It is a rather curious feeling for fans of English cricket
to approach an Ashes series with confidence. It is a strange, tingling
sensation caveated by the mental scars accumulated from almost twenty years of
consecutive, savage beatings at the hands of the Australians. It is so peculiar,
that this summer while England were suitably dispatching the at times hapless tourists,
everyone just didn’t know what do to with themselves.
A bizarre sort of sympathy for the Australians broke out
among some, a sort of shouldering of arms with the old enemy. “We know how it
feels, don’t worry us Poms won’t be at the top for long!” Of course the default
position when beating Australia is to grind them into the dirt, bat for days,
and generally display the sort of ruthlessness that defined the Australians’ of
the 90s and early 00s.
The weirdness of this response to being in the ascendancy
hit its peak, when some even went to the point of wishing Australia would start
winning to keep the series alive. It was all rather English of course. A dull
approach to winning where the aim is to make sure we don’t enjoy it too much as
this could all come back to bite us on the arse again in the future.
The problem with that attitude is that it really isn’t any
fun at all. This cautious attitude is infectious. It sweeps across the nation
and saps away the enjoyment of it all. The greatest Australian sides displayed the
sort of self-assured arrogance that is usually only reserved for irritating MTV
reality show participants. They were brilliant and they made sure everyone else
knew they it.
Glenn McGrath would confidently predict a 5-0 Whitewash
before every series and invariably the Aussies would have retained the urn
after just three tests. Eventually a Whitewash did come, the wounded
Australians gained revenge for 2005 in emphatic style. Promptly half the team
retired handing the initiative back to an England side badly lacking in
self-belief. The dream team of Strauss and Flower duly completed the
revitalisation of English cricket, building on the groundwork laid by Fletcher,
Hussain and Vaughan.
Three Ashes series were won on the trot, the pinnacle being
a 3-1 win Down Under. Australia transformed themselves into the England of the
dark ages, reports into the state of the game were commissioned, selection
appeared to be done through some sort of raffle and most importantly defeats
came at an alarming rate.
The aura of invincibility wasn’t so much lifted but
decimated. The previously feared Baggy Green became the most comical bit of
headwear since Charlie Chaplin started playing around with a bowler hat. The
unquestionable faith in the team was broken, the fans turned their backs (just
look at the crowd for the 5th day of the 1st Test in
2010/11). The arrogance was replaced with a real fear of the opposition.
So now really is the time for the whole of English cricket
to grow a swagger and a confidence badly lacking this summer. Let us mock them, rub their noses in it, and
don’t produce such faux outrage if the players occasionally urinate on the
pitch during victory celebrations (it was a lot more raucous in 2005 and nobody
cared then). This is the time to dare I
say it, embrace our inner Australians and really enjoy this period of superiority.
However if it is to all go wrong and the Aussies rally to an
unlikely victory, well at least we’ll have had a lot of fun taunting them along
the way.
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