Thread: Cricket Rambles
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Old 06-13-2019, 04:56 PM   #447
bazzap

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I like this one from Cricinfo



I Miss Incompetent England. Do You?




These short reveries and musings from our ace team of writers and correspondents are a celebration of the things that make the World Cup worth watching, dreaming of and reading about.


By Andrew Fidel Fernando June 11:




Forgive me if I'm getting a little emotional, but there was a time when representing England at the World Cup used to mean something. A time when England transcended the tournament they were playing in and stood for the good of the game at large, not merely their own narrow interests.


I'm talking about England's long tradition of arriving at the tournament full of confidence, only to crash out in wonderfully comic fashion, filling a billion hearts around the world with joy.


For 20 years, they were resplendent. Who can forget poor old Richard Illingworth in 1996, getting splatted for four fours in a row by Sanath Jayasuriya, who won that quarter-final for Sri Lanka without batting even 13 overs? What about 1999, when England rolled up to their home tournament, got decked by South Africa and India, and was knocked out before the World Cup song had even been released? This was high art - the kind of comedy that makes you want to kiss your fingers and gesture in the way of an Italian chef.


Across the years, there have been upturned pedalos, batting orders that collapsed like circus tents, opening bowlers who were shamed repeatedly through the covers, non-spinning spinners who were shunned disdainfully over midwicket, and captains who wore long, morose looks during long, morose stints in the field. The post-mortems that followed each loss were glorious. While England coaches were put through brutal press interrogations, and the English media dealt in industrial quantities of flagellation and fatalism, the rest of the world looked on with the corners of our mouths twitching, our eyes filling with tears, our bodies unable to contain eruptions of laughter.


Remember that game against New Zealand in the last World Cup? The one where England was monstered for 123 all out, before having that score chased down in 12.2 overs? Or the quarter-final from the previous World Cup, when, having moused their way to 229 for 6 in Colombo, they were convinced they had enough on the board to win? Sri Lanka's openers were so all over the chase that at one point Tillakaratne Dilshan apologised to his opening partner Upul Tharanga for hitting a four because there were only so many runs left and Tharanga hadn't made his century yet.


As the 2019 World Cup hits its straps, there are few losses more keenly felt than the absence of an incompetent England. They are not only no longer risible, but they are also one of the teams to beat, putting up gargantuan scores, driving forward the game's evolution. They have gone from being Ewoks to the Death Star in the space of four years.


Perhaps another team will fill that breach. But much as Sri Lanka are trying, it's not the same. There is a slapstick wonder about them, yes, but they have never commanded anything like the resources at the ECB's disposal, nor does their media quite do hand-wringing in the same way, so the joke is incomplete.


Much as we celebrate the batting frontiers this England team may open up, let us take a moment to reflect on what we have lost: the World Cup's most consistently comic presence.






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