2015 Ashes

2015 Ashes – 5th Test Day 2

LordCanisLupus133 Comments
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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Hello.  That was certainly an interesting set of comments we received on day 1. The village idiots turned up, had their say and naffed off. But they seemed to have made an impression on one useful idiot.

I saw little of day 1. I’m so sorry if trying to earn enough to feed my family got in the way. However, from this remote perspective it appeared to be Aussie’s day. No doubt if Smith makes a big one it will be discounted by the cognoscenti.  I find that laughable, especially if Chef makes a big one. We’re watching this double standard nonsense.

Ooooh. Etheridge has slagged me off. I should be ashamed. Of what I don’t know. Here’s the tweet I received close to midnight. Thursdays are always trouble!

People. I’m not ashamed of you. Not at all. Here’s a little thing, though. I do hope this individual is not personally holding himself responsible for the sins of his newspaper and anyone who uses their comment pages. Because that would be funny.

As for me being self-pitying? Whatever. Why you having a pop at little old me? I would encourage you to read the thread between both TLG and I with Etheridge. It is astounding. If you are not used to Twitter, pick out @DmitriOld or @BlueEarthManagement. It’s gob-smacking.

To the cricket. Comments on day 2 below.

Edit- took out the point about drinking. John said he hadn’t. I had been at a leaving do. Happy to point that out.

2015 Ashes – 5th Test, 1st Day

LordCanisLupus67 Comments
Ten Years Ago....
Ten Years Ago….

Welcome to Day 1 of probably 3 or 4 of the 5th Ashes test for 2015. I will be up in the North West of England today on business, so won’t, as usual, get to see much of the game, although I’ll give SkyGo an effort on the train back from Preston.

I could say a huge amount about what has gone on in the interim period between the Trent Bridge test and this one, but that’s for another time. I’ve not let it just pass by. I’ve taken a few insults from people who are no friends of what this blog is trying to achieve, or even bothered to understand where I come from and what I do. It’s been a very disheartening couple of weeks. But unlike our wonderful captain, there’s no “I almost quit” talk. That’s not how I operate.

So to Day 1. TLG has had his say in the preview. I’m not about to add too much to that, except I fear for Mark Wood if he’s playing on a duff ankle, that needs surgery and that he’s having cortisone shots for. If that’s true, will we never learn?

This will be the repository for comments, so fire away BTL and I’m not sure if there will be a review or not, because TLG is away, and I’m on the road, and then when I return to London, at a do.

If any of you are in the vicinity of the Oval, do support the #ChangeCricket demo. TLG’s piece says it all, and Sam and Jarrod deserve backing up for all the work they’ve done. Also, I am around The Oval on Friday evening, if anyone of our readers are, and I’d love to bump into some as I did with KeyserChris at Lord’s back in July. I’ve also got a couple of days at county games planned, including one at Surrey and one at Middlesex.

I’ll see you all later – comments away…

The Ashes: Fifth Test preview

thelegglance77 Comments

And so, barely moments after the home international Test summer began, it’s nearly over.  If anyone had said that the Oval Test will begin with nothing riding on it, it would hardly have been a surprise.  That it is a dead rubber because England have already won, well that is more of a surprise.

And as a result, when the dust settled on the hammering handed out at Trent Bridge, the focus has been more on Australia than an England team justifiably enjoying the moment.  It has been a peculiar and somewhat subdued build up.

Australia themselves will be saying goodbye to at least two players, in Rogers and Clarke.  In reality, even though they are unlikely to play, Haddin and Watson can be added to that list, for it is hard to see how they will be selected again.  There’s every chance Voges is playing his final match as well, while Shaun Marsh must be a considerable doubt for the future given he’s failed to take his chance at the highest level.  Since Australia lost Ryan Harris before the series began, it amounts to a quite extraordinary end of an era for the Australian team.  Of the squad of seventeen first chosen for the series, you can make a case that seven or even eight (depending on what future Fawad has) will be gone from the Test team by this time next week.

Moreover, Australia have lost little time in moving on, Smith has already been announced as the next captain, with Warner as his deputy – which is an interesting choice in itself given his brushes with authority over the last few years.  It could be the making of him.  Likewise, Smith has been talking about moving to number four in future, all of which suggests that Australia just want this over with and to move forward.

It’s a rather sad way for Clarke to finish.  The last real link to the great Australian team of the noughties, he is going out with a whimper rather than a bang, captaining a side who have already moved on, in a series already lost, with a team comprised of many who will saying their own farewells.  Sport can be a cruel business, and few get to time their departures perfectly.   As both player and captain, there’s a temptation to believe that Clarke is more honoured abroad than he is at home, and a warm reception when he walks out to bat for the final two times is guaranteed.  And thoroughly deserved.

