Sunday, March 23, 2008

Spring springs on England

Spring has sprung; grass is riz. At last, we Englanders can crawl out of our hibernation. The daffodils rise. The birds tweet. The hedgehogs roll freely across the motorway of their eventual demise.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, now we can be sure that England is finally turning the tide, putting the months of cold and darkness behind us, and look forward to a sunnier future.

Ryan Hairybottom proved to us that the prospect for England is rosy. Not just rosy. But tulipy and chrysthamumy too. In a sterling display of bowling, he took seven wickets for just 47 runs.

This is better than the hearing the first songbird of spring. An England cricketer who does well on the international scene is like the joy of a foot massage and a cup of tea rolled into one.

Hairybottom’s success sends sweet waves of shivering joy throughout the pools of England cricket fans everywhere. And for this I am grateful.

In a stunning turnaround, after England performed with the bat like my dog does with this evening’s sausages, New Zealand returned the favour and showed the world just how bad batting can get.

Of course, excepting Stephen Fleming, although humanity was willing him to, he failed to hit that ever elusive century.

We all of us love Fleming. Maybe it’s his quiet demeanour. His understated success. Or perhaps it’s because he so openly hates Graeme Smith. Whatever it is, I think I speak for the entire human race when I say: try not to choke out of a hundred in your last innings. Only, don’t make it a big one, if you please.

New Zealand have done exceptionally badly to let England off like this. I would imagine that it was difficult to watch from a Kiwian perspective; rather like viewing toddlers play by the roadside.

But, for an Englishman, it was certainly worth staying up to God’s Knows O’clock, enduring Geoffrey Boycott’s misanthropy, sitting through tedious lunchtime breaks, and coping with bizarre mergers of test match cricket and my dreamworld were all worth it for those occasional moments of abrupt introductions to conscious delight.

NOTE: I have received a few confused emails from Australian readers. They are baffled at the above strange picture of white weirdness. To inform our friends down under, in England, we call this substance “icy death from the sky”. It is difficult to handle. The English method of dealing with such a crisis is to retreat under your blankets with a cup of hot cocoa, until it goes away. This usually takes the same amount of time as how long it takes to walk from your bed to a chartered airline headed for the Mediterranean.

If you do note heed this advice, you will look like the people in the below photograph.

11 comments:

Mr D said...

The Spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I Wonder where the batsman is
Cause I sure as hell ain't seen any

The Atheist said...

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where dem batsmen is,
The pull is on the batsmen,
But dat's absoid,
The batsmen are on the pull,

Mr D said...

You must be one of those Lake Poet atheists

Miss Field said...

From the comfort of a warm climate it looks pretty.

Anonymous said...

Miss Field last night was so freezing I was almost in pain.

and the snow has melted where I am so we've lost the pretty.

Miss Field said...

Oh that's awful!

I can't move to a country so cold it hurts... even if there are pretty daffodils.

Anonymous said...

You'd soon become English and stoic, I'm sure, and revel in the discomfort.

The Atheist said...

If it wasn't for the miserable weather, we'd have nothing to talk about. We'd just stare at each other. Perhaps we would go on a football riot, now and then. But there would be no talking.

Anonymous said...

I don't even know if we'd stare. I think we'd avoid eye contact.

Jrod said...

Avoiding eye contact reminds me of my trip to London, only time anyone looked me in the eye was to sell me drugs.

Anonymous said...

Yes, that sounds about right.