Don't think the unthinkable
Simon Barnes
YOU think you have seen every folly of which English cricket is capable but, every time, English cricket surprises you. Can you credit it? Sober, sensible, and deeply competent judges of cricket have begun openly talking about the possibility of England regaining the Ashes this summer. It is not the logic I quarrel with, but the unseemliness.
The only right and proper way to discuss the England cricket team is with a headshaking pessimism, a shoulder-shrugging despondency. But, if people such as Michael Atherton, Peter Roebuck and Derek Pringle are stopping short of hollering, 'Come and get it, you mugs,' all are admitting the possibility that England really might win the Ashes when the Australians come to England for a five-match series.
Certainly, England have won three Test series on the trot, which is strange and remarkable and splendid. Certainly England are a far better side than they have been for years — a matter of self-belief rather than cricketing prowess. But what on earth is the good of telling the Aussies that?
Quite apart from anything else, things will be getting difficult long before the series against Australia. There are three Tests in Sri Lanka, where England will face Muttiah Muralitharan at the height of his powers. This extraordinary cricketer — not so much an off-spinner as a one-off spinner — has just taken his 300th Test wicket, doing so in fewer matches than anyone save the great Australian fast bowler, Dennis Lilice. And then in the summer England have a couple of Tests against Pakistan, who will be seething for a spot of own-back after their bizarre defeat at England's hands before Christmas.
As for Australia, I am not sure that I buy the notion that they arc ripe for the plucking after winning a record 14 successive Test matches, and with every likelihood of making that 15. This is a side at its peak, an inexorable victory machine.
Therefore, the argument runs, Australia have nowhere to go but down. Fair enough, but it does not take a lifetime's study of Australian attitudes to (a) sport and (b) England to work out that they will try awfully hard to postpone their decline till after the encounter with the mother country.
Australia will tour India before they come to England, and Australian cricketers have never warmed to the charms of the subcontinent. They may arrive here tired, over-cricketed and out of sorts, but a bunch of Poms who fancy their chances might just rekindle their appetite for strife.
Me, I shall be surprised if England get a result in Sri Lanka, a side the English have consistently underrated despite being consistently beaten by them. And I would be rather more than surprised if England were a serious threat to Australia.
It is proper to talk like this, you see: to speak of the England cricket team in terms of excited anticipation is worse than tempting fate, worse than a faux pas. It is a kind of blasphemy. The way to approach the Ashes series is to dwell on English shortcomings and Australian supremacy. And should the unthinkable happen, the way to deal with it is by saying that it was a fluke and, next time around, England won't be so lucky. If people stop saying that English cricket is going to the dogs, then English cricket will go to the dogs.
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