Cricket and Game

OK. Here are some facts.

Strauss = beta
Cook = beta
Bopara = beta
Bell = omega
Collingwood = lesser alpha
Prior = alpha
Broad = alpha
Swann = beta
Anderson = beta
Harmison = lesser omega
Onions = beta

Watson = alpha
Katich = beta
Ponting = alpha
Hussey = beta
Clarke = alpha
North = alpha
Haddin = alpha
Johnson = beta
Clark = alpha
Siddle = alpha
Hilfenhaus = alpha


There's the problem. The England cricket team is populated by beta males.

England in Not Out Shock

Well, England are STILL BATTING after over ONE FULL SESSION in today's test match.

I'm just flabbergasted, utterly, utterly shocked.

Cricket Is Back!

I cannot think of a better New Dawn for cricket than for West Indies to fuck England by an innings (their first victory v England since Edgbaston 2000, also by an innings). To listen to Tony Cozier and Sir Vivian Richards purring on TMS was just plain beautiful. England deserved to go down like they did. Bad cricket. WI played fantastic cricket. It was a delight to hear their fast bowlers steaming in and their spinner just gradually tormenting England out. And I am as narrow minded a nationalist as you could wish to avoid.

West Indies are back. Cricket is back.

England - Britain- the UK- call it what you will - is fucked. Royally. And truly.

Bring it on.

If we could have lost to anyone,anyone, I would have wanted it to be WI: cricket has been so weak without them, their passion, their skill, their love of the game, untainted (until now) by the pursuit of $$$; WI play cricket - have done since Ramadin and Valentine - to fuck their opponents and today they did.

Here's to WI fucking so many more teams.

Fuck 'em guys, in the spirit of Sir Vivian Richards, Joel Garner, the late Malcolm Marshall, in the spirit of Brian Lara, in the spirt of the great Gloucestershire and WI servant Courtney Walsh, and all those great players who played through the seemingly endless decline.

The decline has ended: England's has begun. And it is wholly deserved.

And if anyone thinks I am being a patronising colonialist, well they can fuck right off because 4-0 would bring cricket to attention in a real way. And we all need WI. And we need England, full of lunches, assumptions and other people's money to wake up and fuck off.

Cricket is my favourite sport.

Love it.

Depression in Sport

A very interesting interview this morning during the rain-delayed ODI between SA and England. It was Aggers talking to England legend Marcus Trescothick who has curtailed his international career due to depression and anxiety. Tresco was very open about his condition, which was pleasing not from a voyeuristic point of view, but rather from the point of view that sport needs to face up to some of the problems its people have; instead they tend to be marginalised and left to suffer in silence.

Tresco described the problems he has with both anxiety and depression, and, vividly, the building up of these problems as the pressure situation of a test match abroad came closer and closer. The loss of control, loss of self, that he felt as the reality of those situation became sharper, was almost painful to listen to. In practice, daily life, he could manage. It was only as these times approached that the symptoms defined themselves, reaching a crescendo of shrieking that simply made normal life impossible.

The things is that these are physical symptoms as debilitating as many physical injuries. Yet we don't believe it, or we look at one situation and two different people and ask why one can do it and the other not: could it be that the psychologists are wrong and we don't believe in the existence of other minds at all?

Ovaltine For The Soul

This morning I woke up after yet more feverish dreams (I have been having these a lot lately, not sure why - illness hangover possibly) and decided to hightail it from BackofBeyond, Glos, to The Oval for the last day's cricket of 2008. Test cricket, that is. It was one of those rare occasions where the 5th day is meaningful (ok ok the series was lost but the match was in the balance).

So 4 hours of car & train and there I was, in this beautiful, calm stadium. £15 on the door - not bad at all. Cricket is often accused of being white, or middle class: well I clocked loads and loads of ethnicities there today: an old West Indian guy sat in the seat below me, greeting me warmly ("how y'a doing, alreet?") and an Asian family occupied the four seats to his left: loads of other types of people came in: people in suits, in patkas (not as a tribute to Monty, but for real), wearing skullcaps, in veils.

