Posted by An Australia v England series starts this week. The old rivalry. Always an edge to it, bragging rights, a chance to make some sort of statement, yadda, yadda, yadda…
The 1986 John Hughes film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off features one of the all-time great film quotes. This is of course headteacher Ed Rooney’s, “I did not achieve this position in life by having some snot-nosed punk leave my cheese out in the wind.”
A greatly inferior but far more commonly heard quote from that film is the title character’s: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Ferris was, presumably, talking about international cricket.
Things aren’t as bad as last year when the T20 World Cup finished with another T20 World Cup already less than a year away, encouraging us to report on the final like this. At least this time around we’re only a year away from a different flavour of World Cup (the 50-over one) and at least it has been four years since the previous one in that format.
So it is that England have had to swiftly segue from celebrations to preparations this week with a three-match one-day international series against Australia about to get underway.
Pretty much the only thing we enjoy about fixture bloat is that many of the players don’t even try and say the right thing any more. In fact speaking to the BBC this week, Moeen Ali seems to have gone out of his way to express his displeasure with this situation.
“Having a game in three days’ time – it’s horrible,” he said – which is just a wonderfully blunt and correct statement.
Moeen then conceded, “We have to do it, and while we’re here we might as well do it. It would be better than going back and then having to come back out another time.”
Put that on a poster!
Even England’s coach has been unable to feign enthusiasm.
“We always saw that series as being something that we will have to be really professional about,” said Matthew Mott.
Strap in for three matches of being professional and getting it over with, everybody!
Needless to say, this series isn’t on the King Cricket 2022 Calendar.
There’s nothing meaningful happening this week. You’re not missing anything. Why not go and read some of our old features.
Similar deliveries:
When Jos Buttler says an Australia v England series is irrelevant, is that enough?
If only there were an eighth one-day international between Australia and England
Angelo Mathews’ super durability sorely tested by Super Series
Steve Smith the ball-eater and other stories: England’s ODI series win over Australia in old-school stats
…and then after that, a Test tour of Pakistan that should really be A Big Deal but will be sandwiched in between those ODIs and Christmas. Then to South Africa, then to New Zealand, then back to the start, collect £200, wonder why everyone’s knackered when the Ashes come around….
Cricketers, they’re just like people. Nobody wants to work anymore.
The existence of this forthcoming series had entirely passed me by until I read this article.
On behalf of all King Cricket readers, I would like profusely to thank KC for his diligence, his research skills and his relentless investigative journalism.
I shall be pinning all my hopes and dreams on this three match ODI series, sensing that all that England has achieved in the T20 World Cup will be as nothing – forgotten – if this mini ODI Ashes-like encounter goes the wrong way.
It’ll be alarm clock setting and through the night chat threads for me. Are you with me, folks? I wanna hear you say “YEH”…
Can’t they just send a reserve team? It’s not like anyone is playing county cricket.
I agree, a perfectly good way for newbies to get international experience. Austrailia are obviously quite rubbish these days seeing as they didn’t even qualify for the semi’s in a World Cup.
(DISCLAIMER – that last bit was sarcastic and I do not wish for any backlash by people who take that seriously, Austrailia are obviously still not all that bad)
They pretty much have sent a reserve team, and I don’t think that England’s current selection currently is as deep as it was. Vince and Billings are a little past it now, they have never been incredible in an England shirt, and to keep persisting won’t help.
TBH where are the likes of Gleeson, Payne, Mills (in CWC squad but didn’t play a game), Simpson, Duckett, Carse, Parkinson, Gregory, Overton (both), Topley (still injured tho isn’t he…?)
Can’t believe the news about Du Plessis’ new book.
I mean, ‘Faf: Through Fire‘, really? As well as being terrible advice for impressionable kids (when you are going through fire, really the absolute minimum of faffing is needed – faff and fire are best kept as separate as possible), he’s given up a golden opportunity for a weak pun based on his name in the title, as I hitherto believed was required by Sportsperson’s Autobiography Law. What’s wrong with ‘Faffing Around‘, ‘The Usual Faf’, or even ‘A Bit of a Faf’?
I appreciate that the word ‘faff’ may not be used in South Africa, but frankly I do not consider that a valid excuse.
I believe that the Afrikaans word for faff is faff, so I suspect that the word works as a pun in South Africa. Fafu or ifu are the equivalent words in Bantu languages.
It’s an absolute travesty.
Nasser Hussain’s Playing With Fire a far better effort in the field of fire-based cricket autobiography titles.
Fred Trueman’s Ball of Fire, in which he recounts an incident with a Bakelite box, several dozen shards of plastic, and a nurse with a steady hand and a pair of tweezers.
I would say that the first two entries in the King Cricket 2022 Calendar in hindsight aren’t really all that important and were altogether rather undramatic.
Australia’s first Test tour of Pakistan since 1998?
There is that, but in hindsight, it could have been a bit more exciting. I got bored checking the scorecard daily, even when I am one that could watch a month of cricket and not be bored.
Surely if we’d not done quite as well in the WC this series would be being talked about by the media-savvy players as “a chance to immediately go out and put things right and show what we’re about”.
As Australia are in that position they’ll be saying these sorts of things, so since we beat them into the semi spots we should play this in a sense to immorally (as per Ireland winning the Moral WC) put things right.
Some elite immorality is required.
I’ve been sitting here patiently since 3:00 am waiting for the “through the night chat” to start rocking. Now I’m about to start work and shall have to sign off. Where was everyone??
They’re all grappling with Mastodon.
“Grappling with Mastadon” so sounds like a euphemism of the Private Eye variety.
…as does “Grappling with Mastodon”.
Does anyone actually care about what Micheal Clarke says? He is so nationalist and proud it is sickening. He is the one who has complained about Moeen Ali saying that the ODI series is too soon after the CWC, but he has also said he doesn’t celebrate much making him a party pooper that doesn’t like other people enjoying success, he can hardly complain about others’ opinions and then feel so strongly about his own. I used to hate him, and unsurprisingly I still hate him.
Pleb
Narcissist.