The difference between the sides

Is bugger all. England should have won, but the ball didn’t swing. This essentially rules James Anderson and Graham Onions out of the attack.

Stuart Broad can’t bowl.

Freddie’s legs are stuck together with blu-tak.

Graeme Swann is in the side for his sledging.

So, we have a one-dimensional attack that is entirely dependent on swing and occasional burst of Flintofian genius.

The Australian batsmen look comfortable and unflustered in favourable conditions. Of course, they lunge around like panicked orang-utans when the ball moves a bit.

English batsmen look a bit rubbish, they are all-weather rubbish though. It’s the non-batsmen where the Australian bowling runs out ideas – at least, once the tail steps forth, the Ozzlers replace their “line and length” ideas with “long” and “hop”.

So, the outcome of this season much depends on how overcast it is. If the weather’s bad, England wins; if the sun shines, Australia wins.

Now, in completely unrelated news, the Met Office revised their seasonal forecast for August from a scorcher in April, to a wash-out this July.

Is a terrible summer a price worth paying for the Ashes? The all-powerful English weathermen think so. And, fair play to them, I say.

Wales + cricket = The Rubbish

The last game in the one day series between Empirer and Empieree drizzled out to an abandoned draw.

Many of us would recall the abandoned draw as a familiar result to family holidays in Wales. You were stuffed into a clinging anorak, prodded up soggy mountains, dragged through depressing marshes and forced to commune with Welshies. The Rubbish was everywhere present.

Of course, the fellahs in the ECB ignored the hard-fought experiences of youth, and have repeatedly played matches in Wales. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

Can you remember a single holiday to Pembrokeshire or Gwyndathshire every classified as “won”?

Why don’t England play in the South of France or perhaps in the Italian hills? Those were all “won” holidays. You could bring some nice wine into the, err, ground. You could wax lyrical about the local cheese. Such grounds even offer chances to laugh at the silly locals’ English. Moreso than in Wales.

In stead, the ECB offers Welshy sog airy, pies and lager as watered down as the weather.

In other news, that Australia is messing everything up with his daft theories. This isn’t the first time it has happened.

But, I’m debating whether to go to see the potentially interesting Somerset vs. Notts match in Trent Bridge this Saturday. Only problem is, the train ticket is £50. And I’m not guaranteed any play or a West Country win.

Should I go?

Cricket: It’s still happening (just about)

There have been some various matches going on. Not like a hip hottie on the other side of the bar, more like it’s happening, but not in a very happening way.

Using 1960s slang to describe cricket matches may not be especially germane. But, the world seems to be taking a little step back from cricket for the moment.

Sure, there are soggy games in the sub-continent. A smattering of domestic matches here and there. But between the tests ‘n Lord’s final and the up-and-coming South African one-dayers, there isn’t a great deal to say.

You could mention the rain. The rain in The North. The rain in Scotland. Or the rain for Wednesday’s twenty-bloody-20. You could do all of those things. In stead, though, I will talk about myself.

Besides, is alluding to Northern dampess especially enlightening?

Today was fun. A client come up to me and said, you must be from ____ no one here would wear a shirt like that. A shirt like what exactly? One like this? With a tie? With buttons? WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY SHIRT?

On which note, I’m going to start a new game: guess who sacked me. It has it going on.

The rules run as follows: occasionally, I’ll drop hints about the firm that fired my behind. Using these clues, you have to fire bomb likely offices in London. Whoever guesses right, and hits the right building, will be awarded pretty paintbrush picture, or something.

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.

English weather shows Antipodean climes how it should be done

Here’s a picture of the Thames Estuary, close to where I live. It was taken about half an hour ago. It’s just a normal perfect, Caribbean day in my little part of London.

Meanwhile, in a continent where the climate is so awful, the insects evolved new forms of incredibly dangerous poison just to ease suicide, the rain continues to pour and pour and pour.

And pour and pour.

There really isn’t much more to this post that pathetic gloating. I could allude to England’s feeble performance against wonder bums, New Zealand. Apparently, we conspired to lose by 13 wickets. That’s how bad we were.

As bad as the current weather over Australia.

The Englishers simple-minded capitulation was pretty low. About as the hearts of all the little Ausslers and Kiwis, as they hear the persistent precipitation pound down on their under-maintained corrugated iron roofs. “Oh please stop,” think they, “just for a little sleep.”

In other news, five members of the Australian team went, and I’m not making this up, totally mad. Honest to god, I got this from Cricket Australia’s official website. So weather-depressed were the Australian first team players that they spontaneously began to run about trouserless, shrieking about how they wished they changed nationality in order to enjoy the wonderful sunshine on the Essex Riviera.

Maybe Tim Ambrose was smarter than we though?

Match not rained off

In an unexpected turn, the notoriously wet Australian climate briefly became “not crap” to allow the playing of a one day match.

The famous Australian meteorologist, Dave Dingo, stated,

“Well, I was all, y’know, sorta geared up for the usual shower of soddenness that we get around here. Y’know, the normal Australian thing of rain, cold and misery. But, crickey my koala, we’ve had sunshine today. It’s so sunny, I feel like I’m in England!”

Strong words indeed. The weather in London has been described by Michael “The Fish” Fish as “lovely” as of late. And it is widely thought that the English climate can tell the Australian weather system a thing or two about being “not crap”.

However, in its defence, Cricket Australia issued a press released of the usually reliable atmosphere:

“G’day. It is true that the weather has been disappointing during matches. However, its net form has been strong, and we here in Cricket Australia back our climate to perform well in the long term.”

Unfortunately, the press conference was cut short when, caught at the nadir of depression, the spokesmen spontaneously decided to take a holiday in South East England where, “it’s bloody marvellous” before adding “mate”.