Falling out of a daily blog habit is easy, picking it back up is extraordinarily difficult. It’s like when you stop going to the gym, or maybe the opposite of when you want to stop smoking cigarettes.
But as short as today’s post might very well be, at least it is a post. A step in the right direction.
While I was away in lovely Ashland, Wisconsin, England white-washed India and were crowned the world’s number one test team. It really is a remarkable achievement, and a remarkable squad. With a couple notable exceptions, nationality aside, these are the some of the best cricketers of the current generation.
Now, many pundits will argue: England are not the world beaters the media is making them out as. They limped their way through the Sri Lanka series, they say, and India, due to injuries, exhaustion, and apathy, are just simply a very poor test cricket team at the moment. They say that England will lose the number one ranking within the next 12 months anyway.
And I might have agreed with all of that, if England had not dismantled India in the manner in which they did; had not dismantled Australia eight months ago in the manner in which they did. They didn’t scrap out two wins and two draws, they went 4-0 and won two of the matches by entire innings. They retained the ashes IN Australia.
This is a very, very good cricket team. One of the best in the last 25 years.
So what’s next for England? Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates it seems, in January of 2012. India? Australia. Four tests starting in December. It would be an understatement to say I am looking forward to the latter. Unfortunately, I will not be able to watch the former (shakes fist at willow.tv).
Before that, however, we have the simple matter of five England-India ODIs to handle, not to mention a t20 match.
Meanwhile, speaking of Australia, their first test (of three) in Sri Lanka starts on 08/31. And the only test between Zimbabwe and Pakistan starts the following day. Plus India has a tour match against Sussex at Hove starting this weekend. Oh, and there is County Cricket, including the semi-finals and the final of the Friends Life t20 which is THIS WEEKEND.
Too. Much. Cricket.
Until tomorrow.
Limited Overs 