Friday 28 January 2011

It Wasn't A Sicky! I Have Genuine Aussiesportitis!

The winter of 2010/2011 has been a genuinely tough one. No, not all the snow and cutbacks. Its the sport! How are we meant to keep up with compelling sport through the night and work the next day? Its a hard life.

It all began way back on the 25th November, unless you are a true die-hard and watched the warm up games. However, even for us armchair pundits it seems like a lifetime ago. England were about to face their great nemesis, Australia in Australia. The usual optimism filled our heads as we anticipated the upcoming battle. However, memories of our last visit were still fresh enough to provide a get out clause for the inevitable dilemma of juggling a need for sleep with a desire to follow the team.

The advantage of being a true armchair pundit is that as soon as things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, we can console ourselves in the fact that it doesn't really matter and we're not that bothered anyway. The rest of life's demands can be taken back out of the cupboard we had hidden them away in and life can continue in its usual drab routine. There's always next time.

Sure enough, three balls into the first over of the first test and Strauss was out for a duck. Although you have to keep watching because its the first day, Peter Siddle's hat-trick later in the day provided enough peace of mind that we could forget about the cricket and work would not suffer. How wrong we were!

Despite conceding a 221 run first innings deficit, something happened during England's second innings that changed the winter for all armchair sports fans. The series got compelling. Bleary eyes, pounding heads and a desire to fall asleep no matter how important that business meeting was meant to be became the order of the day. It became impossible to do the sensible thing, turn off the TV and go to bed. There was too much happening.

Record after record fell as the England Cricket team began to do what many of us had forgotten they could do. They were annihilating the Aussies. At one point I even think they broke the record for breaking records. I couldn't switch off. Even the lulls in the action were broken by the Barmy Army entertaining us so loudly that the TV sound guys couldn't prevent the banter working its way across the airwaves. Who can forget their wonderful rendition of:

"He bowls to the left, he bowls to the right.
That Mitchell Johnson's bowling's sh*te"

Never mind the bodyline series. This was the bodyclock series. It destroyed mine.

No sooner had the Ashes tests finished than the 20/20s came along and then the one-day series began. This was going to kill me. I was seriously sleep deprived. There are only so many excuses you can come up with for not working. Luckily for all armchair pundits England went back to form. They were crap. We could console ourselves with the fact that its the Ashes that matter, not these silly limited over games. Ahhh, I forgot how comfortable that pillow was.

But wait! What is going on? Not only have England re-discovered how to win a one day match, but some Scottish bloke has come along and started winning tennis matches. That's just not fair. He wasn't meant to do that two years in a row. Doesn't he know our jobs are on the line?

At least we can console ourselves that the remainder of the action is at the weekend, and due to it being a nighttime match we only have to forsake our weekend lie in. All crumbs of comfort are gladly accepted in this tough winter of sport.

Don't get too comfortable though. Later this year we have the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Add to that the fact that this Murray bloke looks like finally progressing from nearly-man to Grand Slam winner, and being around for quite a few years to come, we may have a few tough winters ahead of us. On top of that, it was announced today that the next Ashes series to take place in Australia has been brought forward to 2013/2014 to accommodate the cricket world cup in Australia in 2015 and so it seems there is no end in sight.

I know that winter nights are meant to be longer, but this is getting ridiculous.

1 comment:

  1. Well, the series is lost and the tennis is over - I'm off to bed!

    ReplyDelete

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