Yes alright I'm making a fuss of this but that is because we always hear this crap about cricket in this country, that only privileged whites like it: today told you in a broad saaf Laandan accent, that this view is a load of old cobblers.

Also the atmosphere was great: from being greeted by the West Indian guy to the people around me who were happy to chat, to the Saffers who passed by without any abuse or pisstaking: the atmosphere was just for good sport, that was all.

"nee trouble, mate, I divven't want nee trouble" - you often read this in Viz!! Well there was "nee fuckin' trouble" today, that's for sure.

And England won, which helped: and Fred hit a 6 to win, which was even better. But to feel so relaxed so far from home (I am so parochial these days), at what could have been (and was, for a little bit) a tense sporting occasion: to feel free to enjoy the sport in the company of others who wanted the same - was just great.

Oh and a word about the Barmy Army. As readers of this blog might recall I used to be part of this organisation. They have been great, supporting England all over the world.

But today they were twats. Why, guys, why the blinking flip did you start damnfool Mexican waves, chants and hollers of "woooo" when the match was at its only delicate moment: with England at 147-4 and wickets going down and new batsmen in and the conditions dodgy: all the ingredients for thrilling, absorbing cricket; why did you start all that bloody stupid arsing about? It couldn't possibly have helped England and it might have put them off.

Leave all that for when its 364-1, or restrict yourselves to just cheering good shots, clean blocks and near misses, eh? Not when the bowler's steaming in at 90mph with the match (nearly) at stake.


Great day, great sport (Cook was outstanding - that boy is a real talent; Ntini bowled brilliantly; umpiring seemed pretty good from where I was ((Peter May stand)); shame about the trains, but never mind.

BB DayOrder No94

Comrades! Blog TinDrum has been attacked!!! Crimethinker has posted cricketwise!!! Comrades, this is plus unIngsocful - BB himself writed that cricketspeak was crimespeak.

Cricketspeak is death, comrades. Be fullwise this openmindful.

Death it is, comrades, this is doubleplusclear. But Kevin Pietersen is plusgood. Comrades I am plushearful: you speak - "but Kevin Pietersen is cricketful! How can KPspeak be goodspeak?"

Comrades, be restful and thinkful. Blackwhite shows partymembers that good is badful oftimes. Today KP shows goodful side of crimethinking cricket. He is runful, comrades - but not too runful.

He is goodthinking: he knows BB must always be topscoreful so he crimestops at 100. He is full of Ingsocprinzip: unthinking the last ball; being ware that doubleplusungood bowling is, needfulwise, good bowling; unGraemeSmithing the South African innings.

Comrades! BB hopes you all saw BB's own innings today!! Doubleplusgood! BB's innings - in accordance with the principles of Ingsoc - was cut and driveful, sixful and unchanceful. BB's record 200 has set Airstrip One up for CERTAIN VICTORY South Africa-wise!!! The Test Match is measurable distance endwise!!!

Scorecard: Airstrip One 553

Strauss 6
Cook 39
BB 252*
Bell 26
Pietersen (c) 100
Collingwood 61
Ambrose 4
Broad 1
Harmison 49
Anderson 15
Panesar 0

Target

As I think i have mentioned before, Norm is perhaps the greatest blogger on these islands. He posts with intelligence, wit, verve and tolerance - above all tolerance, the quality that is draining from political and cultural and even scientific discourse like blood from an English batsman's face. I plead guilty of course to being wretchedly intolerant; this tends to make up for my physical and moral weaknesses. But at least I've never told anyone I'll delete their comments if they don't share my views, unlike this clown. (I don't mean DK by the way). Heh - what if we'd heard this in late nineteenth century central Europe:

The debate on Newtonian physics is over. Newtonian scepticism is a morally indefensible position. All "skeptics" are trying to do is spread fear and doubt about Newtonian mechanics.

Actually I think some people did try it but luckily Albert just ignored them.

By the way, in British ufology, "sceptic" means a gentle agnostic type, and "skeptic" means a reverse Fox Mulder who does not want to believe. It sort of takes advantage of the UK and US spellings.

