Advent 13 Non-Fiction

Tall Tales, Test Match Special. Now, let's be clear, I bow to no man (or woman) in my love for Test Match Special, one of the last great remaining pillars of public service broadcasting. But this book of sketches (for that is what it is) is a mildly disappointing hotch-potch of retold favourite stories, and, most criminally, some of those are even repeated within the confines of the text. Badly edited, enjoyable enough but best read when drunk.

A Mad World My Masters

As the pace of change quickens, the good things can get obscured by the avalanche of the inane and the downright immoral that make up so much of modern life. You will not, of course, be surprised if I allude to Donald Trump and his wicked cohorts being at the forefront of much that is bad. However I will steer clear of pontificating on the Donald for now. If, like me, you are a gob-smacked Trump watcher, you will perhaps join me in hoping that he will be brought low by his own glaring crassness. I wish I was more optimistic.

Let us, then, steer clear of global politics. Instead let us consider the precarious state of my two favourite team games - rugby union and cricket. I was passably competent at the former and an occasional fumbler at the latter but it is cricket that I prefer watching. Both games stand at a precipice of commercial oblivion. And when I say this, I am talking about the two sports in their pure forms.

A fanciful imagining of BFP in his prime

Rugby Union Football has been worn down by professionalism to a mere shadow of the glorious, muddied oafdom that was so deliciously available to earlier generations. Fifth team rugby is now a thing of distant memories and it will never return. BDR used to say that if a game is worth playing, it is worth playing badly. This ostensibly glib remark masks a lost truth. I am partly to blame because I played and coached rugby with a distinct desire to win. However I hope I never quite lost the instinct that it does a man (or indeed a woman) no moral harm to be bested every now and again. That is part of sport/growing up. Myriad genies are out of the rugby bottle and cannot be put back: misplaced professionalism; tactical substitutions; impact players; the advancement of the interest of the paying spectator over that of the players. The latest new kid on the block is the wrteched R360, a devil-child rugby version of the woeful and divisive LIV Golf. Shame on you Mike Tindall. I am glad I played when I did, from my early efforts at prop aged eleven to my final joyous season at No. 8 for the fourths at AOE at the age of forty-eight.

As I write this I am listening to commentary of the first day of the World Test Championship between Australia and South Africa at Lord's. I am delighted to say that there is a full-house and will allow prejudice to prompt me to add that South Africa seem to be getting the better of it - I can't be doing with that Steve Smith, brilliant as he can be.

Have you ever tried to watch the entirety of an IPL game? It takes for ever. The ingenuity of the batting, I will grant you, is staggering. The fielding is sublime. But it is nothing more than glorified (very glorified) pub cricket. Pop has eaten itself. Enjoy test cricket while you can - it will not be re-invented.  

     

Am I Getting Old And Reactionary?

Of course I am. Indeed my friends will tell you that I used to be young and reactionary. No matter, I'm still going to go off on one about the state of three of my favourite sports, most particularly the way that they seem to think they can attract a 'new audience'.

These three sporting passions of mine may be on their way out, certainly in the satisfying manifestations that have enraptured me for most of my life. Let's start with cricket, the state of which I have lamented many times before. I watch the tedious Big Bash from Australia. The commentary is odious. Shouting does not make something more notable. This noise is rubbish.

Next, the sport nearest to my heart, rugby union football. The RFU thinks it advisable to pay its Chief Executive Officer over a million pounds per annum as he signs-off on a year in which the organistaion culled a load of staff and in which the grass-roots game is dying on its feet. The game struggles to make viable a top league which has only ten solvent teams. It denies itself, when fielding a team to represent our country, the services of anyone who has the audacity to ply his trade outside England. This too is rubbish.

And the game I play (very badly) these days - golf. I watched the utter drivel of the TGL indoor game that is being used to line the pockets of Woods and McIlroy. Professional golfers hitting a ball into a screen linked to a computer that traces where the ball would have gone. All the time the commentators roar at us and attempt the impossible of making golfers sound interesting. Good golf is plenty interesting, its practitioners have no need to be. This too is rubbish. 

Test match cricket. Well-coached top-level rugby. Proper golf played under pressure of terrain and climate. Mark my words, we will miss these when they have gone.       

