Hello from the USA. Where play in the recently concluded series started at 11:30 at night (Eastern Standard Time), where I still cared enough to wake up to check out the score, and am pleased that this team, without needing the help of the really old guard, did something quite special. Never underestimate a team winning in totally alien conditions, no matter what the opposition might be (and Sri Lanka were not as bad as some are painting them to be), and with the results they’ve had in the past couple of years in their own back yard against teams from outside of Asia. 3-0 is a fine result. Well done to England, and to some of the new blood that came up trumps.

This blog has been, quite rightly, very critical of England, and for people jumping on bandwagons at the merest hint of some green shoots. Now we have some, with an eclectic old line-up gelling in the most unlikely fashion at times, and people are rushing to say how crap the opposition has been. I have to smile. Yes, really. That I watched very little of the series, due to circumstances beyond my control, is of little importance. England seem to have a very fresh, yes, I’m using that word, and enthusiastic approach. Whether this is a long-term viable product, who the hell knows, but let’s enjoy this for something that it is, a substantial win in the sub-continent.

I tongue in cheek said on Twitter that when KP was let go for cricketing reasons we promptly lost at home to Sri Lanka – who can forget six inches further carry, two balls, or more importantly, Day Fucking Four at Headingley – while once Cook has been cast aside the team won 3-0, and hell, another opener made a century! I’m not being totally serious, but let me be serious in saying that if the events had been reversed – a whitewash when KP was jettisoned, an embarrassing loss when Cook retired, the media would not have been able to have helped themselves. You think not. One word, one innings. Cook. Southampton.

Yes, there’s always those two hanging over us, but let’s, as the phrase was so readily thrown about, move on. England get a break now before their next tour to the West Indies in early 2019, before we get into the World Cup and then the Ashes. Oh, and a slipped in test vs Ireland. Prices to keep us all very happy, but lots of cricket to comment upon.

Which then brings us, or me, to the blog. 2018 has been a hell of a year. From a personal standpoint it isn’t one I’ll look back on with any great joy, certainly compared to 2017. Losing a family member, even if it is, in the eyes of some “only a dog” has been crushing. Anyone who read the piece on my other blog will know how it devastated both my wife and I. As a childless couple, he was our focus, and without it we are a couple of lost souls at the moment. Being with family in the US has been good, but it’s not really a holiday (it’s bloody freezing and we have a high wind alert for tomorrow), rather a break before we come back next week. I started 2018 fed up with the aftermath of Cook’s 244 not out, and the utter twaddle that followed it, and then endured a summer that was tiresome and wearisome. I lost some of the will to write about cricket, and am not sure I have it back. There’s a lot less to be angry about with this England team, given I like a lot of the players in the team now (though not sure they should all be there), and Surrey gave me a real boost. But my writing is driven by feeling passionate about something, and I’m just not that passionate about English cricket. I’m also phenomenally busy at work – this two week break has been a godsend to get away from that – and cricket takes up less of my time.

In a way that leads me on to the cricket calendar which has been announced for the counties today. As a Surrey fan I’m surprised we’ve given two games to Guildford – Somerset and Yorkshire in June – and while I know that is down to the World Cup, it would have been great if one of them had been at Whitgift. We have Kent at Beckenham, and also, at home, on my big birthday next year. Could be something. The Blast is an irrelevance to me, angry old git that I am, but the calendar is full of games from Monday to Thursday, and that really doesn’t sit right, does it? Add to that we’ll be messing about with the format again next season (2020) and all the joy that the It’s A Knockout imitation of cricket will bring, and it’s really a case of we’ll have to lump it in 2019 because the bad stuff is around the corner.

That’s it. A shrug of the shoulders. Hardly the firebrand passion, eh, you lot?

What else can I put in a post entitled after a bloody Carpenters song? I read Geoff Lemon’s book “Steve Smith’s Men”, and as the saying goes, it was a game of two halves. Lemon tries too damned hard to be a Haigh or Ronay (one of those is good, one, not so) and instead just becomes annoying with idiotic culture references, or stupid analogies. The part of the book dealing with the Ashes is dull, and at times, genuinely annoying. I read the book in a couple of sittings, intending to do a full review, but the annoyance meant I decided not to – and also making notes on a Kindle book is really a pain in the arse.

When the book turns to the crisis itself, the cracks show. Australia truly still does not get it, if this is to be believed. The whole “gotcha” is explained as an elaborate South African TV plot to gain an advantage. While Lemon, to his credit, explains that a similar ruse by Channel 9 against Anderson in the Ashes was a joke, here he seems to castigate the South Africans for being on their guard to catch them. Dash them setting up security cameras to ensnare the burglars! Look, here are the stupid Aussies falling into the snare. Just not cricket. What followed was media mismanagement, a witch hunt that damaged already damaged people, with Smith made to look like some autistic genius, with only one thing in his life, a cartoon character of just one dimension. Warner was imbued with several layers – an amusing anecdote that in grade cricket David Warner was ranked number 2 in the worst sledger poll, behind his brother was a good one – but there was more sympathy and complexity put on him, rather than Smith. Bancroft is seen as some willing accomplice, faithful and happy, wanting to do anything to please his masters, but in the earlier part of the book where it deals with the Bairstow headbutt, Lemon’s interpretation of Bancroft’s stand up routine is a lot more charitable than some. Let’s put it this way, if Bancroft were English, and Malcolm Conn was in charge of adjudication, the results might not have been the same.

Lemon has a little old go at the management in Cricket Australia – apparently Haigh goes to town on them in his book – and makes several excellent points about how the wheels turn there. Some, I’ve seen, sided with the authorities over the players in the dispute last year, but the clear inference here is that the chief shop steward for the players in that impasse was David Warner. Anyone want to hazard a guess how Warner might have been stuck out on the limb as the true bad guy might start from there. Who knows? I like a good conspiracy theory.

It’s an OK read, no more. I hated the writing style, but that’s a personal choice. Did it tell me a lot I didn’t know? Not really. Did it give some meaningful insights? Yes in patches. Did him constantly name-checking other journos get on my nerves? Oh yes.

There’s a lot to write on Australia, going through the image crisis they are at the moment, but we do have a nice looking test series coming up between them and India. I’ll hope to catch some of that in the next few weeks, knowing I have blown all my potential Christmas leave in the meantime which doesn’t give me a lot of chance. The first test in the Emirates was a classic between Pakistan and New Zealand, and the second test historic. There was a pretty decent game between Bangladesh and West Indies, Zimbabwe won a test away from home, and all three games in Sri Lanka were really decent matches. Test cricket is lovable, people get passionate about it. Think anyone would give a stuff about ball tampering in an ODI?

Okey dokey. It’s nearly 11 pm here in Cape May, New Jersey and I’ll have to be signing off as the wind rattles the window frames. We are 150 yards from the sea here, so hopefully nothing too alarming (we had three inches of rain on Monday, Crowded House wrote a song about that). Have a good one, and will be in touch soon. Possibly with an end of year poll and some awards…. You never know.

Peter (Dmitri)