Anyway. Back to Norm. And WotN is the brilliant author Adele Geras, and DotN is the brilliant poet Sophie Hannah, how cool is that. I bet they play fantastic games of scrabble.

Norm posts, while on the idea of government targets for the Olympics thusly:

It's hard to believe I read this, but new legislation now forbids England's cricketers from dropping catches, and all batsmen down to number six in the batting order are to average at least 45 runs per Test innings.

Yes, well, I don't agree there, Norm. You see we have had a voluntary code of practice now since 1877 and I think we can all see that it is not working. We have cricketers being bowled round their legs, caught at point, hooking their first ball off a fast bowler, bowling their first delivery straight to first slip, dropping catches in frankly inconceivable ways, and it is all doing tremendous damage to society. We are reaching a point where people's first reaction to the idea of cricket will be to laugh. And think of the cost to the ECB over the years of this grandstanding incompetence, this binge-failing. No - the time is right for legislation to act in the best interests of cricket and society in general. As part of the legislation we will create the Cricket Commission, headed by Dame Suzi Leather, Lisa Jardine, or someone else with links to NuLab but no interest in or specialised knowledge of cricket at all.


Well anyway. When I was a child, Target was a wonderful word, which implied that there were Doctor Who books that i could buy (Target was the paperback imprint of WH Allen, which published 150 odd novelisations of Doctor Who over twenty odd years). I loved that word, and I loved its connotations: the discovery in the shop, the gentle flick through, the couple of hours of blessed silence on my own devouring this (to me) wholly new adventure of the Doctor. Now, it implies government driven standards, for me and others compulsorily to achieve, enforced by government apparatchiks under the bizarre language twisting labels of "entitlements" and "rights". I find, more often than not, that a child's story will contain nuggets of something: linguistic flair, unusual construction, description, whatever - that was not part of the initial brief. Traditionally I've ignored the brief and concentrated on the genius of the child's work. Now, we're actually ratcheting up the target culture, being endlessly focused, judging the work of infinite imaginations on narrow sets of criteria. It is the managerialising of creation. It doesn't matter how kindly you put it, or how many vivid colours you use on the child's work: it's come down from business and management and it is being stamped, like the boot, on the faces of those who actually do have an insight into life - namely, children.

A Target novel - yesterday


You can tell by this semi-plagiaristic waffle that i am still poorly and feeling sorry for myself. I have not eaten a meal now in 38.75 hours and my guts are still churning like I have just eaten a massive curry at that place Viz always used to promote.

Cricketspeak

At the risk of offending BB (see post below), I have decided to write on cricket anyway as I am poorly and feeling sorry for myself. So I am propped up in bed and listening to the rain.

England's performances since the latter part of 2005 have, in the main, been dire, inadequate, or simply mediocre. The one good Test series, in my view, was the 2006 Pakistan series, won (now) 2-0: Strauss was an effective and efficient captain who led from the front: Panesar and Harmison put together a couple of good bowling performances and Chris Read looked to be getting his batting together.

Then, of course, the selectors took the bizarre decision to hand the captaincy to Andrew Flintoff, and to bring back Geraint Jones, and the rest is history. Since then England have generally beaten poor sides and been exposed by good ones.

I don't understand the unfolding narrative of "playing like millionaires" - a statement that usually means England's batsmen flash their bats like video game swords and nick the ball to slip or wicketkeeper. It implies a genius hampered by an unpredictability. In reality this is not the case: England's batsmen struggle to judge the lines of deliveries, seem uncertain when to play, are unable to play themselves into a long innings. None of this is new: over the past 20 years batting averages have risen to such an extent that each of the major test nations now have one more player who averages 50, and 40 is no longer the guarantee of a class player, as it used to be - England have been largely immune from this (KP averages exactly 50); in addition, since 1991 there have been only 7 scores over 200 by England players (Gooch, Hussain, Thorpe, Trescothick, Key, Collingwood and Pietersen). England have failed to produce any players of consistent world class with the bat.

Or the ball. Hoggard, Harmison, Panesar - all average over 30. Caddick and Gough averaged about 28. You have to go back to Bob Willis to find an England bowler who took loads of wickets at a very good average.

