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The Ashes. The phoney war is over: Let battle commence

With Ashes excitement reaching fever pitch Nouse begins its daily comment and analysis, starting with Richard Smith‘s assessment of just who won the pre-Ashes battle of words

Wednesday 24 November 2010

With no Glenn McGrath anymore the Aussies seem less able to rile the English. Image: Paddynapper via Flickr Creative Commons

Who would’ve thought that a few games of cricket between the two most precisely average Test playing nations (according to the ICC rankings) could produce enough hot air to heat all of our positively Siberian student houses? Well actually, everyone who gives a rat’s posterior about cricket would, because the Possibly-But-As-Yet-To-Be-Incontrovertibly-Disproved-Metaphorical-Dragon of Conjecture that always preludes an Ashes series down under, has stirred, reared its head, stomped about for six weeks, produced precisely zero quotes of any substance, and it’s now curling up again for another two and a half year snooze.

In our lifetimes, Australia, with the likes of the teak tough Steve Waugh, unerringly confident Glenn McGrath, and the gerbil munching Merv Hughes have blustered and bluffed their way into the notoriously unsettled minds of stuffy, multi-initialled English cricketers. Subsequently, wickets have tumbled, runs have been plundered, and the cricketing version of the motorway pile up has been meted out on the beleaguered tourists time and time again. Messy.

This time round however, England has done it differently. For a start, they’ve crammed the team full of South Africans. Although the initials are still there, AJ Strauss, KP Pietersen, MJ Prior, IJL Trott, purely by being South African in various states of dilution (KP is the Tesco’s own double strength orange squash http://nouse.co.uk/2010/11/24/the-ashes-the-phoney-war-is-over-let-battle- Archived 11 Dec 2018 commence 00:59:06 Nouse Web Archives The Ashes. The phoney war is over: Let battle commence Page 2 of 3 version of a South African, beyond neat), they have craftily sidestepped the genetic mutation present in all English batsmen for being cack at dishing out, and soaking up sledging.

What’s more, a Zimbabwean, basically an X-rated, industrial strength version of a South African, is England’s head coach. This man, by the name of Andy Flower, is more boring than smooth-bored musket in a boardroom full of blackboards and sociology lecturers. Rumour has it that in his playing days, the irascibly bland Flower cut ridges into toothpaste tubes of all his team-mates, to make the toothpaste exit in a straighter fashion. And all munitions experts know that that is the highest class of boring. This man is therefore the ultimate in trash-talk aversion, a veritable juggernaut in the face of the Aussie peashooters.

What’s even chuffing more, in a final masterstroke, by employing the most sledgeable name in cricket as batting coach, a certain Mr Graham Gooch (think of the options, fashion based, anatomy based, Essex based, weight based, cereal based) the England team has immunised itself from all forms of Aussie guff. The England cricket team has, in effect, become MRSA in the face of Australia’s banter antibiotics. England has got all options covered in this phoney war, let’s just hope they can bloody play cricket.

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