An Unquiet Mind

There but for the grace of God. What follows is not intended to be presumptuous or self-aggrandising - it is a subject close to my heart.

Graham Thorpe played one hunded test matches for England, scoring sixteen centuries along the way. Last week he ended his own life by standing in the way of a train. We need to talk about this.

I had no particular affection for Thorpe as a player, rather a considered admiration. I'm afraid that my romantic soul made me more of a Gower fan when it came to the left-handed batsmen of my lengthy cricket-watching life. We do not need to talk about this.

There but for the grace of God. My personal stars aligned (family, medical, religious and social) to keep me alive but the loss of a soul brother touches me. We need to talk about this. Please, please, just talk. Sleep peaceful my brother man.

Back On The Chain Gang

Which, by the way, is the title of my favourite Pretenders' song, not that this has anything to do with what I was going to say. No, what I want to talk about is Big Fat Pig's return to the streets of Four Oaks. Those new running shoes I told you about have passed their first test, indeed two tests. Two passages of my favoured route and no calf strain to complain of. In addition I have been out on the Precious Bike on each of the last two Sundays. Nothing gargantuan but plenty of middling climbs to make the thighs burn. What with my twice-weekly golf (I have joined the Senior Section at Royal Pype Hayes to add to the Monday outings with old rugby mates) I am feeling quite chipper about my physical condition. 

Here's something that bothers me - the England cricket team. They have revolutionised their approach to test cricket and quite properly hoovered-up some praise for their exciting approach. But these are the facts: by their hubris they gifted the Ashes to Australia and last week they lost catastrophically to India in a match they could quite plausibly have drawn. Since when has a defeat been a more desirable result than a draw? Unprofessional - and I don't care if they come charging out of the blocks this week and demolish India in the fourth test, my point still stands. It's sport, not professional wrestling. Making a classically gifted batsman like Joe Root look like a pissed-up pub player is no achievement at all. 

Usually at this time of year I would be girding my loins for the annual pilgrimage to the races at Cheltenham. Not this time. Never again I suspect. Too crowded, too corporate. This is a sadness but hardly a new phenomenon. It is precisely the same thing at Twickenham. God, never mind the running and cycling, this middle-aged-man-in lycra is knocking on the door of miserable old git country. Doesn't mean he's wrong though!

I Went To Manchester And It Didn't Rain

All of which was a pity since after my return to good old Brum, the rain has hardly left Manchester alone. I was there for the cricket and it looks as if the destiny of the Ashes will be settled by the intervention of the weather. England have utterly outplayed the Australians in this match but you have to have a poor medium-term memory to be oblivious of previous occasions where England have got away with it. So no complaints from this quarter - those should be reserved for the gratuitous gifting of the first test to the Aussies - see earlier grumpy entry.

All is forgiven

Our day at Old Trafford was a real treat. We saw Jonny Bairstow at his pugnacious best and we saw the Aussies reduced to pleasing dishevilment. Gratifying. Sadly one has to comment on the truly shocking toilet provision within the ground. Half hour queues to avail oneself of a squalid sewer is not acceptable. I feel a strongly-worded letter coming on.

So what else? Not much to be honest. I was having what I hope will be my last examined encounter with Shakespeare and Bagehot last week and found myself mentally drained as a result. Then a day on the quasi-lash at Old Trafford left this poor little poppet physically empty as well. Time for the Pig to act his age not his shoe size.

A thought - Italian red wines. Yes please.   

A Great Film, A New Calculus, And The Story Of Three Yorkshiremen

I am always careful not to bandy the word 'great' about too careleesly in my frequent opining on films. But you will have to indulge me in the context of His Girl Friday. Even my Halliwell agrees, describing it as quite possibly the funniest film ever made. I'm not quite sure I'd go that far although I can't, off the top of my head, suggest a better candidate. It is a lightning-paced verbal firecracker of a movie. Based on Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur's stage play, the film takes the daring (and outrageously successful) risk of changing the sex of one of the leads into a woman - Hildy Johnson, played superbly by Rosalind Russell. Her co-star is Cary Grant, possibly more briliant that in any other role and, yes, I have seen Philadelphia Story. 94/100. 