In short - the technical ability of England players is not improving, nor is their mental strength. Ian Bell's brilliant 199 was a case in point. He spent a very long time in the 190s, advancing through streaky singles, and it was clear to me at the time he'd be out before 200. Players, time and again, get into a position where they could, with technical and mental application, dominate the opposition, but throw it away. As if they are frightened of the possibility of success - it is easier to fail and think of the excuses than it is to come close to success and know that the only thing that stood between you and success was yourself.

After the Ashes debacle of 2006-07 the Schofield report was supposed to set out a blueprint for the development of English cricket. Instead it shows all the flaws of early twenty first century Britain. We got a report (good, we always need more reports) more layers of management (also good: promotes efficiency and accountability, and we got rid of David Graveney (which seemed odd to me). Net effect: the bizarre selection of Darren Pattinson.

There is also a limit to how long you can argue that you have a team in transition, and when you have to admit that your players are simply not of a high enough class. England cricket has too many players who fair to middling, and part of the problem (I suspect) faced by the managers and leaders of cricket, is that the players coming through are also....not quite good enough.

A depressing thought, but I am not sure I see any evidence to the contrary.


ooh...my guts are churning again....

BB DayOrder No.42

Comrades, why does ingsoc require reality-control? Ingsoc needs reality-control because of crimethink.

Comrades, BB is loveful party-wise, but BB is ungoodfeeling when InParty Comrades fail history-wise. Comrades, remember that history is partythink, and so history is changeful; days are onetime sunny and onetime rainy: this is needful. Why is it needful? It is needful because comrades are plusforgetful. Comrades crimethink weatherwise doubleplusdayful!! So, comrades, you must blackwhite weatherwise, and recall fullwise and speedwise doublethink. Some days, comrades, exist hotwise and coldwise. It is BBthinkwise, comrades - no weather exists outside BBthink.

Some oldthinking comrades say "a day is hotful" - these comrades are plusungood and must be unpersoned. But, comrades, needfulwise, a day may be hotful and coldful, if BB decides weatherwise.

No reality outBBwise, comrades!!!! Goodthink thiswise. Goodthink leads BB-wise and BB-wise thinks lead life-wise, comrades!

BB

ps - BB thinks are drawn drinkwise by plusungood reports of Outparty members falling floor-wise, vomiting, and crimespeaking BB. Comrades, remember fullwise that alcohol causes oldthink, sexcrime and unbellyfeeling Ingsoc, alcohol also causes unbellyfeeling food and drink, which ungoodwise shows Outparty members. Comrades! Crimedrink is activity unpersonwise!!! Be Fullminded thiswise!

pps- BB attention is also drawn cricket-wise. This is crimesport, comrades. Cricketspeak is death. Let no Partyman or Partywoman cricketspeak. Cricket is an unsport.

Some Hopefully Reasonable News

The Third Test starts today and England go into it 1-0 up after their brilliant win at Old Trafford last week. Rather less than brilliant is the fact that this still seems a very patchy, inconsistent England side, with few real talents capable of taking a game to a top side. They got away with it last week and Strauss did play a fine innings, though whether he'll ever recapture his 2004-5 best is doubtful. I seriously doubt whether we'll see Flintoff back, ever; and I am not sure I see the point of half of England's batsmen, who have, to be fair, regained that 90s skill of "one out all out", and who now follow each other off with the same regularity as British Leyland used to.

Still. Might be fun. And no penalty shoot out.

England's Victory over New Zealand, by Emmanuel Goldstein

The key thing here is that this victory (note the use of that word again) is designed to make England _appear_ to be a good side. They take an indisputable fact, such as Ryan Sidebottom's 10 wickets in one match, or his hat-trick, and use it to twist people's perceptions of reality such that this equates to England being good. It operates therefore as a synecdoche. Interestingly, _before_ the series, with New Zealand's many injuries and loss of players such as Shane Bond - a geniune paceman, unlike Steve Harmison - the talk was of England winning 3-0. It was only after the disastrous first Test, that the existence of this past was erased and replaced by one in which a determined England team were out to upset the odds. In that sense the ECB have reversed reality in their attempts to make England seem good.

