Category: Uncategorized

Wow, that wasn’t quite what I expected, but it’s safe to say England will be the happier of the two sides in the sheds after the days play. The Aussies, when they reassemble outside the hospital doors, may be left a bit confused as to what on earth just happened to them.

England fans rarely have it easy, and today was no exception. For those of us brave enough, and with some annual leave to spare, the 2am wake up would go one of two ways….today it managed to go both.

When I heard England would be having a bat I began to sweat, cry and vomit. The PTSD of Rory burns crabbing across his stumps and getting castled first ball of the series fired up and I was prepared for history to repeat itself.

History didn’t quite repeat itself, Crawley played the first ball well, the 6th ball? Not so well. Oh fuck boys it’s happening again.

And happen again it did! Despite good starts for Duckett, Pope and Smith and with Brook batting well (I think?) to make his 50, for the most part we looked worryingly out of place.

The size of Aussie grounds is an issue I have tactfully decided to ignore until now. They are big though, really big, I dont think anyone in the stands could see Ben Duckett out in the middle.

Root I will excuse, you’d do a lot of awful things to avoid getting a ball like that early in the innings, go again Rooty.

But the rest of them? Hapless.

Credit where its due however, Mitch Starc was a cut above today, taking 7fer in the first two sessions of the series is special. They needed him, and golden boy Boland was nowhere to be seen, getting taken apart by a rattled England batting order.

With 172 on the board, I put an admittedly sarcastic “20 over par here lads” message out to a number of group chats, something I will now defend as a serious, well informed statement for the foreseeable.

We looked in big trouble, I could envision the Aussies putting 500+ on the board and killing the series in cold blood.

Then came Usman Khawaja. Towards the back end of the England innings….well actually when we were 6 down, but we all know that may as well have been 9, Uzzie had the sudden and painful realisation that he hadn’t yet completed the Friday Wordle.

Damned if he lost that streak, and with his boys seemingly in control of the situation, he tactfully told the physios he had a tight back, and off he went to the bogs for half an hour to get his guesses in.

When he reemerged having successfully completed the puzzle in just three attempts, he was quite surprised to see the innings nearly wrapped up. As Mark Wood sent his first ball skyward, you could see Uzzie doing some mental maths as the ball plopped down into Alex Careys mits. He wasn’t going to be able to open the batting.

This was far from ideal for the hosts, since Warner (well established prick) retired, they have been struggling to find a suitable partner for Khawaja. This time over they felt confident, Jake Weatherald has been in good touch and warranted his spot in the side, but Uzzie wouldn’t be at the other end.

Poor Jake had to walk out to bat with the second strangest creature on gods green earth, Marnus Labsddfkdgbsgbsh. Marnus’ is about as annoying as they come, loud but not in a funny way, devoid of charm and although occasionally a good player, quite a hard watch at the crease.

As Jake walked out to bat with Marnus chirping away in his ear, he probably wasn’t in the best mindset. Two balls later as he sauntered back to the pavvy with half his front pad blown off, I can confidently say his head was in the gutter.

It was at this point, the strangest creature on Gods green earth walked out to meet the fella he pipped in the rankings. Steve Smith is a very hard bloke to like, which is partially why I don’t like him, but is an admittedly good cricket player, even if watching him gives me seizures.

Smudge shuffled out to the middle looking “well fed” as described in the aforementioned group chats, and as twitchy as ever, taking guard against Archer, he and Marnus proceeded to bat out the next half hour in a disgustingly strange manner.

England were bowling incredibly well, Archer, Atkinson, Wood and Carse all bowling quickly and getting the ball to talk. Smith took a couple of big blows to the elbow, which I enjoyed very much, and looked troubled by the pace and bounce. Marnus looked as if he was actively trying to miss the ball.

When these two bat together, it is an assault to the senses. Two strange men who, when together, seem to make each other even worse. The shuffling, hand gestures and exaggerated shouting were awful but acceptable a few years ago when they were shitting runs together, but now it seems forced and sad. Aussies can’t actually enjoy watching that can they?

Well one person who didn’t enjoy watching it was Jofra, who got one to leap up at Marnus, catch his bat as he attempted to leave, and castle him. Thank fuck that’s over.

Smudge was gone shortly after to a brilliant ball from Carse, who impressed on ashes debut, mostly because he gave some verbals to Marnus early.

The Aussies were in trouble, and it kept getting worse. Khawaja came out with his tail between his legs, and 6 balls later went back to the dugouts having made his situation even worse, some of the Aussies were so upset with him they got the MCC membership on FaceTime and asked them to give him a good spraying again.

