Cricketing Anglophobes have been struggling to disguise smiles of smug vindication this week. Indeed, even for those without an axe to grind it does seem extraordinary that the English press, having been handed a baking summer of spectacular victories, comic-book heroes and now a mini-World Cup, should be as lugubrious as it is. Inexplicably, despite a season to tell the grandkids about, they’re whingeing.
Apparently the organisers of the ICC Champions Trophy have scheduled it far too late in the year, and the amateur meteorologists thronging the press box reckon we can expect some mid-afternoon typhoons moving down from the north-east with a 70% chance of intermittent showers of magma.
Furthermore, said climatic climaxes will torment threadbare crowds. The English public, scorched by the supernova of Andrew Flintoff’s talent, have staggered home to dinner and slippers and the comparatively ascetic rituals of the new football season, and the press is predicting venues almost Athenian in their desolation.
Add to this the absence of Sachin Tendulkar and Muttiah Muralitharan, and it seems that many Brits will be hard-pressed to turn on the telly for the toss, let alone toddle down through the sleet to watch the world’s best play for an enormous purse, $1,15-million to be exact.
The sudden-death format of the tournament — and it’s frenetic schedule — has also irked some home commentators, who point out that the interesting contests will only start in the second week. But that’s what you’d expect from a public spoiled with a languid and deeply satisfying summer, where victories have been savoured over days, and happy anticipation of the next triumph has spanned weeks.
It’s a different matter for those South African supporters who spent their winter listening to a stuck record in Sri Lanka — snick, hoorah, snick, hoorah, snick, hoorah — and endured a five-match one-day series that combined the slow inevitability of Test cricket at its worst with the essential pointlessness of the shorter game.
For Graeme Smith and his boys the chance to slap leather, either literally or figuratively, can only be a relief. With nothing to lose they might remember what it is they’re doing, and the chill of failure that has gripped them for so long might, for a fortnight, be eased away by the last glow of the English summer.
Not that Australia should expect South African opposition in the final. The Australians have looked almost human in recent outings, but the difference between a stuttering world champion and a stalling also-ran is immense and the Proteas’s wildest dreams should extend no further than a semifinal appearance.
England’s players might sympathise with those truncated dreams.
Hosting the world, fielding their strongest team in 20 years, apparently offered a realistic chance of thumping their Australian nemeses in a final at Lords, the home team have had to swallow a draw in which their only likely encounter with the world champions will be in a semifinal.
And if there’s one place you don’t want to meet an Australian cricketer, it’s a semifinal. A game — and an eternity — away from the conviviality and relief of a final, it is at the best of times a bloody and joyless encounter, skill and temperament pushed to their limits and either hardened or broken. Facing Australians, the baddest dogs in the semifinal junkyard, even these Englishmen might find themselves savaged.
Even those supercilious Anglophobes must recognise such a disappointment, must regret not having the opportunity to see Flintoff, high on final-juice, climbing in with a cry of ‘Yoiks, tally ho!â€, tie askance and toffee-apple protruding from his pocket, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher rolled into one; to witness Australia limping out of the dust cloud with a lump on its head and a sticking plaster on its knee.
But despite the reservations of the home press, there’ll be plenty to keep us occupied; questions that will be asked and answered. Will Brian Lara be able to convince his critics that his team is the ninth best in the world, or will fresh synonyms have to be found for ‘nadirâ€? Can charisma-impaired New Zealand cause an upset, and if they do, will anyone take any notice? If India win a match away from home, and there are no Indians present to witness it, did that match ever take place?
Silly questions, but then it’s a silly series: silly, timely and fun. Yoiks, tally ho!