Phew! Thank goodness that’s over – I don’t think I could have stood any more. The breathless excitement, the visceral nail-biting thrill, the agony and joy, of a sporting contest which gripped two nations on opposite sides of the planet.
Or maybe not.
I’m talking, of course, about the recently-concluded NatWest one-day series, which might just rank as the limpest and most pointless endeavour in the entire history of international cricket.
No one in either England or Australia was capable of even remotely giving a monkey’s about it – including the players, most of whom, on the home side at least, failed to even turn up.
Depending on perspective, on the ECB’s part the series was either a well-intentioned mistake, or a piece of lamentably poor planning and execution, or a deliberate and cynical attempt to rip off supporters.
For a start, why were these one-dayers scheduled after the Ashes test series? The battle for the urn constitutes the emotional heart of English cricket, and by definition anything which follows is an anti-climax. After the excitement of the tests, and the achievement of winning three-nil, how were we supposed to care about what came next?
And because the ODIs followed a gruelling series of virtually back-to-back tests, and because the next Ashes is only two months away, England had no option but to mostly rest our senior and box-office players, in some cases due to injuries acquired over the previous weeks.
As a result, we largely fielded a B team, peopled chiefly by county journeymen and rookies we’d barely even heard of.
The likes of Cook, Trott, Bell, Broad, Swann and Anderson were rarely, if at all, to be seen.
The other consequence of staging the 50-over games after the Ashes is that they took place in the cold and rain of mid-September, which handily also coincided with the football season gearing into action. If that wasn’t enough, some bright spark had the brainwave of scheduling some of them as day-night matches, just to exploit the famously balmy evenings of a British autumn.
All these factors combined to bring about the farce in Southampton on Monday, which saw England supporters charged £60 to sit for eight hours in freezing temperatures and be entertained by a stellar cast of such international heavyweights as Chris Jordan, Ben Stokes and Michael Carberry. When the two most glamorous names in an England team are Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara, you know something has gone seriously awry.
Many questions are begged. If the likes of Cook and Anderson were never going to be properly available at this point of the season, why schedule the matches for exactly that time? Have the ECB never looked at weather forecasts for September? And do they really think punters are naive enough to put up with this forever?
Once upon a time England’s summer ODI campaign comprised three matches, only, played in early June, as a warm up to the test series. Important issues of momentum, form and selection were at stake, and each side fielded their strongest XIs. As a result, the cricket was meaningful and significant.
The format was perfect in the eyes of everyone except the people in charge, who decided to scrap it. And if they had a good reason for doing so, I’d love to hear what it was.