Do we all remember the 1980s? I know that, generally, remembering anything is inadvisable, and that last century’s eighth decade brought with it special kind of horrors such as Norman Tebbit and white trousers, but it’s worth re-engaging those battered grey cells just for a fleeting moment.When attempting a reminiscence, be sure to skip over the files labelled “what you said last night whilst drunk” and definitely avoid the “early sexual experiences” folder, and drill down to that unique cringing pain given to you only by the England cricket team.
Ah. You are with me now. Deep within the tortured recesses of your undoubtedly abused brain, you find a potent catalogue of angry scars, each wound marking the next spineless England series, rather like an entombed prisoner counts of each day of his squalid march deathwards, you have commemorated each disastrous slump with a little piece of inward death.
In recent years, however, the scratches have dropped in frequency and intensity. Perhaps there may even by happy bellybutton marks filed somewhere in some forgotten happy part of the mind.
But oh, how quickly the stinging pain of reality re-unites the soul with the throbbing misery of memory. Strangely, as a device to unearth long repressed agony, the England cricket team proves more adept than Freudian hypnotherapy. And, for those mentals out there, a great deal cheaper.
The difference between England’s humiliating tours to the Caribbean in the 1980s and current embarrassments is the anticipation of obliteration, but now the feckless Englanders swaggered into the Windies with the hubristic and frankly hilarious expectation of easy victory, resulting in a predictable outcome.
It’s as if the disintegration of the team’s leadership, collapse in key player’s form and Twatford gang-groping never happened. England sauntered off to the one of the world’s leading tourist destinations with the intention to toss of the third world country before getting down to the real dirty with Australia later in the year.
By, OMG!!1 how pisspoor was that effort? I mean, really now. REALLY.
What were they thinking? What were they flipping thinking?
All that can save England now is a strategic ball placed under the ankle of a devastating fast bowler.
Welcome back to the good old days.
5 comments:
It''s the 1980s now - and in the summer it'll be the 1990s. Oh joy and happiness.
England were good for about three years and have been shite ever since the last day at Multan in 2005. That's when it all went wrong. All went wrong then...
9th decade, surely.
I think the last time I felt this bad about English cricket was when we lost at home to New Zealand and the crowd were singing 'we've got the worst team, in the world'
The annoying thing is that we did have a lot of poor players then. Now, we have some decent players, some brilliant ones and ok some pretty average ones. But we have more to work with now than we did back in the 80's and 90's - which is why it's so frustrating!!!
Timmy
timmytrundle@blogspot.com
Au contraire Atheist.
This is just the performance "The England" needed to make the next Ashes competitive. After Australia's depantsing by the saffers, and the imminent 4-1 brownwashing by the Kiwis in the one-dayers, and the already pre-destined 3-0 thrashing by the saffers in saffaland, this will set up the Ashes perfectly. England needed to lose this badly to set up a competitive Ashes.
effectively, Strauss' honeymoon got over before it actually started. Poor chap.
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