For England, it is the chance to deliver four Test wins in a series against Australia for the first time since 1978, and in circumstances that few would have expected.  Given England’s inconsistency, and the end-of-era nature of the Australian team, it’s as hard to call as any of the previous Tests.  The series has been so unpredictable that it would be a brave person to make the call on what will happen this time.   Perhaps what most fans of both sides would like more than anything would be a close match.  There hasn’t been a truly close game between these sides since the Trent Bridge Test of 2013 – even the Oval last time which ended up tight was down to a contrivance more than genuine competition.  That Oval Test incidentally was only the third time since five Test series became the norm that the Oval Test was a dead rubber in England’s favour.  That this is the fourth instance one series later says a lot about recent series.

To that end, what does this say about England’s win?  It’s fourteen years since Australia won in England, and in that time England are 10-3 up in Tests.  Yet since England won that first series in years in 2005, England are 11-3 down in Australia.  Each side is being well beaten away from home, with few close matches, that has to be a concern.

For England, there seems little point in risking Anderson – there would have been little point even if the series was on the line – so the debate surrounds the question of the pitch and whether a second spinner is needed.  If so, then there is at least the possibility that Moeen could be moved up to open to create space for Adil Rashid.  If that is how England go, then Lyth too could be facing the chop as far as his Test career is concerned.  Lyth has hardly been a stellar success in this series, but then neither has his opening partner, one innings excepted.  It would be a sour note were England to continue to go through openers not called Cook at a rate of knots.  That is of course making the point before it even happens, and England may well retain Lyth to give him the chance to cement his place.  A score of any sort would probably do that.

Of course, if Lyth does keep his place, then it seems hard to see how Rashid could be given the nod.  Wood is troubled by his ankle, but the indications are that Plunkett is favoured if he doesn’t make it.  There is of course no point selecting someone for the sake of it – that is what happened two years ago when Kerrigan and Woakes were called into the side and promptly discarded for the following series – more understandably in the case of Kerrigan, whose handling can still be questioned.  Yet with the series in the UAE coming up, Rashid will certainly be required.

In all, this is a subdued build up to the final Test match.  At the end of it, Alastair Cook will be presented with the urn, and all will be well with England cricket.  Of course, the reality is some way from that, the previous 18 months has created a schism amongst cricket lovers like little seen in living memory.  The win has papered over the cracks, but failed to resolve them.  The ECB have a big job on their hands to re-create love for England, but if they do intend to try and do so, then this is no bad platform on which to build.  It is now up to them.

@BlueEarthMngmnt

Only Ashes Test – Canterbury

LordCanisLupus26 Comments

The Ashes resume tomorrow with England trailing after the first three ODIs and really needing a win to take control of the series.

The game will be played over four days at the St. Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, and here is the place to post your comments over those next few days.

Given the prominence we will be giving to Death of a Gentleman, I regret that this post will be below that one for a while, but you lot have the gumption to find it.

All the very best to the England team, and I’ll be keeping a firm eye out when I can during office hours tomorrow.

King William Street

LordCanisLupus62 Comments

What do the Ashes mean to you? The wrapping up of the extremely one-sided Trent Bridge test has brought the majority of English fans out into raptures of delight. To see how the worm has turned, one only has to look at the headline of Tom Fordyce’s piece on BBC Sport. “Have the Ashes become to predictable?” he asks. Really? Very few predicted England would win this series, and now we’ve gone full circle. I was tempted to throw in a spurious Twelfth Night reference (as the only Billy play I’ve read, and that was out of educational necessity) but that would be pretentious. However, if this Ashes series is anyone’s idea of the food of love, then I would quite like the band to stop playing.

Oh dear. Am I being a frightful curmudgeon?

