That Cricket

England won a one-day international today, against Awstraya. It’s nice to type that, but it would have been nicer if they had shown any sort of fight before this. It has been terrible, and I witnessed the two low points of this Ashes tour (in my view) - Perth and Melbourne. Melbourne especially was abysmal. The stand between Symonds and Hayden was enough to make me sick in a small bucket. Genuinely, Ventnor CC have more spark and fight than England and I sat and watched as we acquiesced in our own death, like a new client at Dignitas.

What was also sickening was some of the things we saw around the ground. A lack of focus in practice, getting pissed, terrible body language, complaining about homesickness and ‘being away from our families’, not being together on Christmas Day, and above all, seeing the condition of some of the understudies.

In Perth we sat behind Rob Key, Chris Tremlett, Ravi Bopara, Tom Smith, Owais Shah and Rikki Clarke for a day. They were there for the Academy, where, supposedly they were being trained and monitored for fitness and supervised by a special England fitness adviser. I think the fitness adviser may have been Dawn French.

With the exception of Tremlett and Bopara, all of them were significantly overweight. I might even have said SIGNIFICANTLY, that’s how fat they were. Not only that, they were tucking into several burgers, hotdogs, fizzy drinks and ice creams throughout the day in an almost comedic Homer Simpson-type fashion. It was like one of those reality programmes with fat people wondering how they can possibly have got fat when all they eat and drink is this here coca cola and those there pancakes. EXCEPT THEY WERE PROFESSIONAL SPORTSMEN. All the while whilst we sat and parsimoniously sipped water behind them. How can this be?

Oh, it be.

If you were paid to be a professional sportsman and were good enough to be in with a shout of playing for England, what would you do? Genuinely? Their whole demeanour shouted ‘I’ve made it’ rather than ‘I am desperate to make it’ and it made me as sick as they should have felt after their fun at the fair.

I’ve heard that Australian cricketers are hungrier than ours, but now I’m not so sure. It was the single most depressing thing I have seen and I would like to know the following:

1. Could I beat all of the above in a bleep test? Because I think I could.
2. Exactly what nutritional advice do they get at the Academy?
3. What precisely does the England fitness coach do?
4. Why do no journalists pick this up and ask questions about what the HELL is going on? Give a job to my mate Joe Owen he’d ask difficult questions.
5. Why do no county chairmen ask the same things?

In fact, I pose these questions to Matt Thacker who runs this fine magazine here:www.alloutcricket.com What say you Thacker?