England Deserve to Lose It All

There was a time where it was fun to root for England, namely when they went about toppling the unbeatable Australians in 2005. The underdogs beating the Aussies at their own game playing with aggressive swagger and style.  It was great.

But that was nearly a decade ago. The so called English dominance of test cricket, brief as it was, is going through a painfully slow death where they can no longer play Ishant Sharma. 

And they absolutely deserve it.

lol

There is a difference between the once great Australia and the once "great" England.  Australia were ridiculously good and they knew it, they could field three cricket teams who could blow apart anybody that dared to turn up. One would scream out for those precious moments when another team actually got the better of them (the aforementioned Ashes 2005, a prime example).

The Ashes Begin: With A Bang

Its probably the littlest trophy in the whole sporting world. Certainly one of the oldest. More have been written about the Ashes than any other sporting contest. And why not? After all it carries a little poem too.

When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;

Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;

The welkin will ring loud,

The great crowd will feel proud,

Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;

And the rest coming home with the urn.

Its been a long buildup to the double headed Ashes that are going to be played over the next 8 months. 10 Tests between the oldest rivals. 

Rotation; Why Not?

When I was a lad, plying my trade in the Jersey Under 15's football league, I was a reliable left back for my home Parish, Grouville. In the spring of 1995, we went on a cup run that took us to a prestigious final at Jersey's answer to Wembley; Springfield Stadium.
 
I was as excited as an England fast bowler, marking out his run up against a West Indies middle order batsman, but my cup final dream was to turn into a nightmare. Martin Roberts, a nippy left winger, nippier than me anyway, had forced his way into the reckoning and Robbo, our coach, looking for more attacking flare in the final, delivered the news I dreaded just an hour before kick-off:
 
"Marty' starts, sorry Tom!"
 
This of course was before terms like "rotation" and "managing your resources" we're part of sporting vernacular, this was simply a question of who was the best player, and I lost out. Boo Hoo!

Shiv the Selfish, Really?

And so England's international cricketing summer is up and running, with the West Indies facing the best test team in the world at the Home of Cricket this week. The weather has been decidedly moist in England over the past few weeks but remarkably it stayed dry for whole of the first day at Lords, and a packed house was treated to some fine cricket. Jimmy Anderson, proclaimed the ECB player of the year earlier this week dominated early on with the ball, teeing Kieron Powell up with a textbook out-swing, in-swing combination, before some nice stroke play from Barath and the hyperbole-drenched Darren Bravo - who was relentlessly compared to one Brian Charles Lara all day on Twitter - steadied the ship before lunch.