In Affectionate Remembrance of ENGLISH CRICKET,
which died at the Oval on 29th AUGUST 1882,
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P.
N.B.—The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.
England had been playing cricket against Australia since 1877. They thought they were uber boss, even though the Amatuer Aussies had won 7 of the 13 matches they'd played. The Poms just couldn't be arsed traveling the 48 days to get down under, as planes hadn't quite been invented yet and they were busy trying to conquer [Poor language removed]. That day though, in 1882, at the Oval, the pompous poms, having never lost at home, were odds on to tonk the lesser Aussies.
The Aussies made a paltry 63 in the first innings, and snooty snickering was eminating from the stands. England took a 38 run lead with 101, which they thought was ace. Hugh Massie lashed out in the second innings, taking the visitors to 122 and a lead of 85 runs. It was there for the Poms taking, the victory crumpets all lined up on the backs of colonial African slaves, But bowler Spofforth had other ideas. Sick and tired of the blatant stuck uppedness, went on an absolute rampage and took 4 for 2, leaving the Limeys 7 runs short. They never lived it down.
A group of chicks from Melbourne, howling that the stuck up Poms had been smashed by the colonials, burned the bails (as far as anyone knows) and put them in an urn and presented them to loser Ivo Bligh, the Captain of the losers. 'We took your game and showed you how to play it, douchebag. We burned your [Poor language removed].' they were heard to remark.
Outraged, and on a jam scone bender, Bligh then set off for Australia to win them back. He did, with a contentious 2-1 win when he didn't count the fourth game which the Aussies won making the series 2-2. He went back to England and told MASSIVE PORKIES.
The Ashes didn't really take off though, until 1903, when Pelham Warner the Smelly Isle Captain took his side back to the beautiful country and won them again. This time fairly. Australia, with a population of a couple of million and no footballs to kick around, latched on to this, and started royally taking the piss out of John Bull's Boys anyway. The Aussie press had a field day, and England, peeved, rolled off their porky missuses and started tweaking their mustaches. 'I say, those Australians are quite the sporting legends. What say we stop raping and pillaging those Indians, Asians and Africans for a bit and concentrate on Sport, old chap? We can get back to the decimation of native people when we come back'.
The games were pretty even until after the War, when the Aussies dominated. They combined the quicks to punish the opening line in a tactical masterstroke. The Stinkers won only game until 1925 and were commonly referred to as the 'Crumpets'. This of course coincided with the emergence of The Don. For the Americans still with me here, if there was a sporting street, where only the absolute freaks of sport lived, the Don would share a picket fence with Pele on one side and Rod Laver on the other. Muhammed Ali just across the road. He was that good. The Crap Crumpets decided to make their own tactical masterstroke. 'Lets just peg the ball at the Aussies heads. Lets do to them what we did to the Irish. We'll starve them of the ball.' And so, like the Britsh detention camps in Kenya, the order of the empire was restored. Jardine and co would just try to injure the heroic Aussies, ball after ball. Several players were sent to hospital and England took the Urn home with a 4-1 'win'. Some say the blueprints for the attack were taken from the Boston massacre in 1770.
After the second World War, The Red Coats were again [Poor language removed]. Blaming ze Germans for stealing all their gear, the Aussies now captained by the Don proceeded to beat the crap out of the Cheating Crumpets. Back to drawing board and buoyed by the Nazi Scientists they had captured, the Crumpets started genetically engineering super babies to regain the coveted Ashes. Names like Tyson, Statham and Laker dominated proceedings with their brand of genetisized Nazi cricket. Onto the swinging sixties, and Englands Nazi Cricket Babies had all discovered LSD. So with their bad teeth and wavy hair, decided they didn't want to play Cricket anymore and started learning Guitar in seedy basements. This left the door open for Richie Benaud, Lawry and Simpson to stamp their cream tones on the game.
From now until the 80's, the game was even stevens as names like Lawry, Davidson, Thompson and Lillie profited from the Boring as Dry Batshit Boycott era. Ears perked up again as crumpet lovers Beefy Botham, Willis, Lamb, Gower and Bunny Gooch made the mid eighties there own playing above their weight and O/D'ing on the scones and extra cream.
That was until 1989.
Then everything changed. Lead by Border, The two Waughs, Hughes, Reid, McDermott, Warne, Boon, Taylor, Healy, Ponting, Gilchrist, Hayden, Slater, Jones, McGrath, Martyn, and Gillespie dominated the Crumpets so convincingly, that the Poms seriously contemplated giving the game up because of the embarrassment. They were a laughing stock. Fat, unwanted and unloved, they started to feel like the rest of England. They got royally flogged on the field and when they got back to the Queen and also in the Press. They served up fried drivel and were roundly thrashed. They tried with people like Atherton, Stewart and Tufnel, but they were battered. And so England, bereft of ideas, struck upon an idea. They were so crap at Sport in general, so fat chewing on the cud of the rest of the world, they decided the only way to get out of this conundrum was to steal. hey stole players from other countries. Hussein, Panesar, Rashid, Bopara, Shah, Raprekash, Mahmoud, Kabir, Hollioke, Ambrose, Lamb, Strauss, Petersen, Grieg, Smith, Prior, Trott, Caddick, Defreitas, Small, Hick, Lewis and Jones. Australia, in keeping with tradition and only picking Australians, sadly lost out to this new tactic.
What will England do next to sully the proud game? Exploding Balls? Guns instead of Bats? Time will only tell.
Cheating Crumpets v Mighty Australia.
Brisbane (Nov 25-29)
Adelaide (December 3-7)
Perth (December 16-20)
Melbourne (December 26-30)
Sydney's New Year Test (January 3-7)
