Voy Por Ustedes

I'm a cricketing layman, but surely you don't need a slide rule and abacus to work out the second Test at Lords tomorrow is not going to go England's way. Andrew Flintoff has chosen to get his excuses in early and I don't blame him for keeping his Ashes aspirations at arms length. But once he'd declared himself officially ready for the scrap-heap that must surely have been Andrew Strauss' cue to ditch him for someone who can play five days without needing to be hopped up on goof-balls after the first days play.

We have this inability to ditch people of Flintoff's ilk in this country. Paul Gascoigne had to almost go completely mental before Glenn Hoddle found the courage to dump him prior to the 1998 World Cup and I suspect he only did that because he liked creating headlines. Old boys clubs, that's what our national teams are.

England haven't beaten the Australians at Lords since 1934, which does beg the question; why in the name of Jesus at short leg do we play there? Of the 18 games since 1934, Australia have won 9, and one struggles to see how they won't make it ten this week.

Alistair Cook has an average of 27 against Australia and sounds Scottish to me, Pietersen isn't fit at the moment, Andrew Flintoff isn't even fit enough to play cricket any more and his replacement starts crying when ever he's more than 100 miles from the north-east, Stuart Broad is too weedy to play at this level and Monty Panesar is quite frankly an embarrassment. You can't beat the Australians when half your team are either shit or injured or shit and injured. Even the physio is a fat bastard.

With all that in mind, any odds against price on Australia leaps off the page as value no? Even taking into account Friday is going to rain and rain, there must still be time enough for the Aussies to accept 20 of our sacrificial wickets. I shall wait until it's really pissing down on Friday and back Australia to win. That's what I'll do. I'll also have a chunky lump of a wager on Ricky Ponting to out-score Kevin Pietersen.


In other news, I was unable to make it to the supermarket today for sammich ingredients, but I'm going to need some. There's much sport on this weekend and I shall need to graze while I enjoy it. I suspect I won't see day light until Sunday evening when I attempt to make it two in a row at the Pigeons.

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Labels: Sport