Of course, like all good manipulators of reality, the facts are bare: England _did_ win the series. But if one studies the matches closely, one finds that either or both of the last two tests could easily have been lost at several points. In England cricket, as we know, no-one individual creates the conditions for a Test win, and very few individuals actually play to a high enough standard. Let me elucidate. Andrew Strauss made 177 in the final test. But he was 173* overnight, appearing to be completely uninterested the following morning. His job was done. The same applies to Tim Ambrose in the previous test, and to Ian Bell, whose 110 came when the pressure was off him personally. A quick comparison with the key players in sides such as India or Australia will reveal that they never give up until the match is won. England players are concoting an illusion of effort and of class: we are supposed to be fooled into thinking that this level of play is enough and will do against, say South Africa.

It is plainly the case that it will not.

It is rarely commented on now, for obvious reasons: but in the past (the real one), England players _did_ score over 200 with reasonable regularity. But in the general softening of outlook which set in around 1991 such scores have decreased to a trickle. England _did_ produce successful spin bowlers and they _did_ have consistent pacemen. It is correct that at such times they were also useless, but it is the cynical misrepresentation of how England cricket used to be that enables people to say comfortably in the bars and on the trains: "England are a really good side" when this is not so.

What can be done? Well the leaders of England cricket have no clear ideas beyond the usual setting up of committees and reports. This is designed to foster the illusion of action, and it works, while coincidentally providing worthless jobs. My suggestion is simple: the future lies in the young players. They must be sought, encouraged, retained. A revolution of England cricket will only happen if they can find young players and treat them in the right way, as Australia did in the late 1980s (not that we hear much about this now - the origin of Australia's dominance has been long forgotten,and deliberately so).

This may happen sooner than we expect, if international 20Twenty tournaments explode at the rate they are threatening to. The eternal lure of money will provide more and more spaces for these young players, as their more experienced colleagues decamp to India or South Africa or wherever, until they too succumb, creating the conditions for eternal revolution within England cricket and destroying the power of the management committees and the easily satisfied media for ever.

Appearance at Norm's

Norm has added a cricket memory of mine to his excellent series and if you so choose, you can read it here.

Ministry of the Bleedin' Obvious

Michael Vaughan says "it's easy to criticise...".

YES MICHAEL IT IS. No question. It is piss-easy to criticise, and for those of us who've given thousands of pounds to England cricket, we have every fucking right so to do.

Why I Hate Cricket

Because, among other reasons, which include passing off the murder of one of the game's greatest sons as so much media bluster, England have been stuffed, by 9 wickets to end their piss-awful WC campaign. England mustered 154 and SA got there with 9 wickets to spare and Graeme Smith on 89* from 56 balls.

England's lack of attacking aggression mirrors the general collapse of confidence in both England and Britain - their 4th crappy WC exit in a row exceeds the dismal record of the footballers and leaves the rugger players laughing into their pints of lager.

Until 1992 England featured in 3 World Cup finals, losing them all.

Since 1992 England have failed to reach the semis of any WC.

PissPoor. Fuck off, you bunch of useless tossers. And if someone wants to quote this post as evidence of the badly behaved, illiterate and bullying right wing blogosphere, as everyone seems to be after it at the moment, they can. And here's an extra "fuck off" for their delectation.

Drummer Online, Warne Offline?

I think the comment thing has sorted itself out now, which is a shame, in a way, because I don't have anything amusing or learned to say at the moment.

I think - and I stress think - that I am going to be on Radio 5 Live this afternoon; I've been asked to present myself to Radio Gloucester studios at 3.30pm for a recorded piece, so I don't know when it'll be on - Drive maybe?