Travis head looked fucking awful to start, pretty bad in the middle, had 5 decent minutes then remembered he isn’t very clever and slapped an innocuous stokes delivery straight to Carse.

Cam Green looked good until he didnt, he had a bit of a scare when Mark Wood decided to stress test his helmet for him, nearly sending him crashing backwards into his own stumps, but it wasn’t Wood that got him, it was the skipper, and the rest of the story is the Ben Stokes show.

Ben Stokes plays cricket with his piece. He has been our best bowler over this year, and showed why with a five wicket haul today making light work of the middle/bottom order. He wasn’t the best of the bowlers, I would actually say that honour is shared between the whole attack, but Stokes just has a knack of taking poles when it matters.

The Aussies end the day 123-9 and England have their noses in front. If you’d told me that at 6am I might have kissed you.

It’s all to play for tomorrow, and I think it may well end before the day is out.

Ahhhhhhhhh fuck lads, I’ve got my hopes up again. 

It’s been a long old time since England have looked remotely like competing over in HMP Australia, but this time……I fancy it.

Why? Well that’s a question I’ve been bouncing around in my small, uncultured English brain for the last few weeks, and I think I’ve finally found an answer.

The Aussies have lost their aura. It’s gone, vanished, fucked off into the abyss. When did this happen? I have some theories…..

This is a major issue as the Aussies, I have deduced, are not and have never actually been particularly good at cricket. What they have been good at, is manifesting performances through sheer bloody minded belief that they are incredible athletes, this belief humming so strongly from their collective craniums it has actually leaked into the opposition, the crowd and the remote audiences heads.

They have been getting away with this ruse since its inception. It can be traced back to the “great” Don Bradman, who, as archived footage has shown, was actually properly shit. His trump-esque self belief (and reportedly similar political views) had him bully his way to a batting average of 99 and so the great deception began. 

It’s impressive that they have been able to keep it up all these years with only a few notable slip ups. Their home series loss to India, probably the most memorable of these, was likely due to the all powerful Virat Kholi, who had been the subject of a targeted mental attack, leaving the tour early. The Aussies scrambled to turn their attention to Rahane and co but couldn’t quite infect them fast enough. 

Kinks also showed in their armour back in 2010/11, when England thrashed them in their own back yard. It’s hard to pinpoint how this team managed to break the spell for the duration of the series, but it was likely due to the hypnotic powers of Chris Tremletts assuredly huge member that took up so much of his teammates brain power they were able to shed themselves of the Aussie illusion and embarrass them on foreign soil. 

These previous fuck ups didn’t quite spell the end of their methodology though. They managed to bounce back each time. Recently though, they made a fatal error that could spell doom for the great deception….they selected Sam Konstas. 

Konstas, in theory, should have been the perfect candidate to maintain or perhaps even strengthen the mental cannon in their armoury. He was oozing in self belief, and completely devoid of cricketing talent, a proverbial Anakin to Bradmans’  Palpetine. It seemed to be working as well, on test debut he made a quick fire score against the worlds best chucker (we will come back to that allegation later down the line) and all was looking rosy in Aussie HQ.

All was not as it seemed though, in their giddiness at finding what they perceived to be “the chosen one” they had overlooked one huge factor. Sam Konstas, is thick as pigshit. 

Being somewhat educationally challenged isn’t normally as issue in this system, in fact, its quite often an advantage. But the system relies on a base level of understanding that you aren’t quite as good as you put out to be, and so you must work on your mental fortitude to ensure that this never leaks out. This is what builds the radial strength of these deception waves and makes them strong enough to pierce the thickest of skulls, like those on the shoulders of Piers Morgan and Johnny Bairstow. If you doubt my science, Shane Watson literally wrote a book about it, brazen. 

Konstas doesn’t have this, he’s not even close to understanding the concept, when asked for his cricketing Idol, he told reporters the “little hamster in Bluey was pretty good”. This complete lack of awareness has bled into the psyche of the rest of the squad. Steve Smith has been making social media videos in New York in a strange attempt to sculpt some kind of personality, something anyone  who has watched him play, speak or exist, knows is a complete farce.  

Aussie HQ realised their mistake and dropped him, but it was too late. It’s broken, he has broken it, the deception is lifted and for the first time in a long time, the world are finally opening their eyes and seeing that the big bad Aussies aren’t quite all that. A few of them are a bit fat, most of them are objectively ugly, and none of them are any good at cricket….apart from Mitchell Starc. 

So it’s England Vs Starc 

3-2 Starc.