Everyone has blown hot and cold about the England’s bowling plans, not to say bowling going astray at the MCG last week.
Ian Botham blew hot, probably because he was angry about the England performance.
Angus Frasier blew cold, more important things in the world, probably because he was resigned to England’s performance.
Matthew Hoggard, the different player [...]
A Survival Guide to the Loss of the Ashes, and similar English sporting failures.
Fifty Ways
(after Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon)
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.
A [...]
Sorry Western Australia, can’t say I was taken too much by Perth.
“Sheffield has never much cared for its history and buildings, and one day it will regret it” Sheffield Telegraph 1907.
“Darkness insists that Sheffield is a city, a metropolis; daylight reduces it to its component parts, to a series of bloated villages, unfolding across the [...]
Analysis of Failure
This is for cricket lovers, especially English cricket supporters, who wonder why the Ashes were lost so readily after taking so long to regain.
Previous Performances
We did better than the last time down under. The 2002-3 team lasted eleven days in their attempt to wrest the Ashes. At least this time it was fifteen. [...]
Everdismal Fletcher was more dismal than ever. Inside his gloomy hotel room he wondered how he could revive his own and his team’s spirits for the last two Tests. His Christmas Eve stocking lay empty. ‘A test indeed,’ he said to himself ‘we need poetry!’ Turning to his regular bedside companion “The Coach’s Story: Ashes [...]
21nd December 2006, Fremantle
Don’t think I’m the right bloke to talk about spending Christmas anywhere. Someone who’s a lapsed atheist of jewish descent isn’t go to go overboard on the holy trinity son of god born in Bethlehem thing.
By and large I’m a pretty jovial chap most of the year, but Christmas with its enforced [...]
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 [...]
Balance The World On The Edge Of A Blade
We’re 33,000 feet above a globe flying from one point to its antipode. Do the Australians refer to the British Isles as the Antipodes? In terms of relative size the antipodean equivalent of Australia is Europe, including Russia to the Urals. It’s all a question of geography, [...]
One Day We Will Lose
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month we commemorate those lost in two world wars, the first of which was the war to end all wars. Poets write about war. Homer’s Iliad is the story of Troy, the Trojan Horse, Paris, Achilles, and Helen the fairest [...]
