instead of saying we’re pretty wuss

Let’s fight back to win the Ashes
Win back the Ashes.

Mahmood lbw McGrath 4. Caught on the crease, not moving forward or back. My elder brother Daniel who nearly exploded yesterday because the English batsmen hadn’t learnt from earlier mistakes is probably seeking succour in eating his teatime sandwich as the end nears. (‘Teatime sandwich?’ Yes, Aussie Bloke, the Fines are incurable optimists, gluttons for punishment as well as nosh) England still + 20 but for 9

Drinks. Crowd Security stop Delilah singing the Chess Club song. As Peter White whose house in Redfern I’m staying in (where the first Prime Minister of Australia grew up, Bowls Club Sydney, please note) said this morning ‘It ends not with a bang but a whimper’ T S Eliot, I say. The Wasteland, we concur, apt for the current state of English cricket, and its writer’s name is an anagram for toilets, which more or less sums up summing up the cricket from an England perspective. I wrote a blues at Perth when the Ashes were finally lost

The English Ashes Hopes Blues

We don’t need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell us the Ashes are gone.

The Aussie version would start

The Australian Ashes Blues

You don’t need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell you the Ashes are gone,
But winning 5-0 doesn’t smack of triumphalism.
You thought you were pretty good, but were up against the best
Came here underprepared, and we just did the rest.
You don’t need no Aussie Scoreboard to tell you the Ashes are gone.

It’s Australia’s Day now. A few Harmie blows delay the inevitable, Anderson skying McGrath. England all out + 45.

Langer and Hayden come out to knock them off. At first it’s hard yakka. About as hard as the ball Harmison bruises Langer with. Justin must be thinking ‘No more analgesic sprays, ice-packs, and tenderness turning over in bed.’

‘It’s an absolute privilege and honour to wear the baggie green cap one hundred and five times and I’ll really miss it,’ he says at the ceremony afterwards, and his cap is about old and faded as Steve Waugh’s.

When this Ashes Tour is Over (tune of What A Friend We Have In Jesus)

When this Ashes tour is over
No more cricketing for me,
I shall put my commentator’s mike on
To give expert summary on tv.

No more ducking Stevie Harmison,
No more edging Hoggie over the slips,
I shall kiss the gold of my green baggie,
God, I’ll miss this whence it leaves my lips.

‘It could go into the afternoon,’ I say to the bloke from Perth, who remembers Langer’s father, a good West Australia player too. ‘I hope not,’ he replies.

On cue Hayden on-drives Mahmood for six, and after a consultation with his opening partner to determine who shall have the honour of it, off-drives the winning hit. The crowd go crazy, in the middle they remove helmets and embrace like long-lost brothers after a hard-fought war has ended in victory.

The crowd stay behind to celebrate the 5-0 Strinewash, and the end of three great players’ careers. “Thnx” says the text painted in the turf

Thnx Justin, Glenn and Shane

No tears in their eyes
As they say their goodbyes.

Emotional men. Their passions controlled
Their destinies to excel themselves
For mates and their country.
Weeping publicly is for Oscar ceremonies,
Not the proud bearers of the Baggy Green.

Tears came alright
At times of uncertainty, injury,
Loss of form and controversy.
They wussed from our eyes
Alone, facing torment
To achieve after failure.
Each sob made us stronger,
Bolder, harder, far older
And yet more kind,
Appreciative of hard yakka.

Thank you, Australia

No tear in our eyes
As we say our good byes.

Warne and McGrath – I want to write Shane and Glenn, but I don’t know them, and more the point, they don’t know me – pose with their kids for the media. You can see that Shane will always be a kid. I think how important the Ashes are to both countries. In establishing Australia as a nation. Her first prime minister, Edmund Barton, brought up his first three children in the house where I typing this. Perhaps in a room which was a nursery. Australia as a state didn’t exist till 1901. Before then it was a set of separate states, and to bring them together was a hard-fought effort, certainly harder than the current series, which began in 1882. Cricket and the Ashes helped form Australia – and continues to do so. Will it help the development of England?

The ceremonies continue, where all pay homage to the support of the Barmy Army (What about your Fanatics, Australia?) with Captain Andrew Flintoff going over to bow to them.

Oblivious children of the Australian players gambol and frolic on empty parts of the paddock. I think of my own childhood, parents and also Freda, my brother Paul’s partner, her friends and family, grieving her sudden loss on Christmas Day. Her funeral is today. Think of her in heaven looking down upon us, smiling.

Cartwheels

Dad, spend more time with us.
Pick up from school, act the fool,
be the long one instead of mum
when we don’t do what we should’ve done.

You’ve missed us, we’ve missed you.
Watch us grow up,
achieve the new.