Next, that new calculus. I refer to cricket and the much discussed 'Bazball', itself a nomenclature not loved by its principal practitioners, Messrs Stokes and Brendan McCullum. Mind you Stephen Greenblatt has never taken to 'New Historicism' even though any fule kno that he invented that critical method. Well, Bazball has been worrying me a tad. If we ignore (as we should) the test against Ireland, England, by their own generosity had thrown away two successive tests - the last against New Zealand in the winter and the first in the Ashes at Edgbaston. I like Zac Crawley as a batsman and I find supportable the view that he will become a worthy test batsman. However he gave a completely pudding-headed interview after the Edgbaston debacle in which he parroted the rot about the result not mattering and being in the entertainment business. I've been a sports fan all my life and I can tell you Zac that most of us regard the pursuit of victory as the foremost requisite of professional sport. Yes, you can take risks (including that of defeat) where they open up greater prospects of overall triumph, but throwing international matches away on the basis of a sense of theatre? No, that's professional wrestling and that is not sport.

Anyway, I can forgive the defeat at Lord's, just as I can forgive Carey's dismissal of the criminally negligent Bairstow. Such things tend to come back and bite you and Carey duly endured a tough time at Headingley. Mind you there was no redemption for Bairstow who kept wicket poorly and contributed bugger all with the bat. Which is not to say that Bairstow doesn't have plenty of credit in the bank after last season's heroics.

The Headingley test was almost too tense to watch but I managed it. Good to see one of the nice guys, Chris Woakes, a proper Brummie, scoring the winning runs. His boyhood cricket coach was my great mate ICW at Aston Manor CC. Fame by association!

Nice guys do win.

So those three Yorkshiremen. Bairstow is one and, England's victory notwithstanding, he had a poor match, as did, quite untypically, Joe Root. His droppped catch off Marsh in the first innings nearly cost England the match. Root owes us nothing. Which leaves the third Tyke. The old saw is that when Yorkshire cricket is strong, so is England's. In these days of a criminally diminished County Championship, this is harder to support but in the credit column we have to list Harry Brook. He batted with all the sureness of the infant Bambi in the first innings but then was lion-hearted in the second. Better to be lucky than good. Brook might just be both.  

Pop Partially Regurgitates Itself

A couple of events that, if they don't totally clear my mood of pessimism, do at least cheer me up a tad.

As you know my favourite axiom is that pop will eat itself and I have applied this tediously and often to Twenty20 cricket - you know what I mean, that 'speeded-up' version of beautiful old cricket wherein sides now take two hours to bowl twenty overs. What a crock. Well, anyway what should come riding over the horizon on a white charger other than the revenging knight of a fabulous test match. England conceded more than five hundred and fifty runs in the first innings yet somehow conspired still to defeat New Zealand on the back of a pyrotechnic innings from Johnny Bairstow. Quite brilliant. And, yes, I suppose I do have to concede that some of Bairstow's audacity may have been honed in limited overs cricket. That however is not the point.

Not quite so stratospheric but nonetheless welcome was the climax to the Canadian Open golf on Sunday. That is to say a championship played over seventy-two holes. Better still if you want assurance that golf's soul may just be rescuable, track down millionaire John Rahm's press conference before this week's U.S. Open. Modest, grateful and wise. Thankyou.   

But let's get away from my sporting hobby-horse. I've watched another film. An odd one this one. Radioactive is a worthy biopic about Marie Curie, played enthrallingly by Rosamund Pike. It deploys with limited success some flashing backwards and forwards from Curie's mature years. It take seriously the boons and the hideous horrors of the taming of radioactivity. It succeeds in making you think but, somehow despite Pike's excellence and the taut direction, it doesn't seem to me ever to be as involving as it wants to be. 69/100. 

2021: 11 - 12

And so the year came to its sorry end. And OG's capitulation in the face of facts finally came to pass. In November Boris Johnson vainly tried to orchestrate the forgiving of a back-bench MP who had behaved execrably. He was found to be shedding support like an ageing stripper but with rather less dignity. The impression was of a man totally out of touch with common decency. Just like the abject Cameron before him we had the demeaning spectacle of a clever man just too bloody lazy to do the job properly. Events would soon reveal the revolting, shabby thruth - Boris had even fewer redeeming features than the Boy Cameron. Eton College must be so proud of itself.

