Whenever the Ashes comes around one can't help but hark back to the Douglas Jardine inspired thrashing we gave the Aussies on their own patch in 1933. A fantastic era. If I had a modified DeLorean handy Victorian/Edwardian/Georgian times would be my destination. Fantastic. When the sun never set on the Empire, urchins were put to work and beaten regularly and Europe no longer reeked of onions as the French had been put firmly in their place. And most splendid of all, the Bodyline series gave the Aussies a reminder of just who invented the game of cricket.
Oh how I long to live in an England where men still have mens' names; Douglas, Harold, George, Edward and Henry instead of Romeo, Jordan and Fabio. Inspiring brylcreamed figures who would take a cricket ball to the face and congratulate the bowler on a splendid delivery.
Not now though. I feel no such inspiration from this mongrel Ashes side we've strung together without a true Englishman amongst their number. Just a collection of rejects from the colonies who take six weeks off when they hyper-extend a tendon and get to meet the Queen if they make a half-century. No. This is just not cricket.
I'm an Aussie-phile in all honesty. I'm envious of their climate, their way of life, their cool accent and how they abbreviate everything saving them valuable seconds in conversations. When it comes to cricket and sport in general, I do like to see them lose though, but on this occasion I just can't deny there's a small part of me who wouldn't mind seeing England take a thrashing if for no other reason than to make a mockery of the ridiculous number of sports psychologists, physios and other quasi-professionals the England cricket team have surrounded themselves with. See here:
Twenty five people for a team talk, only thirteen of them are in the team
actually play the game? Might this be why we're so shit? Jardine's winning team had no such hangers-on, just some good old fashioned courage and his wife to hand round some sandwiches at lunch and tea.I'm no conspiracy theorist, but might the reason our players are seemingly so physically and mentally fragile be because the fucking "physios" and head shrinkers are making shit up so they can keep their cushy jobs?
The sports psychologists are the worst cuplrits. They've already ruined Threscothicks career by making him believe he was a fruit cake. He was fine until he started having sessions with them. They drove Flintoff to drink causing him to fall over a lot and damage himself thus making more work for the physios. A calculated and ruthless double-team.
I predict our Ashes dreams to turn to dust. A fairly sound victory for the Aussies surely as we are being brought down from within by pseudo-science and I will base my wagers on this theory. Look to see the number of game theory technicians, consultants and various other gits swell after a humiliating home defeat and a brainwashed and bewildered Andrew Strauss insist that the team will take the positives from the experience and move on. Poor Jardine would be turning in his grave had he not been turned to ashes himself.
The Ashes trophy is a metaphor for the satirically observed death of cricket in an 1882 newspaper when Australia beat us at the Oval for the first time. It looks a bit tatty now so I'd like to see a couple of these sports psychologists burnt alive to mark the death of our cricket in the modern era and placed in another urn which teams with more staff than players can compete for every two years.
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