Imagine rooting for the Australian cricket team. If you’re Scottish, Welsh or Irish — or Australian obviously — it might not be such a stretch. But for an Englishman, I suspect, it’s nigh on impossible. It would be like supporting Germany in the (football) World Cup. Or yearning for the All Blacks to win the rugby. We invented cricket, after all. And in that particular sphere, Australia is our natural enemy. They burned our bails in 1882 — ‘the Ashes of English cricket’ — and quite properly we have never forgiven them.
But if that’s how you feel — and I really don’t blame you — then you should treat yourself to the marvellous Amazon Prime series The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team. Not least among its virtues is that it will inure you to the misery of the next occasion the Aussies inevitably thrash us. Sure they might be cocky.
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