In December we had the start of partygate. Proof positive that Boris and his cronies, the braying sub-culture who inhabit Downing Street, simply don't believe that the laws they have made should apply to them. The stench of entitlement is rank. Still the wretched man hangs on, now embarked on a scorched-earth policy that seems to involve the ditching of everybody who was in the vicinity bar the leader himself. As George Washington didn't quite say - I cannot tell a lie Father, it was the cat. 

I care not a jot that the laws Downing Street were ignoring were assinine  - they were laws and it ill behoves our governing class to stick two fingers up at them. In the name of God man, go. Now. 

But there is worse. By the end of December and with barely a whimper of defiance our cricketers had lost to Australia. Pitiful. Ill-prepared, the nation's cricketing pride sacrificed at the altar of the Hundred - a competition invented for those who cannot even be arsed to sit through a full game of Twenty20 pub cricket. I don't give a shit about the commerciality of the 'product' - some things are too precious to be messed with and test cricket is one such. But what do I know.

My new year resolution? Not to be so grumpy. It's going to be difficult.

Silence Is Golden

But not so golden when you are a blogger.Writers Write.

I am ever grateful for the company of good men. Winter golf can be a tad disspiriting, apart from all else, it gets your precious white shoes dirty - I have to wear white shoes. Not sure why but have almost invariably done so. To counter this desecration of my summer shoes, I have taken to wearing my old shoes - these look fine (also white) but my sodden feet remind me why I replaced them earlier this year - there'a substantial hole. No part of this small personal drama dims the lustrous company of BH, JRS, CL, MS and RW at Royal Pype Hayes. 

More good company: the Aston Old Edwardian Reunion Dinner at School on Saturday, an event which seemed to have been crawling to a sad oblivion, transpired as a resurgent iteration. This was the first time that our new Head had heard the School Song being sung. Silly but brilliant. Long live the good old schoolboys, God bless the brave old school. 

The T20 World Cup has come and gone. Good riddance. Australia winning anything is a little tiresome but this is, after all, only pub cricket. The height of the tournament was the ignominious exit of India - the nation who have stolen the soul of first class cricket. Ha ha.

You may recall me concluding some months ago that Eddie Jones has outstayed his welcome as England rugby coach. I stand by this. Apart from the fact of his fondness for acting the charmless nerk, forgivable when winning perhaps, he just does plain stupid things - he plays his best player (Tom Curry) out of position in a specialist position for example. I could go on. But won't. 

The Craven Reimagining Of Cricket

Pop will eat itself. Here I go again.

As if Twenty20 cricket was not craven enough with its elevation of pub cricket (and don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with that in its place) into something somehow godly, now we have the utterly detestable Hundred. A sub-seventeen over thrash for professional cricketers, a game devised by marketing men who hate cricket. It is served up to us by commentators who have swallowed the grim lie that this is the greatest thing ever invented and that it will 'save' the game. If this is the price then this precious sport is not worth saving. Nothing sums things up so much as the televised enthusiasm of that great talent, Kevin Pietersen - a man who sees no harm in selling the soul of the sport he graced for a mess of pottage.

Thus yesterday we had the pitiful and meaningless Hundred sharing attention with a Test match which really did what great sport can do - that is to say, expose the fallibilities and the potentials of participants. As it happens the fallibility was all English and the potential all Indian.

Pop will eat itself. God, I feel old! 

Same As It Ever Was

Sorry, I have gone through an inactive period blogwise. I have not been entirely lazy, rather I have been waging my ineffective war with my chapter on Antony and Cleopatra. Still mired in that task though an end (or more exactly an interval - there will have to be substantial revision) is in sight. Great play, as yet a patchy chapter only.

Enough of my problems. How have you been? Are you yet vaccinated against Covid? That seems to be the key to getting out of this bloody lockdown. Waiting for a Covid-free world will be stupid. Within reason, we have to live with it as we do with other ailments. I find the cozy stupidity of those who think we can all live at the cost of each other the most frighteneing aspect of current thinking.