Who’s that Greek fella who rolls the bloody stone up hill? That one. I feel a bit like him. So let me please do this one more time just to make sure those who want to use my words against me, as some elegant escape narrative for the constant misrepresentation of my points. So, as the bullets were so effective in the last post, let’s play it again Sam, as Humphrey Bogart.did not say in the 1942 film Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, and did you know Casablanca is not the capital of Morocco, and Rick Blaine is not the brother of David Blaine. Anyway, bullets (not rubber, as 10CC sang about in their 1973 single):
•    KP is not the illness, he is the symptom of the high-handed treatment the ECB showed towards those they need to build the sport;. The fans. Some of you were OK with it. I was not.
•    Outside Cricket is not just about Piers Morgan. Carry on believing that if you wish. This ia about a toffee-nosed, self-selecting elite telling the people who pay their wages that they are not to be concerned with the important things. Like THEIR national side.
•    I think Giles Clarke needs to be completely relieved of all duties for cricketing reasons. This is the clean break most needed in the sport in this country. He is, in my view, a malign, contemptuous, entitled charlatan, with about as much empathy as the desk fan I have next to me.
•    As certain ECB personnel leaked like my cistern, they are complicit in this episode. To suddenly forget this is not on. Absolutely not on. This may, or may not, be linked to the bullet point above.
•    The print media acquiesced and now, after 18 months, they believe the furore has passed. An Ashes win has been a pleasant surprise to them, and now they’ll milk it. And in some cases, settle scores.

TLG wrote a very good piece about his reactions to the Ashes. It was, as usual, excellently put together, brilliantly argued, and he can pay me a bit more if he wants any more nice words. As I said, I  can never want England to lose to Australia. That is not in my DNA. I walked down King William Street after the 5th Day in 2006. It was a walk of utter despair, total humiliation and a recognition that a week that started with decent expectations, and indeed with two excellent days to start the test, had gone downhill and then collapsed. It was pitiful. I’ve seen my team lose to a last minute goal at Wembley, a last minute goal in a play-off semi-final and an FA Cup Final, and I’ve never been gutted as I was that day. It was a day long torture session. English angst and passivity powerless in front of mental disintegration. It was a day we were stripped bare. So I’m not in this for the glory or the kudos, and I’ve seen the bad times, and paid a ton
of money to do it. Don’t attack my credentials. To be labelled, as we were in that wretched buffoon Ed Smith’s piece as akin to desperate students trying to garner support for a cod-Marxist rally, I say this. I’m fucking delighted to have been at your last test match, and seen your last test dismissal. The termination of your test career. As Arnie didn’t say “I won’t be back”. (I don’t like being this churlish, but stuff it. He goes on like he’s the world’s brightest light. Arrogant in the extreme).

I’ve seen one tweeter in particular, who Dave Tickner and Dan Brigham gave more house room to than he was entitled, keen to rub people’s noses in it. That an England fan thinks the upshot of the last 18 months is to gloat into other supporters’ faces is an acceptable conclusion, then well. I never meant to gloat in front of other fans unless they were being arses to me and people I give a damn about, and it wasn’t even gloating – it was despair. I would aim my points at the press, the ECB and their enablers, and yes, that included Alastair Cook. Try finding a bad word on this, or my previous blog, about Joe Root, Gary Ballance, Moeen Ali, Mark Wood, Steven Finn, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Adam Lyth, Sam Robson et al. You won’t, unless it’s about cricket performance. This “I’m a better supporter than you” bollocks is that. I have a view, and people read it, but I never claim to be a better supporter. People who oppose my views, and slag me off, are supporters. The difference is, I acknowledge that. They don’t. Oh – the tweeter concerned shares the same surname as the England captain. A nice coincidence.

There’s a long KP related piece in the works to give people the ammunition to call me an obsessive, but that will be released on an appropriate date. What I want to do in the remainder of this ramble is to just set out my feelings on the Ashes triumph.

Supreme indifference.

You want to know why? You know why if you’ve been reading this blog, and it has naff all to do with Kevin Pietersen. Just watch the last Giles Clarke interview in Death of a Gentleman about journalists and administration. Just read Maxie’s incredible piece on The Full Toss. Just read How Did We Lose In Adelaide. Just read @jamiecook1988 and his twitter chat with Tickers and Brigham. Just read Mike Selfey. Just read Paul Newman. Just read Stephen Brenkley. Just read FICJAM. Just attend a speaking engagement with Lovejoy. Just buy The Cricketer. Just read anything by either Alec Swann or The Analyst. Just read Derek Pringle. Watch Paul Allott on Cricket Writers on TV. 

The malcontents are treated as the enemy without, not even within – hence the name of this blog. Not once do those who criticise really try to understand why we are like we are – and I am being presumptuous on my clientele here, so do permit me to use “we”. They think we are that fickle that an Ashes win will bring us back into the fold. Fact is, we never left. We were just stuck in the naughty corner of the pen, and the only way to get in with the crowd is to come back with our tail between our legs. Admit we are wrong. Say we are sorry. Bow down to our masters. We are supplicants who need to know their place. WE WERE WRONG. ADMIT IT.

Ain’t gonna happen. I’ll be around for a while yet. So get used to it FICJAM and others. I ain’t going away. I remain, for now, firmly Outside Cricket.