One genuine bit of news I've read this morning: is Shane Warne about to announce his retirement from international cricket? The thing about cricket is that it really does emphasise the appreciation of genius, wherever it is found. I remember Peter Baxter swatting a question from Charlie Whelan on 5 Live a few years ago when Whelan said that it would be a good thing if Warne was injured and couldn't play, to which Baxter replied: "No, not really." And Warne is nothing if not a bona fide genius, a man who make things happen, bend a game of 22 players and several umpires to his will, and create wickets in the least promising situations. At the Oval last year England were flaying the tired Aussie attack in the first innings until Warne came on and just ran through the top order on the first day of the match. Leg-spinners are not supposed to do that. Shane Warne is, perhaps, the greatest player of cricket, up there with Bradman and Grace: and more, he single-handedly rescued leg spin bowling from an era in which blasting batsman out was regarded as the way to go. Suddenly you didn't have to be brave but clever, to stay in. He is a master of a difficult art and a testament to the fizzing inventiveness and cunning of the game of cricket.

Sir Shane Warne, surely?

"He is Going to Lose, and Lose Big"

...was, I believe, a comment by John Major, that well known professor of language, during the first Gulf War in 1991.

Given today's performance by England, it does raise the issue of the best way to lose. Losing narrowly is a false dawn: you lost, but you think you could have won, should have, nearly did: damn it you did win, except for luck/umpiring decisions/unjust rules/the weather/the will of God. To lose narrowly is to assume, at some level of self delusion, that you won.

In Australia's case,this belief has hardened into a granite will actually to win, this time.

In Germany's case, in a slightly different context, the belief that "actually, we didn't lose. If you look at it, we've just agreed to a cessation of hostilities" - caused or helped to cause all sorts of problems.

England have a different view. They are going to lose, and lose in considerable style. This is how it goes.

1) Media talk: we're a good side/good players/but we need to bat down to 8/can't risk Monty/Chris Read is a pain in the arse and Geraint Jones is a good egg.

2) Opening salvo: first ball of series to 2nd slip. Do not pass bat, do not take edge, lose match.

3) Get into excellent positions: 551-6d, or Aus 244 all out.

4) Relinquish control in spectacular fashion - Gilchrist near record 100, incredible collapses, etc.

5) Lose.

6) Mutter about had x,y,z been different, we _might_ have won (but - and this is the crucial difference - not to really believe it. Hence no real changes are made, nothing done, nothing happens, no-one cares).

7) forget.

8) Next time around, start all over again.


To lose big is a state of mind, as well as a state of play. It is real, and psychological. It's a symbiotic thing. Each feeds the other. Technique problems feed the mental problems, the mental issues destroy the technique. Look at G Jones. It gives the enemy or the opposition not only the thrill of victory but the glory of humiliation; it rehabilitates their faded stars and ancient glory, it is talked about for years but not really remembered in any real sense.

Losing big is where you are, at the conclusionary phase of the planetary rotation.
We all lose big in the end, so let's get used to it. Winning is overrated anyway.

Being Paul Collingwood

..must be pretty good right now. That holy grail of England batting, the double hundred, has finally been discovered. The last one was by the pie-eating Rob Key in 2004, the last one before this in Australia by a Pom was Wally Hammond in 1936/7. It sounds to me like a sub-continental pitch, offering nowt for bowlers, but even so, as a Pom, batting in Australia will always be difficult work. So well done to Colly, who's never really been rated in the same way as his contemporaries, always seems to be the guy to make way if someone else comes back from injury, but who's always done his darndest - and who now has the 2 highest scores by anyone in this England team, 206 and 186.

Sajid Mahmood, England

There's plenty on the BBC and in various newspapers today about the barracking Sajid Mahmood received from a section of the Headingly crowd yesterday. Chants of "traitor" were shouted at him during his excellent couple of spells that helped win the Test for England. He was a bit annoyed but responded in the two best possible ways: 1) taking wickets and 2) attributing the chants to his dad, a Pakistan fan, and thereby showing he is a really mature head on young shoulders who should be pencilled in for Australia now. Yes he needs a lot of work and practice but he has the pace and the suggestion of reverse swing that says he could replace Simon Jones, if he is allowed to prosper. It has been a tough 18 months for England and they have come out of it well, and deserve to be rated No2 in the world. Wins v Australia, Pakistan, draw v India in India and a win in South Africa are excellent performances, even if the loss in Pakistan was rubbish and the draw v Sri Lanka appalling. It is even better when you consider that England just does not have the raw talent these other countries have - there are no great players in the England side, no Inzy, Yousof, Murali, Tendulkar, Dravid, Ponting, McGrath, Warne and so on - and that playing at home is possibly less of an advantage for England than any other nation, given the number of foreign players who play (or have played) county cricket.

