My Funeral, Your Ashes

You knew another Ashes summer was upon us when England’s captain Andrew Strauss, in a moment of children-pushing-toy-submarines-round-a-bathtub inanity, said that for ten weeks and five Test matches two cricket sides would be “at war”. His jacket was pale blue, his tie a paler blue, and he said the words oh so coolly. That they were insensitive to millions in cricket-playing nations who have known and felt actual war went unremarked on by the gathered hacks in the Lord’s museum, who sat silent and unblinking as one of Douglas Jardine’s old neckerchiefs. That the words were hollow was made plain by all the other things Strauss had to say.

“If we can turn over those previous statistics…”

“If we go out and win…”