Yesterday, England mangled the Aussie batting and won the Ashes for the third time in a row. Much has been said about how much England should gloat. the PC brigade think it is not a good thing to relish victory.
If the boot had been on the other foot, you can imagine how the Aussie press would have reacted, bleating on about softie whingeing Poms!
So, as the famous line from the St Trinian’s school song goes,
“Trample on the weak and revel in their plight!”
In a few years time, if the ICC have not completely killed off Test Cricket with their rules and regulations by then, the boot might well be on the other foot, with the English taking a walloping. So, sons and daughters of St George, make hay while the sun shines, for it will not shine forever 🙂
Boadicea's Chariot 
FEEG, your ‘humour’ tag is misplaced. Winning the Ashes is nuffin ter larf at. Schadenfreude is alive and well. Glory be! 🙂
J: Very true, but I did not want to upset our Antipodean friends TOO much. 🙂
And who do we have to thank for the total demise of the once all powerful, all conquering Aussie side?
Some say the retirement of such superstars as Warne, McGrath, Gilchrest, Ponting and others. Others have blamed the shambles that was the Aussie administration a couple of years ago. Yet others have laid fault at the Aussie selectors but not us!
Our hero in the demise of Aussie cricket is Mickey
No no, not Mickey Mouse but our very own Mickey Arthur!
Each time we see the Aussies struggling, be it in the recent Champions trophy or their test series in India we raise a glass to our very own Mickey.
Mickey’s cricket career was pretty nondescript, he was an opening bat for the Orange Free State ( a province who to the best of my knowledge have never won a first class trophy.) Coached my very own Eastern Province for a couple of years and then got thrown into the deep end with the Proteas. He of course took the Proteas to number one in all formats of the game but I suspect that was more down to the abundance of talent that he had then any great coaching / man management skills (Smith, Kallis, Amla, Boucher, Steyn etc.)
So, when you raise a glass on August 21st to a series win over the Aussies spare a thought for the architect of the Aussies demise, the chap who put the final nail in the Aussie cricketing coffin, our very own Mickey Arthur
… 🙂 …
I blame Elizabeth Hurley.
I can raise a glass or two to her 😉
It behoves me to bring to your attention that the dramatic change in fortunes of the English team coincides with the appointment of successive coaches who learned their trade in a small landlocked country in southern Africa. 4 of the last 5 series have been won by England with Zimbabweans at the helm. Perhaps not a coincidence after all.
I wonder why they left.
While being happy at England’s retention of the Ashes I hope the next series in Australia will be a closer affair.
JW, England aren’t so hot at close-run affiars, are they? So I’ll stick to my preference for good, solid beatings.
That’s Knott cricket, J-man. The love of the game is in watching and enjoying great play by either side. One team taking a battering is OK in football, for example, which is a tribalistic sport. A closely run Test match is nectar from the Gods.
OK, enough with the poetical waxings. I need some assistance. Fopp, the discount CD/DVD/book retailers has on offer about 20 different novels from the quintessential English writer, PG Wodehouse. They’re punting them at two books for a fiver. I haven’t read any of PG’s works, any suggestions on what are the best two to read first?
TR, there is an episode in Right Ho, Jeeves that always has me laughing out loud every time I read it.
Hi Sheona, thanks for that little pearl. I recently read Skios by Michael Frayn and, using that cliché also, I did laugh out loud many times. The book centres on a comedy of errors and ten pages in you just know it’s going to be a fun read.
JW, you didn’t spot the bumps in my faces, indicating the location of tongues in cheeks! 😉
TR, you can download many of PGW’s books foc from the Gutenberg Project. I would concur with Sheona’s opinion of Right Ho Jeeves. Have just read it myself for the first time in many years. Brilliant.
I keep forgetting about Gutenberg, Sipu. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have a look see as soon as I can.
Haw JW. We was robbed!
If it’s in the list, I would suggest ‘Summer Moonlight’; for an introduction to the world of Blandings complete with Lord Emsworth, Beach, the Empress, Lady Constance, the efficient Baxter and, above all, Galahad Threepwood.
You definitely need to read the Jeeves and Wooster stories. If it’s there, ‘The World of Jeeves’ has all of the short stories.
Do not buy ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert’.. A group of short stories all set in a golf club. You would hate it.
Hola (oops, sorry Ferret) JM,
Don’t mention the under 21’s. Over the sea that was a great result for Northern Ireland tonight.
In the march issue of The Cricketer magazine I entered a competition to win five Mike Jackson books by PGW. Despite getting the question right, and it was a hard one, I was unsuccessful. Last year I did win a cricket bat shaped memory stick from the same ‘zine so I’m happy with that and go along with the You can’t win them all saying.
Thanks for the recommendations and Cuthbert will be the last one I get around to, if I make it that far. As I’m up to date with all my Sky Atlantic programmes I have a bit of time for some reading.
I know you’d be curious as to what the PGW question was so here it is-
What nickname did PG Wodehouse share with Sir Pelham Warner?
Told you it was a hard one.
Answers on a postcard or sealed down envelope to the usual address.
JW, I hope that you are not intending to download any of the Wodehouse books from Gutenberg as they are still in copyright in the UK?
Added to which, it’s his early work and not nearly as good as the later stuff, in my opinion. So much so, that I have archived most of them off my Kindle where they mysteriously appeared when I was preparing for my Australian trip.
Apart from the Jeeves tales and Psmith as an adult stories (in the City and Journalist) which I do not seem to have got round to dekindling yet.
And ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert’ of course..
Plum.