I warn you. I’m going to vent. For those of you who still care enough.

Because if you give more than two f***s for this test team, I applaud your faith. If you care how they do, I applaud your loyalty. I’m 50 now, too old for blind faith, or to be loyal to such an abusive partner.

The openers failed again. Sibley made his case in county cricket, and has made his case to show that in the top theatre, he ain’t up to it. We had to try. Burns averages, what, just over 30 and is as close as we have to a settled top order batsman. Speaks volumes. Denly battles hard, and is an exemplar for making the most of his opportunity, but it’s a bit like that time when your football team has been beaten 3-0 at home and the tannoy announcer says your defensive midfielder is the man of the match because he ran around a lot and kicked somebody. If Denly is your main positive, you are in trouble. 19 tests, average at 30.

Root can’t carry all before him in the batting, and even Nasser was losing his rag over the captaincy. Stokes, is the best cricketer we have, but he’s ill, his father is seriously ill, and he can barely bowl. Buttler is an enigma still, and probably still will be when he is in the side after 70 tests with two hundreds and a load of 20 not outs. Bairstow was dropped for being crap, then picked again rather than someone who went on a tour for which Bairstow was dropped (Crawley). Seems they’d rather not have given Zak one test too many. Sam Curran has no first class hundreds, so he’s not someone to rely upon. The team subsided from 140 odd for 3 to whatever all out. It’s not new. It’s happening all the time. Frequently. But hey, all we need to do is see an ECB stooge say we care about Test Cricket and the gullible idiots of the press lap it up, alongside the insipid media commentators who care more about looking scrumptious in front of the cameras than actually holding these fools to account – yes, Wardy, I’m looking at you.

Then there’s the Jofra Archer whispering campaign. Built up in July, Shot down by December, as Frank Sinatra might have sung. Pollock is especially all over him. Seems if you have crap body language and aren’t pinging it down at 95 every ball, you are a slacker. Jimmy and Stuart scowl all day at the fielders and have done for a decade, and nothing is commented on their poor attitudes. It’s getting worse, not better. That said, those last two balls from Jofra were naughty. Someone does need to get into his shell on that.

England don’t take test cricket seriously. This team proves it. This squad proves it. This selection process proves it. How can a wicket-keeper batsman with one century in 38 tests move sweetly into a spot when a better keeper, with a century, in Sri Lanka, on debut, is totally excluded for, well, reasons, and you bring back someone you dropped for technical reasons against pace. They’re laughing at us. Their twitter feed is mocking you. The press boys love their paid holidays too much to care whether the real fan is being short-changed. The TV media are goons, cutting costs (notice it’s the South African feed in its entirety), pushing Wardy to the front, and having three people commentating at the same time, when two might have been one too many. Pommie Mbangwa has no reason to make a living out of this, and Mark Nicholas on my screen is as welcome as the blue screen of death on my laptop.

I can’t watch this nonsense much longer. I can’t write the same old same old about a test team that pretends to care, but all messages are that they just want to maximise their earnings, without the increase in performance required. They are about as far away from the ODI team as is possible. We have come to this. South Africa are in utter turmoil. They’ve lost players and will lose more. They are handing us our arses on a plate, but it’s going to be more of the lessons learned, take the positives and play better cricket. Letting Philander bowl you to a stop is not learning. Getting nervous when a batsman hits you hard like QDK did isn’t learning lessons.

You carry on. There’s a lot more rage where this comes from. But maybe a finite supply because the time will come when enough is enough and I get out of this abusive relationship and hand the gig over to those on other feeds who got the journo gigs they so wanted, who turned into the media stooges they sometimes berated, and who look down on the likes of us as mugs who do this for no reward, no wanting a full-time job, and the abuse it sometimes gets us. Why care about something the protagonists, and the people that pay them, don’t give a shit about? Let’s have some more “Big Three + 1” series to make life so much better.

Yes, Amazon (if you followed my Twitter feed you’ll know) have riled me and made me angry, but there’s a lot more stored away. Who are the angry voices out there now, about this test team? Where are they? What are they doing? Why sniff at a five man bowling attack? Why whisper your disapproval of sticking a team in? Where’s the rage? Where is the caring? Do we want to go back to the 80s and 90s of being plucky triers? On the money these guys are getting now?

Have a good one. Comments, if you give a shit, below. I’m handing over to others for the rest of this farce.

UPDATE – Colin Graves has been awarded a CBE. If you aren’t livid, you should be. Chris will be giving our reaction tomorrow, but in the meantime, a preview…

 

First up, I hope you all had an excellent Christmas, and best wishes for 2020. The output on here has gone down with our increasingly busy lives, and, it has to be said, the inclination not to go over the same ground too often – the Hundred’s sheer ghastliness could sustain a whole blog, but others have that gig. We are, in the main, an international cricket blog when England play, and that’s what we will continue to maintain even if enthusiasm on repeating the same old same old on the ECB, while cathartic, diminishes.

