Hooray, at least, for hubris. After all the optimism, fuelled by threatening boasts from some of England’s cricketers, the Lord’s Test match in no time turned into as retributively gruesome an anticlimax as the British Lions’ rugby tour had done earlier in the month. To be effective, swank must be supported by confidence in your own elementary basics, but once the bell sounded the Lions couldn’t tackle or pass and the cricketers, woefully, couldn’t hold their catches. It was daft, as well, to set about the Ashes challenge by dismissing many of your opponents as over the hill — over the horizon and far away, more like, and if, beginning next Thursday, England cannot reel back the Australians in the successive Tests at Birmingham and Manchester, then the whole contest could be done, dusted and relegated forlornly to the inside pages by the time Premiership football kicks off on Saturday week.
At Lord’s it was thrilling — elevating — to witness the majesty of the two veteran Australian bowlers, McGrath and Warne, the former relentlessly controlled and almost dot-perfect in unremitting, cold-eyed hostility, the other a lulling, ensnaring provocateur of taunting imagination, daring and infinitely subtle variety.
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