Aren't the Tories a shower? The sheer blind stupidity of Matt Handjob takes some believing. And isn't Dominic Cummings quite simply the nastiest, most odious, disloyal little shit you have ever seen? These bastards drove me into a position I never want to be in - I found myself agreeing with that shit of all shits, Alastair Campbell. I got over it but please never again.

More tee shirts sold than records?

So why today's title? Well, I was going to go (yet again) with my favourite 'Pop Will Eat Itself', but I thought you might be bored with that. You know what I mean by now. That lucky phrase comes to mind again as Sky flood the sporting airwaves with advertisements for the Hundred - cricket designed for people who hate cricket and find Tweny20 too boring. The same weary sentiment is reinforced by the news that Premiership Rugby are increasing the size of the league and imposing a moratorium on relegation. Watch this space - the rich will get richer. And what about the complete charade of the group stages of football's Euros. Thirty-six matches to accomplish the minor task of eliminating only eight of the twenty-four teams. Stultifying. Greedy. Mind you I ask you to give me credit for having backed the nil-nil draw in the England v Scotland match. I'm sorry but it was as obvious as Scotland's failure to garner any other points. 

Still, no matter. I'm enjoying golf with the lads and it's QMT tour in three weeks time. Glorious stupidity. I had a particularly joyous outing at Forest of Arden last week with CC and BH. The greens were an eye-opener for those of us who are used to the speed-bumps on the greens at Royal Pype Hayes.

England v Germany tonight. I'm not sure I can stand to watch it. 

Round The Coast Towards Moelfre

I have been suffering with writer's block. That is putting it rather grandly - what I mean to say is that, rather to my surprise, my chapter on Antony and Cleopatra has got me stumped. I love the play but finding anything cogent to say about it is proving a horrible challenge. It is having too many ideas rather than none, which is, I suppose a good thing. Oh well, sod it, the sun's out and the red wine is chilled. Yes, I did say chilled red wine. If it's good enough for the Spanish, it's good enough for me.

It's renovation time here at Plas Piggy. I spent the morning ripping up the flooring I laid twenty plus years ago in the front bedroom. My handiwork will be replaced by a more professional product. Sad to see the last vestiges of my DIY efforts being consigned to the scrapheap but I have to admit that those few remaining features of my work are looking tired. 

After loading the old flooring into Canyonero (if you're not a devotee of The Simpsons and don't get this reference, I'm afraid I haven't got time to explain) I treated myself to a walk around the coast path towards Moelfre. The sun is out with only a slight breeze and the beach is crowded with happy noise. Life's been good to me so far.

I have been listening to the test match but have now given up on England. Is there a worse top three currently playing in international cricket? I know there probably must be but surely we can find better than this. Technique seems to be an optional extra these days. Pop will eat itself - see earler blogs for an explanation.  

Tonight I will mostly be eating meat pie.

Pop Still Eating Itself - Own Leg Already Half Digested

You may well be tired of my saying this but it's my blog so sod it. Pop will eat itself. 

Joe Root made a brilliant double century in the Test match in India overnight. Brilliant. That is real cricket. Go to the BBC cricket page and you will find it leading on the outcome of the utterly insignificant Australian domestic T20 competition. But that is not the worst of it - you will find occupying a lot of air time at the moment, coverage of some ridiculous T10 contest. That's right, ten overs per side, played by professionals. What a load of complete bollocks.

I ventured, a few years ago, the opinion that Tiger Woods was a knob. So he was, but he is much better now and I hope his fragile body allows this remarkable sportsman a last hurrah. His mantle as talented knob now rests easy on the head of another macro-talent, Rory McIlroy. McIlroy is stuck in a rut of serial under-achievement but that does not stop him talking tosh when a microphone gets put in front of him - McIlroy Tosh. It is worth comparing this peevish reaction to that of the normally daft Bryson DeChambeau, who seems to have had some PR lessons.