Secondly, as I’m writing this on Christmas night, this isn’t going to be an in depth preview. The first test has been “switched” from the normal Boxing Day venue of days gone by of Durban to Centurion. My over-riding memories of Kingsmead tests were the pitch doing plenty very early, the team batting first getting skittled, the team batting second clinging on, and the wicket going very flat. I flew out to South Africa back in 2004/5 in the middle of such a Kingsmead test. It would bring hundreds for Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss (who had an amazing series) and the last for Graham Thorpe. England had won 8 straight tests going into that game, I believe. As soon as I touched down in South Africa, we drew. A few days later we lost in Cape Town and the jinx record was maintained. I digress.

There’s been a lot of talk about the wicket, thanks to George’s tweet on Tuesday, but let’s see how it plays. I’ve heard too often about duff wickets that turn out fine. My mantra is most people don’t have a clue what it is going to do – whether you are in Pretoria or in Peckham. Chris Silverwood, showing some early worrying signs, is outwardly saying that he might consider the wonderful no-spinner route that had them hurrah-ing in Hamilton (I’m of the thought that unless the pitch hasn’t been mown for months, or they are playing in an English spring, you consider not playing a spinner, then pick one). I would hope we won’t, but there appears to be a tendency among the England clan now to be the smartest guys in the room. If Leach has recovered enough from his illness, and is able to go five days, he’s the best spinner is available and should play.

I am not going to try to pick the England team. You can read that elsewhere. Leach is likely to miss out through illness, so count out what I said below. Pope has come down with it as well, so he may be replaced by Bairstow. Ben Stokes, and our thoughts must go to him with his father very ill (but appears improving) is likely to play. Anderson returns, but with him there must be a worry now as he breaks down more often than my brother’s old Vauxhall Cavalier (it is the 27th anniversary of that clapped out crate breaking down on the M62 on the way home from Tranmere tomorrow – note Tranmere away on Boxing Day, the bastards. It’s a “short” hop to effing Cardiff this year). Stuart Broad will keep his place, Jofra Archer will have the eyes of the “effort police” on him no doubt, and then it is a question of Woakes, Sam or some mystery spinner. The mystery being his identity, not what he will bowl.

Meanwhile South Africa, 20 or so months on from beating Australia so convincingly in the Abrasive Series, are a team in crisis. Their board has been a shambles, and while Graeme Smith has come in to the fold, with lots of the old greats trying to lend a hand, it remains to be seen if this is an impressive sticking plaster on a horribly infected wound. With things looking to have settled down off the field after a rocky December, the timing of Vernon Philander’s announcement that he will be retiring at the end of this series to take a “Kolpak”, probably at Somerset, is another punch in the gut. In England we’d probably sling him out of the team for that. South Africa probably don’t have that luxury. The irony isn’t lost on me. Back in the 1980s England were on tenterhooks for fear of their players supplementing insufficient income by going on rebel tours. Now, thirty plus years on, England are taking South African players for county cricket. The former had me angry at betrayal, the latter has me sad at the erosion of test cricket (and other international formats) in nations outside the Big 3.

So South Africa need new heroes. Firdose Moonda, who was part of the nonsense that started the demise of the previous head of South African cricket when colleagues were banned from attending South African cricket matches, lays out the new problems:

With two players, Rassie van der Dussen and Dwaine Pretorius, all but certain to make their debuts, and two others, Zubayr Hamza and Aiden Markram, with less than 20 caps to their names, South Africa’s batting is laced with inexperience. Though Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada have played 100 Tests between them, Anrich Nortje has only played two Tests and the back-up seamers, Beuran Hendricks and Dane Paterson, are uncapped.

So. A mightily flawed team, who travel as well as my border collie in a car, play a team being pecked at by an avaricious county structure taking the bribe money from the ECB for the Hundred and spending it on imports, and with rookies, young and not so young, in their ranks. It could be fascinating.

OK. That will do you. I have some thoughts for an end of year wrap up, but they can wait.

Before I go, I’ve not written much, if anything, since the passing of Bob Willis. There’s always something more painful at the loss of your childhood icons, and we all impersonated his run-up as kids. I will never forget watching THAT spell at Headingley. And I watched it all. He was part of why I loved cricket although I was never a bowler. Bob held our bowling attack together, stayed with England, and when he retired, turned into an acerbic, witty, funny commentator and pundit (and having read some of his tour and cricket diaries, he was a very good author/story teller). He introduced me to the phrase “Fred Karno’s Circus” regarding a run out in an Ashes test down under, which had me giggling uncontrollably despite not having the first clue who, or what, that circus was. He was The Verdict, and please, please, please God, don’t try to replace him with Dominic Cork. Please no. Most of all, Bob was a great England man, and why he was not knighted, given current standards, I do not know. He will be really, really missed.

Enjoy the cricket tomorrow, and tonight, when Australia play New Zealand in the Boxing Day Test on that notoriously lifeless MCG deck, and we’ll be trying to keep the reports coming during this test and beyond.

Enjoy the rest of the break. Comments below.