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This is the toss side of the Ashes that you forget about in the two year downtime: ball not doing a lot, Australian batsmen not doing a lot wrong.
You can enliven proceedings greatly by playing the ‘how bored can I possibly make myself’ game. Put the TV on mute and try not to take in any information whatsoever. If you find yourself pondering a minor element, fight it. Maybe try and sit in a really uncomfortable position to take your mind off things.
Don’t think you’ll do better than us though. We’re brilliant at being bored, if we do say so ourself. Last week, when our flight was cancelled and we were sitting around at the airport, we thought of two quite brilliant games. Game one was ‘what does it say on the bag of peanuts?’ which is fairly self-explanatory. Game two was ‘guess what the bottles of booze in that shop are by looking at the backs of them and then maybe an hour later go and check whether you’re right or not’.
We injected an extra level of brilliance into proceedings by pacing ourselves – ie, we just sat there and spent our time looking forward to playing these games for a good hour before we actually got cracking.
This is clearly where the English and Australian tempraments differ.
We entertain ourselves with games, tut quietly about the situation and contemplate the finer things in life, such as peanuts.
Australians cause a riot.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25760075-5017962,00.html
Then again, if I was stuck in Perth for longer than I had to be, I might go mad.
At airports, pretend you’ve got two heads but that no-one has noticed yet. Then you can amuse yourself by chuckling at the bizarre lack of reaction of everyone who walks past.
SW I’m sad to admit you are spot on.
Personally I’m dissapointed with the current proceedings for 2 reasons:
1) I will no longer be 11th on cricinfo’s fantasy team list
2) we have to tolerate Ponting as our captain for the next 3 years (at least)
The second causes me more pain.
I think it’s also worth saying “congratulations” to the management and groundstaff at The Swalec Stadium for preparing such a wonderfully flat and lifeless pitch. They’ve really understood the way that test matches should be, with billions of runs scored and hardly any excitement whatsoever. I mean, who wants to see matches like Lords ’05, Edgbaston ’05, Old Trafford ’05, or Trent Bridge ’05? That sort of thing is definitely not what the paying punter wants in these days of 20/20 excitement. No, the sight of the cream of the world’s fast bowlers bowling onto a duvet resulting in an incomprehensible draw is what will bring people into cricket.
If I had my way, I’d have them shot.
Well, it was a pretty fun first day and a third, wasn’t it? Granted, it was largely due to the heroic efforts of England batsmen in finding innovative ways of getting out, but they really wrung the excitement out of a dull pitch. That’s a talent these probotic Australians will never master (tip o’ the hat to Jrod).
What does it say on the back of the bag of peanuts, KC?
Don’t keep us in suspenders, there’s probably going to be rain in Wales tomorrow.
We need something to occupy our minds.
It was nutritional information in French.
I bet it said “warning, may contain nuts” somewhere on it…
This is the literal definition of being ALL OVER an opposing team
Really? When you’re all over a side, you rarely concede 400 plus.
Batsmen can’t be all over bowlers anyway. Batsmen are dicks who ruin the game.
Thank god we don’t have any of them in our team then, it would be most unsportsmanly.