Sorry, Norm, You're Right

Here's Norm on Adelaide.

What can I say? Many critics, including St Geoffrey of Boycott, opined that the Aussies, unlike other cricketing nations, had forgotten how to play a 5 day test. Well, that was well called, eh?

I don't believe Australia are miles ahead of England. I think the strongest England side is a match for the strongest Aussie side. However, as in all sports, our natural idiocy has prevented that from happening; in addition to which although our first XI are great, our second XI are rubbish. One thing we could do is follow the Aussie States and not allow our main competitors to play for our county sides: I remember the outcry when it looked like Graham Thorpe was going to play for NSW this winter.

Norm's post is a great one: at times like this for Poms it is very difficult to recall the reasons we love cricket. Indeed the last test is why I hate cricket. But like my dad, or my oldest friends, I keep coming back to it, and I love it for its worst bits; and I love it because England's deficiencies are an integral part of its beauty - real beauty that is, in which a created thing is pleasing, moral, but flawed in that way that all created things must be. Like living things, England cricket will always die - it's a shifting being, capable of greatness, but, like most of us, struggling in the depths of mediocrity from day to day.

England cricket - you are one of us. Cheers.