Tuesday 8 November 2016

England vs India

The first test starts tomorrow in Rajkot.  It looks like England will play the batting line up I wished for a week or two back, Hameed will open and Ducket replace Ballance at 4. The bowlers are undecided as yet but the smart money is on Gareth Batty returning.

It's impossible to predict how England will go these days but against the No.1 team in the world in spinning conditions, we will definitely be the underdogs.  We could play much better than we did in Bangladesh and still get battered.  Statistics show England have the best record of all teams to tour India since 2000 and are the only away team to win a series here in the last decade.  We could be brilliant and play out of our skins... But we don't have Swann or Panesar any more.  I'll stick my neck out and predict a 3-1 India win.

Elewhere there is the small matter of the US election.  The country that has given the world Neal Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Stephen King, Harper Lee, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Joe Fraxier, George Foreman, Marvin Hagler, Robert de Niro, Johnny Depp, Quinten Tarrantino, Mark Oliver Everett, Kurt Cobain, (insert favourites of your own...you get the point...) Marvin Gaye, Dr Dre, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Earnest Hemmingway, Woody Allen, Iggy Pop, Aretha Franklin, Lauren Hill, Jimi Hendrix, Roosevelt, Lincoln and yes Obama.
How the hell did they end up having to choose between a pair of psychotic clowns ?
Then again, this is a county where mad people are allowed to own guns...

PS  I don't dislike American people, I've known many over the years and have liked almost all of them.  Unfortunately their country is even more corrupt than ours.


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