Good Stuff, Bad Stuff, Loads Of Stuff In Fact

Four days have now passed since the miracle at Headingley which saw Ben Stokes, by a combination of megatalent and towering will, lift an otherwise hapless England cricket team across the line to victory. Watch again the last hour of that match and then try to tell me that Twenty20 is other than a tasteless frippery.

cricket, bloody hell

That was good stuff. Bad stuff was the demise of Bury FC. Worse has been the quality (more markedly the lack of it) of debate that Bury's expulsion from the Football League has inspired. Even the usually sane, albeit hyperbolic, Jim White on TalkSport had lost the plot in the immediate aftermath. The questions no one has been asking and which need to be posed are these: What is it that dictates that we absolutely must have ninety-two functioning fully professional football clubs in this country? What other country has, per capita, a similar number of such clubs? Why should the insolvency of a football club be administered by any standard other than that applying in all other industries (bar banking I suppose I ought cynically to add)? I do not deny that football has a particuar problem in being invaded by shyster investors but the crisis of football is all about greed at the top of the mountain and envious chancers looking to scale the immoral peaks.

Brexit, bloody sodding Brexit. Boris Johnson's proroguing (alright I know it's technically the Queen) of parliament has got the Remainer luvvies all of a tizzy. There is sham outrage and pious bollocks about this signalling some death of democracy. Oh good grief, grow up. Parliament will miss perhaps five days of potential debate on a topic it has already wasted three years of fannying about upon. I am no fan of Boris but the outrage arises because just for once a Prime Minister has outflanked the Remainers, a group who have become used to getting their own way in the face of nothing more daunting than Theresa May's crass, appeasing ineptitude. If you're on the same side of an argument as Jeremy Corbyn, Gina Miller, two dozen Anglican bishops and, worst of all, John Bercow, you might just be wrong.  

But Is It Cricket?

Steve Smith (whose potential greatness it is foolhardy to question - check the stats) was felled at the weekend by a vicious short-pitched delivery from England's new hero Jofra Archer. Smith took his eyes off the ball and copped it on the neck. His collapse was frightening and it has now been confirmed that he will have to miss the upcoming Headingley test. In  a gruesome way this is very good news for England.

What are we to make of the species of bowling that can produce such results? We have to live with it I would suggest - sport can be, almost must be, dangerous. I think we also have to acknowledge that an unintended consequence of the safety culture that quite properly promoted the wearing of helmets has been the deleterious effect on batting techniques against the short-pitched ball.

When I blogged about the fist test at Edgbaston I condoned the booing of Smith as humorous albeit probably counter-productive. However there is a world of difference between coarse humour and the booing of a stricken warrior departing the scene of his downfall. Smith has been an egregious cheat, still is a phenomenal cricketer. The two sides of the coin need to be considered together.

So, yes it is cricket and I'm sorry if that sounds glib.

It Took Less Than A Month

... and already we're crap at cricket again. We had a bloody good stab at losing to Ireland in their first test match at Lord's and not content with that then proceeded to have a totally successful stab at losing to Australia ... from a seemingly impregnable position. Half way through day one at a predictably raucous Edgbaston, Australia were trying manfully to rescue themselves from the rubble of their first innings - they were 122 for 8. Read that again - 122 for 8. The Aussies were revived by the brilliance of Steve Smith and eventually they despatched England thanks to yet more Smith excellence (a century in each innings) and the staggering uselessness of England's second innings batting - on which score has an international sportsman ever behaved as unprofessionally as Jason Roy? Luckily the day which unquestionably belonged to England was day two and that was the day that your correspondent was sunning himself in the Hollies Stand, that repository of coarse wit and wisdom. Great fun.

Bradmanesque?

Steve Smith presents us with a problem of course. He is beyond question a great (as distinguished from merely very good) batsman - the statistical evidence is incontrovertible. He is also the man who was captain of his country when he assented to an egregious piece of cheating and then cried in front of the cameras when he got caught. The answer to the Smith problem is obvious however: one should both boo him as pantomime villain and stand to applaud his almost (almost I say, let's not get carried away) Bradmanesque accumulation of runs. Mind you, there has to be a suspicion that the booing merely serves to motivate this run machine, in which case we should perhaps adopt a steely silence or possibly that most English of weapons - a painfully polite and condescending ripple of applause.

So apart from a jolly good day at the cricket, what else has the Big Fat Pig been up to? Well, every morning he checks the interweb thing for news of what Trump has been up to. I find him eerily fascinating and still cannot quite believe that I live in a world that has allowed this to happen. Apart from that I have a tiresomely painful right knee which is so the doc tells me merely displaying wear and tear consequent upon overuse. Go not gentle into that dark night Pig. And we've got bloody gulls (flying rats) nesting on the roof of the country residence. They are of course protected so it will presumably cost an arm and a leg to safeguard our property.

