The Cricket

If there’s one sign of summer that I can’t go past, it’s the Boxing Day and New Year’s Test matches, when Australia trots out another round of punishment and humiliation, back to back, to some team chosen for the ritual sacrifice. I can just imagine all the other test playing nations gathering in a secret location to draw straws for who will go to Australia this year to get their ass handed to them on a platter.

Can you imagine these poor souls who have to travel to Australia – a long enough journey for practically anyone but Australians – to get here in the middle of our beautiful summer, and be forced to stand in a field, in the sun, for 6 hours and more, for 5 days on end. It’s at that time of the year most spend with our nearest and dearest, and get exactly no work done, but these men are out on a trip of embarrassment. These are world-class sportsmen, guys who have worked hard to get where they are, and the Aussies? Don’t give a damn.

I would say that it makes for a fine sporting spectacle, but seeing Australia win over and over again isn’t a fine spectacle; it’s a predictable and regular occurence in which one side dominates the other so comprehensively as to leave you dispirited at the very thought of even watching. It’s not like they’re even sporting about it – when they win, oh, how they let the opposition know. And if – if! – they should happen to be in the lesser position, they will be as sporting about it as an 8 year old (c.f. Andrew Symonds).

In the end though, I live in constant hope that someone will defeat the Aussies in their premier games, and make it an emphatic win. And it is after all the sound, the feel, the very definition of summer as far as I’m concerned =)