Pj Kavanagh

Nearly guiltless

Ashes to Ashes, by Marcus Berkmann

issue 04 July 2009

No one has ever successfully explained cricket-obsession, and Marcus Berkmann doesn’t even try. He just expresses it, stamping about like Basil Fawlty in exasperation at England’s nearly constant humiliation at the hands of the Australians. He even confesses to a disbeliever that ‘some of my best friends are Australians’, and puzzles at the way they seem to hate us, whereas we rather like them, an affection which they find patronising. ‘A chippiness they really should have got over by now… However you look at it, we just can’t win — which, by astounding coincidence, is what usually happens on the cricket field too.’

Berkmann also fumes at the many outrageous team selections (and omissions) that England has made over those 35 terrible years, which have infuriated many of his fellow-obsessives, among whom I class myself. For example, no one ever seemed to know how to deal with that Child of Joy and most beautiful batsman of his generation, David Gower.

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