Spoke too soon

I spoke too bloody soon.  Just when I start to believe the England team is invincible the wheels come off.  It had to happen, we knew that really.  Even the team was telling us to expect the odd defeat along the way as they try to change test cricket forever.  So why am I so bloody angry?

Because…  Because it shouldn’t have happened.  We were the better team, we’d set the match up and the only sensible decision was to bat on and keep the Kiwis in the field, take defeat out of the equation.  Enforcing the follow on was the quirky, funky thing to do, it was the flash thing to do, the arrogant thing.  If this match had taken place this coming summer with Australian opponents would England have declared?  I think definitely not.  England let the Kiwis back in the game for what?  For the sake of the game?  Bollocks.  This devalues test cricket and in some regions and the recent past this decision would have been scrutinised for dark reasons.  Fair play to New Zealand for making the most of the opportunity but make no mistake, England dominated this series and where by far the better team.  A drawn series flatters the home side, England gave it to them.

A week ago there were no questions but now I’m wondering where did Ollie Robinson go in this match?  Is Crawley looking over his shoulder yet?  With Bairstow set to return soon who will make way?  I hope it isn’t Foakes!

Red ball rampage

England won another test match making it ten out of the last eleven and spanking a very good home team, this highlighted by the stat it’s our first win in New Zealand since the tour when Anderson and Broad first bowled in tandem fifteen years ago.  It’s all going so well there’s very little to write, the team picks itself and everyone is contributing at some stage.  Or to put it another way, they’re all doing their jobs.  It seemed bizarre that England had virtually no practice but could still come out and impose themselves on decent opposition but there was no point when I could imagine anything other than an England win.  Was this because I was asleep for most of the play or am I starting to believe?  A year some people were talking about a ‘red ball reset’ now we are enjoying a red ball rampage, by this time next year test cricket could be changed forever.

McCarthy’s bar by Pete McCarthy.

Pete McCarthy is an Englishman with Irish heritage and family in Ireland’s wild west.  Here he takes a Bryson style tour of west Ireland trying to make sense of himself, is he English or Irish?  The book was written in 1999 and describes a country I knew well at that time and I loved that I could recognise familiar characters and scenes.  The names and towns may have been different but I’ve experienced almost identical scenarios.  One of McCarthy’s rules of travel is to never pass a pub that bears his name (and very many with other names) of which there are very many and his liking for a pint is the start of many amusing stories.  The Irish pub experience and the unlikely course these evenings can take is something else I’ve enjoyed many times.

The late nineties were a boom time for Irish tourism and McCarthy laments the fake Oirishness creeping into and spoiling the towns he knew in childhood.  In trying to give tourists an Irish experience the country is in danger of losing its identity.   Certainly by the end of the twentieth century Ireland as he knew it seems to be in the process of changing forever.  This would be the only Ireland I’ve ever known, did I experience the real Ireland?  Yes I believe I did.  But how much more has it changed in the two decades since I last visited?  Maybe I should find out some time or will I not like what I find?  Either way I liked this book.