Posted by With all due respect to the England v Sri Lanka one-day international series (almost none) and the West Indies v South Africa T20 series (a reasonable amount), surely the most exciting men’s series taking place right now is the one where the scoreline is 2-1 heading into the fourth Test.
We are talking, of course, about the 2013/14 Ridiculous Ashes where Tim Bresnan and Ian Bell last week served up one of the all-time greatest run-outs to earn victory for England in Perth.
In a series that featured Stuart Broad, Shane Watson and Mitchell Johnson, we’ve been greatly enjoying the contributions of less obviously ridiculous characters like Bresnan and also Mike Carberry, who we’re starting to see as very much The People’s Champion of the series.
The latest episode, about the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne, features the Greg Ritchie Threshold, the audible despair of Michael Vaughan and (although he is not explicitly named) a short anecdote about Prince Prefab attempting the moonwalk.
You can find it and all the previous episodes in this series here, along with links to places where you can subscribe in the event that that’s a thing you want to do.
I played catch up with the 2013/14 Ridiculous Ashes over the weekend, listening to the first three tests all at once, while “taking siesta” on Sunday. I pretty much stayed awake throughout.
I especially enjoyed the first test podcast, not least for the discussion around the “existential ridiculousness” of that series, so soon after the previous Ashes.
I am also enjoying the emerging theme that certain players are intrinsically ridiculous; Stuart Broad and Shane Watson being obvious examples from the class of 2013/14.
Another aspect I have especially enjoyed this series is some of the debates around “whose ridiculousness is it” in some instances; the Bresnan/Bell-Watson run-out being a classic example. I can imagine remote fisticuffs (or more likely metaphorical bodyline bowling) between Messrs Liebke & Bowden over such disputes as the Ridiculous Ashes progresses.
I look forward to hearing the fourth test; probably in a few days time.
Is there an agreed time lapse for which events can be considered to be running, in some sense, “simultaneously”?
I think to an extent this happens at an interval of 100 or 200 years. We are often reminded of significant events that occurred this long ago and indeed their centenary or bicentenary often count as significant events in their own right. But for events within living memory a shorter interval seems more apposite. Is 7.5 years -if my mental arithmetic is correct – about right for simultaneous reliving? My main concern is we should avoid multiples of 4 or we end up with eg World Cup overload, as a previous edition (and all the ones before that) come into alignment while the current one is in play. I think 7.5 years also neatly dodges the modular arithmetic issue by being half a year out of phase. This is particularly helpful since every winter there is the memory of summer to warm us up, and vice versa. My main concern is I don’t want to have to feel old for remembering (or indeed often misremembering) something that happened 7.5 years ago as that is, surely quite literally, merely just yesterday. Now a hundred years is clearly stretching things too far but I feel like nostalgia deserves to be earned over at least a decade.
(If you permit a change of sports, yer Maj, I’m feeling particularly sore today at being informed by commentators during actual-yesterday that Raheem Sterling grew up in the shadow of the Wembley Arch, which was clearly constructed during metaphorical-yesterday. It therefore merits the adjective “new” – though I don’t think commentators called it “New Wembley” even once – and certainly no grown adult should have childhood memories of it! And if they do, surely they shouldn’t be allowed to vote! I remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant. Colonel (Ret’d) Bail-out, Tunbridge Wells)
Did Prince Prefab subsequently demonstrate the moonwalk in more appropriate footwear and with less disastrous consequences, or has he been scarred for life by the events chronicled in the podcast?
Scarred for life.