CityJournal’s cricket buff Lachlan Dyson has been keeping a close eye on the current Ashes Series and he is sick of the games, other than cricket, being played.
Some of you might may judge this article as a little cold after those Poms took the Ashes off us once again, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
Trust me, I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit, but that’s not the issue.
Now to get things straight, I don’t believe in walking before you’re given out and if the umpire doesn’t put his finger up after you and everyone else on the ground knows you’ve smashed the cover off it, count yourself lucky.
Stuart Broad hit it to first slip in the first test at Trent Bridge and the umpire didn’t budge – fair enough – not out.
COOKING IT: England Captain Alistair Cook used some unsavoury tactics to salvage a draw in the 3rd test against the Aussies.Picture courtesy of nazry on Flickr.
Moving to Old Trafford and Usman Khawaja may as well have shouldered arms when he was given out caught behind off a ball that missed the bat by a country mile.
To add to my incredulity, he somehow failed to overturn the decision with a DRS referral that clearly showed a truck driver could have coerced his B-double through the gap between the bat and the ball.
All right, umpires make mistakes, even though I could smell something starting with M and ending with atch fixing in the air.
But that’s wild speculation and we won’t go there.
What really got under my skin was on day four in Manchester, when the game was in Australia’s grasp and the little urn still faintly in our sights, those Poms had the chutzpah to call for light!
And they were fielding.
Even though the Aussies were happy to brave the dimming light and push for a win, the blokes from the UK (and South Africa) took off their little caps and whinged to the umpires about having to bowl thunderbolts at the Australian captain and bowler Ryan Harris.
Former Australian test captain Allan Border summed up the changing ways of test cricket with two succinct sentences.
“I played test cricket for 15 years. Not once did I leave the field for bad light when I felt it was impossible to play on,” Border told the Herald Sun.
But, without wanting to buck the Pom-friendly trend this series, the umpires warmly accepted the prodding of the home team and off they went.
HOWS THAT WEATHER? : The English team was more worried about the skies than their opponents in the 3rd test at Old Trafford. Photo courtesy of nic_r on Flickr.
There was little regard for what the Aussies wanted, exacerbated by the fact that the English team had an over rate so slow that even Her Majesty the Queen considered reaching for the remote.
To make it worse for our boys – after the hottest summer in England for years where there wasn’t a cloud in sight for what seemed like an eternity, on the one day where we were a chance of winning a test match and keeping our Ashes hopes alive, it buckets down!
You know you’re out of luck when even nature doesn’t want to play fair.