I do not think that we will retain the Ashes -home advantage and Warne might prove too much for us, but we are developing a good squad of players, and the days of Hick or Crawley being called up for a couple of tests are well and truly over (Jon Lewis notwithstanding). It is sobering to think that had Ramprakash been born in, say, 1979, rather than 1968, he would be enjoying a magnificent test career right now and England might have had a great player in the side. We have had good, very good, players, betrayed by short sighted management; we have, hopefully, seen the last of that. We have not seen the last of injury though, and if they are not careful the management can still repeat the disasters of 2002/3 by sending an unfit Jones, Flintoff, Vaughan and Giles to Australia. We can only hope that Mahmood, Panesar, Read and Cook have done enough to persuade them to take only fit and strong players.

A word on the umpiring. It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that over the last 12 months, England have received the rub of tosses, decisions, (often) injuries, and even weather. CMJ remarked, rightly, on TMS this weekend that during the long long spell that England were being thrashed by Australia, not winning any 5 test series, and not winning abroad, everything seemed to go against them. I still remember a run out so blatant at Sydney in 1999 (I was there), when the batsman (Slater, who then made a hundred in an innings when only one other batsman reached double figures) was already walking and England celebrating before the the 3rd umpire called him back; and Adelaide that same winter when the big screen showed so clearly that Atherton had taken a catch that we were all celebrating, only for us to be utterly dumbstruck when the verdict came back: not out.

I could list all the cliches, but I really can't be bothered.

A word on language: I am taken by the Australian and perhaps US convention of referring to teams as singular nouns rather than the UK convention of assuming they are plural entities ("United were rubbish" rather than "United was rubbish"). It makes logical sense to me, and I think it is rather cool.

Self Criticises Houellebecq


In a reasonably well argued piece on Spiked Josie Appleton mentions that Will Self has dismissed Houellebecq as a "little guy who can't get enough sex". Frankly I'd have thought that was the whole point of all of Houellebecq's books, so full marks to Self for stating the bleeding obvious, but apart from that it is a remark that betrays Self's own departure from literary outsider with the volcanic junk fuelled imagination (or William Burroughs wannabe) to fully paid up member of the literary bore establishment. Reviews of Self's latest novel, The Book of Dave, which admittedly I have not yet read, have tended to gush about the criticism of holy and sacred texts it contains - thus maybe proving Houellebecq's point in The Possibility of an Island nicely: "[artistic recognition went]... to productions that.. challenged moral values conventionally described as "traditional"..." - and so on for a good page or so.

The Will Self of My Idea of Fun, Grey Area and Great Apes was a fearsome talent, of prodigious angry imagination whose obsession with identity bore strange and exciting fruit, especially in the short stories. His conception of different, essentially satiric states of mind was vivid and startling. It was the work of an edgy writer writing about edges of various kinds. I especially loved Great Apes for its exposure of so many things: language, sex, sociability, drugs, art, human animalness and so on. The Self of How the Dead Live, going back to an old idea, seemed to me at least to begin to lose this torrential imagination without replacing it with anything of real depth. His was a greater imagination than Houellebecq, whether he is as prescient I don't know. Self is, however, a fairly conventional lefty, but Houllebecq doesn't fit that category quite so nicely, hence the remark. Stick to bizarre, funny and frightening imaginary worlds, Will, it's what you're best at.

England won the Test and Series today, their first home series win over Pakistan since 1982. There are a number of coincidences here, currently being discussed on the BBC's TMS site: then as now, an unpopular UK PM kowtowed to a powerful US Republican president; Israel was causing havoc inside Lebanon; England were going down under that winter; England were lacking key players; Pakistan were unhappy with several umpiring decisions and so on. This aside, it is notable for being yet another instance of England being a great team without any great players. England has no-one of the talent of Yousof, Younis Khan, or Inzy. But hunting in packs they more than make up for that.