Run, skip and dance
from dreams and memory
to your final match, here.
Playing games on the pitch
our farewell to you.
A blue dress cartwheel
our turn to show
what we can do.

Cartwheel Cartwheel Cartwheel.

The Branson pickle Ashes farrago continues. In this morning’s SMH is a story about a couple who flew Virgin to watch the cricket only for Virgin to mislay their luggage (“If you poms keep losing the Ashes, not surprising your airlines lose luggage.” Aussie Bloke) It happens, Virgin paid for couple to buy some clothes to cover the hiatus, but couldn’t find cricket tickets which the couple put in their stowed baggage – until the SMH published (“More fool them,” says Aussie Bloke, “best sewn into your undies if they’re not in the Bank of England soap-dish deposit box.”)

Now it gets interesting. An unattributable source your intrepid Ashes poet in residence met this morning said Sir Richard Pickle wanted to make the announcement at tea on the centre of the hallowed turf. Apart from clashing with the Boonie/Beefie drag races, it’s just not cricket – where Australia are 236 for 5, after fortyfive minutes, Gilchrist already 29 in the mood to Waca Waca. Panesar pegs back progress beating Symonds in the flight, clean bowled 48, 260 for six.

Warne sweeps the next ball for four, then six, not out off a glove when he was, and …..Australia cruise past England’s 291 with 14 off a Harmison over, two overs to go before the new ball. Throughout this series England have sought to defend rather than attack with the old ball, a reversal of their approach in 2005. Australia have scored at about two runs a minute during the last half-hour.

I try to defend the MCC retaining the Ashes Urn with the Aussies behind me. ‘Awe, we should have them, just to piss off you guys.’ I imagine something of the same attitude exists at Lords.

Billy The Finger Bowden saws off Gilchrist’s legs caught behind when the noise was the bat hitting the ground, not the ball 318 for 7

Billy Bowden
Pulls the crowd in
With extravagent gesture
And the crook of his index finger

Another keeper’s victim, the Frindaliser whirrs – straight through after lunch Flintoff gets Lee ct Read, 10 dismissals out of 18. Warnie reaches his fifty, still to get a test match century. The Barmy Army make as much noise as they can but ‘Warnie, Warnie’ reverberates around the SCG when he gets to his fifty, a lacing off-drive off Anderson.

Panesar goes round the wicket, Warne hits to point, practices the shot, and then places again just fine of point for four. Couldn’t England guess what was going to happen?

Clark skies Mamood for 38. 398 for 9

Enter the Gatorade truck to a standing ovation. McGrath joins Warne in a last stand effort of legends to get Warnie his maiden century. Warnie flip-flops down the pitch to Panesar, stumped the length of Bondi Beach by Read top score 71. Australia 398, another stumper victim. Eleven in the match to date. The Frindaliser, having frindled, Frindles on.

England start at -102 for none. Clarke top-edges Bing Lee for a skier -97 for none. Strauss ducks his head into a Bing bouncer and falls to deck. He seeems okay, readers, thank God they wear helmets.

Strauss lbw Clark 24, England -47 for 2

Bell ct Gilchrist b Lee 28, England -38 for 3. A needless flash, the Frindaliser whirrs.

Pietersen and Collingwood try to steady the ship without becoming becalmed. McGrath bowls eight overs, six maidens, none for six. Pietersen changes bats, has he ever been out to Stuart Clark, who induces Collingwood to edge to Hayden in the Gulley for 17, England -4 for 4. Pietersen and Flintoff at the crease, shades of the end at the Waca. The Frindaliser is unmoved.

Flintoff is stumped millimetres out of his ground off Warne for 7. England +11 for 5 in real money. Superb piece of work by Gilchrist, the Frindaliser goes into orbit.

Panesar comes in as a nightwatchman. In many ways the best day’s cricket of the series.

An Old Scorebox Operator Laments

The game isn’t what it used to be,
nor the creaking knees for climbing creaking stairs
to ring the changes, today they score too damn quickly
for me. Joints need regular lubrication and maintenance,
mine, not just the machinery.

O how I yearn my Slasher MacKay
and Bill Lawry. You could open, pour and drink a long cool one
before they dreamt of hitting off the square. Put your feet up.
O my MacKay and Lawry,
Maybe fifty between lunch and tea, maybe.
Time enough to find the papers, makings,
roll a gasper to inhale each ball
safe in the surity it’d die on my lips

before they turned the old scoreboard over.

Last week they pinned a sign above my head.
‘Living legends don’t smoke’ without mention
to Boof or Warnie – two of the worst.
Gilchrist, Symonds. Hayden and Langer
started it all under the gimlet eyes of Waugh.
They score too damn quickly. Rickety
old me ricketing up those rickety stairs,
reels, numbers and boards. And sometimes
I forget to move on the score
staring at the beauty of it all.