Cricket, Bloody Hell

Well, well, well, the early favourites did in the end win the Cricket World Cup, though not by any means in the swashbuckling manner that their stellar pre-tournament form had suggested. No, it was back to the days of two hundred and fifty being a defendable score and bowlers at least getting some of the glory. Praise be to the person (if he or she actually exists and it wasn't one of those happy accidents) who oversaw the production of the pitches - now I consider it, I suspect that happy accident was involved.

So England triumphant after quite simply the most gripping game of one day cricket there has ever been. Death to the bastard child that is T20 and long live the one day international and its big brother, test cricket? Sadly I suspect not but for a few days we can at least bask in the sunlit glory of England's victory. Now, the observant amongst you will have noted that I was critical of the team when they endured their mid tournament blip. Do I now recant? No, not completely. They are still not the finished article (an unpleasant prospect for the rest of the teams) and some of them betray their membership of the snowflake generation but what they achieved on Sunday was resoundingly good news for cricket and sent the nation to work on Monday with a smile on its face. Our footballers needed extra time in 1966; the rugby team needed the Wilkinson miracle in 2003; our cricketers took it even closer to calamity before winning. What will we have to endure before we can celebrate another global team title?

the final act in a true sporting drama

Drama notwithstanding, I would select as the moment of the match Martin Guptill's immediate and sporting signal of six when his teammate Trent Boult carried the ball over the boundary. I know that television would have made certain that the runs had been counted but Guptill's actions were instinctive and honourable. Not enough was made of them by the television commentators.

Cricket bloody hell. Bring on the Ashes. I've got a ticket for day two at Edgbaston.

By way of a change I am now ensconced in a student hall of residence in Swansea as I await the British Shakespeare association conference. Bulletins to follow and hopefully this time I will manage not to offend any of the great and the good. There's always a first time.

Of Flat Track Bullies (Again) And the Boasting Of Mystic Dave

I warned you that England's over-hyped cricketers were heading for a fall. I warned you. I get things right so infrequently that you will understand my need to boast.

But, my ego aside, we should just consider what has gone wrong - most particularly we should locate the failing as something other than 'just one of those things'. Manifestly it is not such, because in the space of two weeks it has happened twice, on both occasions at the hands of hitherto hapless opposition. I will tell you what is missing from England's game - nuance. One of my favourite words, nuance. Test cricket at its best (and that is the highest expression of the sport) is highly nuanced. One day cricket (but not that omnivorous beast T20) just about permits of nuance. In recent years and even in test cricket England have had two speeds - full throttle and calamitous crash. Just look at Moeen Ali's dismissal against Sri Lanka - a fall categorically lacking in nuance. And he wasn't the only one.

Misses the mark - lacks nuance?

So here it is -  nuance matters. Cricket is a game of nuance, or at least it ought to be and as I have said in this context too often, pop will eat itself. And whilst we are on the subject it should be noted that Mark Antony should be played with nuance and it is this necessity that makes Antony and Cleopatra potentially so beguiling. As a critical aside, and not that anyone will care, the BBC Antony and Cleopatra, marginally misses the mark.

So you see, sometimes I am right. Sometimes I am wrong. And sometimes it rains.   

A Nation Expects - Unfortunately

The Cricket World Cup got underway today to the tune of England's favouritism. Usually such expectation has a debilitating effect on our players but, on this occasion, only the greatest churl would argue that they have not earned the tag by virtue of their prior performances. They have elevated the fifty over game to a point where a total of a mere three hundred can seem inadequate. Their bowling does not convince quite as readily as the brutal batting but, hey, you can't have everything.

 I watched much of the game against South Africa today and at one point in the middle of the South African reply to England's innings, I felt that too familiar deflated sensation of the England fan (in any sport - cricket is hardly alone in letting us down) and was readying myself to write a blog which castigated the attendant mood of confidence. In fact I was wrong by a massive margin. England were reassuringly professional in bowling South Africa out. And if you haven't yet seen Ben Stokes's catch, please gooogle it and wonder at what a man can do. I think I am going to allow myself to be optimistic