This is written over two months after the event – a lovely fortnight straight-after in Brittanny, two weeks of my right/write arm paralysed with arthritis, then a month sorting out the effects of a manic episode, intervened. (Yes, folks, yrs truly is a bi-polar, or manic-depressive. It goes with the territory, ‘All poets are mad,’ [...]
Over two months have passed since the destination of the Ashes was determined, so I’ve eschewed going back to my notes and rather reflect using memory as a sifter.
Overall it’s been a crazy series. At Cardiff, Australia should have won by a country mile except they let Anderson and Panesar bat through to an unfeasible [...]
At the time it hurt. If you support England you don’t like to see any English batting collapse, and not two in percussive innings, interspersed with bowling pretty well as bad. With a week or more to think about it – it still hurts!
It wasn’t quite as bad as the fifth day collapse Tuesday 6th [...]
I’ll talk about three areas here, all inter-related.
Watching the Western Stand, it struck me that the Hogarthian vision of The Times’ Thunderer is scarcely more than jolly japes in prep school dorms. Midnight feasts, ragging of other houses and schools, hiding Screwbottom Jnr’s spectacles, building a periscope from pop bottles to peer up Matron’s drawers [...]
The papers are full of it. Shock, horror, people drink at test matches. This is also known as lazy journos not looking for a story. Richard Whitehead ‘The Thunderer’ in The Times is perhaps the worst http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6736701.ece
“Those not used to these occasions might think they have slipped into a Hogarth canvas.” My fourteen year old daughter, [...]
Odd test match, this. Were it not the Australians, nor being one-nil up in the series, nor the memory of 2005, most people would say it was a pretty dull affair, more or less ruined by the weather. Which would be more or less true, certainly from half-an-hour prior tea on the last day, when [...]
No two ways about, if you’re an Australian Fanatic, Lord’s was a dreadful result, nearly as bad, perhaps worse than drawing at Cardiff. Never mind the seventy-four year old Lord’s voodoo going down the clacker – historical records for Australian test teams are only there to be beaten. What’ll hurt is the failure to nail a dead-cert win at [...]
From capital to capital, Cardiff to London. The difference could hardly be greater. It was the first test ever in Wales as well as the series, whereas although any test at Lord’s is significant, especially against Australia, it was when all is said and done, just another test. There were no signs directing people to [...]
For England to draw was far more than a fluke. It halted a run of five heavy defeats in a row. Add a sixth to the list, and losing would no longer have been a habit, but fast becoming an addiction.
They were protesting about Ryanair’s dodgy employment practices. One of their daughters had paid £2500 to be trained up to work for Ryanair, only to be sacked the night before before she started earning. If I were her da’ I’d have been livid, and if I were going to the cricket the next day…
