One would certainly expect the Barmy clunkers to refrain from such stupidity as to boo Ricky Ponting yet again at the Gabba. That would be taking stupid to a whole new level, and such disfigurment of this contest would be met with severe disapproval Surely not. But I have seen that ridiculous crew do some very stupid things in the past, particularly the send off to Warne at the MCG last Ashes tour, when all was well and truly lost for England. Could Melbourne send off its Wonderful Warne without Barmy stupidity? No. So nothing would surprise me.

Even so, since everyone in England is broke, the ladies of the Gabba will be distributing lunch boxes to those of the Barms who can borrow enough to make the journey, as we in AUえーゆー don't like people to go hungry, whom soever they are, be they Tory or Labour or Liberal Dem. Egalitarianism.

One more sleep to go~~!!

A good contest for the Ashes is always excellent. Hopefully it is that, rather than two dud sides trying to loose the most.

And then watching The Canning of either or both sides throughout the media.

Debate in the afterlife:

Is there any greater joy to be had than seeing the English beaten at cricket?

Alexander the Great: "Nope."
Julius Ceasar: "Can't argue with this, no."
Albert Einstein: "Certainly not."
Leonardo Da Vinci: "Hell no"

Etcetera.

A sport that takes 5 days to complete. Yawn

How on earth did this sport take off surely there wasn't enough players to play the game because everybody was working in the mills. How did they get the time off work ??

Controversial though this view might be, I argue that Murdoch/Sky is actually POSITIVE for the Ashes because only a tiny minority gets to see the hog-whimperingly embarrassing, toe-curlingly nauseating, advertisements in which one's erstwhile heroes are made to do and say ludicrous things in a completely redundant effort to promote excitement in a contest which is perfectly capable of generating its own.
If recent productions are anything to go by, the BBC would have done more or less the same thing.

@bonds

Mills?

It would have started on the lawn in front of the manor, with the gardeners and grooms roped in for competition:

Thock! "Lovely shot, old Fruit, that's gone off into the lake.... of you go Smithers, don't tarry...."

I do hope that England don't win the first two Tests.

That is not just because I am a Scot with Australian ancestry , although this helps , of course , but I am going to the third , fourth and fifth Tests and I would like to see an exciting contest!

if the England batsmen collapse before breakfast

Followed in short order, no doubt, by their sleep-deprived fans
Nullifying at a stroke Ozzy's cunning post-recession plans......

A sport that takes 5 days to complete. Yawn

Couldn't agree more. Imagine when these games were invented and being asked how long they wanted.

Football: "Hour and a half should do it".

Rugby: "We're a bit more physical - call it 80 minutes".

Cricket: "We want about 50 hours play spread over 5 days".

Not only that, even with around 50 hours of play you're not guaranteed a positive result. Notwithstanding that it's the only team sport where they stop playing just because it's a bit damp. And the only sport where cames called off because of weather aren't rescheduled. And that a team can have around 500 runs more than the opposition yet the game can still be declared a "draw". All of which gives the game no credibility in my eyes.

Not to mention that it's basically hours of people standing in a field apart from once every 5 minutes when some of them move a bit.

Not a big fan of stick and ball, you may have guessed. The sporting equivalent of watching paint dry.

Playing Australia at cricket is the only game that really matters.

Yes playing other sides can be entertaining and exciting but lack the sheer visceral feelings that accompany these games against Oz.

However the sort of hype that is taking place reminds me of the football world cup where England, with Rooney, only had to turn up to win.

Being retired I will reset my body clock and sleep patterns and try to watch as much as possible and would love to think that England will win 5-0.

It aint gonna happen though but I think we could just scrape a victory over the 5 match series.

For those poor deluded people that don't like cricket they have the perfect ooportunity to ignore it given the time it will be on.

So they need not worry it won't interfer with X-Factor or Corrie.

Bonds and Vlad2010,

If you don't like cricket, why bother reading and commenting on an article about cricket? Do you not have anything better to do? So some people don't like cricket. There are also some people who don't like chocolate, Mozart, or birdwatching. It's not that big a deal.

I hope the first couple of tests are nail biters, poor old Ricky will have no fingers left, and England will cruise the last matches !

FredinSpain,

The difference with the World Cup is that the small hints of confidence in England is based on facts, rather than The Sun's idiotic jingoism.

The sort of person who thinks cricket is boring, and yet reads a Guardian editorial on the subject, then comments below it on how boring cricket is, is an odd person indeed.

Actually of course, the fact that it can last five days and still end in a draw is precisely what makes it the greatest game, but some people will never be told. Their loss.

I despise Murdoch as much as the next Guardianista, and will never buy one of his papers or subscribe to SKY, but the line above about free-to-air coverage is odd. Overseas cricket series have never been on terrestrial tv. For all of the damage Murdoch has done to broadcasting and media in this country, he did enable cricket fans to watch England play abroad.

@FredinSpain and SotD:

Hear hear. How easy would it be for some of us to disparage other genuinely boring sports with a few equally tedious cliches?

Better still to refer back to the general sports journalist in 2005 who wrote something like:

"Might as well admit it, nothing in the next nine months of overpaid bladder-chasing can match what England and Australia have served up this summer".

In the words of Diana Ross, I'm still waiting for it to do so five years later, frankly.

@Guardian

Better than the editorial about match-fixing. But please remember that, as loathsome as Murdoch is, Sky's cricket coverage is excellent. More to the point, without Sky we would NEVER see touring England cricket teams on live TV, be it in Australia or anywhere else. They started it. England away tests have never been live and free-to-air.

Right, enough cricket. I'm off to the soccer, X-Factor and, er, chocolate, Mozart and birdwatching blogs to tell everyone how boring and pointless their existence is. That should make for a fun morning.

NowWeKnow
24 November 2010 9:56AM

The sort of person who thinks cricket is boring, and yet reads a Guardian editorial on the subject, then comments below it on how boring cricket is, is an odd person indeed.

Actually of course, the fact that it can last five days and still end in a draw is precisely what makes it the greatest game, but some people will never be told. Their loss.

I despise Murdoch as much as the next Guardianista, and will never buy one of his papers or subscribe to SKY, but the line above about free-to-air coverage is odd. Overseas cricket series have never been on terrestrial tv. For all of the damage Murdoch has done to broadcasting and media in this country, he did enable cricket fans to watch England play abroad.

Almost right - I seem to remember when we alst won the Ashes in Oz that the BBC managed to rummage together enough cash for at least one test - but it was a very long time ago that I may be wrong. Of course they have no problem finding the cash to send vast hordes of technicians, presenters, celebrities and god knows who else to Olympics or World Cups where there is less certain national involvement.

Wishy washy pish. Opinionated garbage.

You lot clearly have no clue whatsoever about the history of the Ashes or competitive sport in general - or indeed the supporting of it.

At home the Australians have acted out some of the most virulently abusive antics ever seen at a sports ground - which stops short of soccer-related violence that is.

Having seen it at first hand, abusing Poms is their national sport - the only time they go quiet is when they think they're going to lose.

The English/British cricket and rugby fans by contrast are the best supporters in the world away from home..............therefore your 'plea' is superfluous.

The Australians should be grateful for the invasion of passionate but good-natured, free-spending Poms - from about 1994 onwards we have made a substantial contribution to the Aussie economy, and to their sporting culture.

This time, what we need is a win.

@NowWeKnow - Thank you; spot on.

I don't "get" rugby league or Wagner opera. I don't automatically assume that it's all rubbish, and rush on to websites to tell their followers how it's a complete waste of their time. Particularly not demonstrating my ignorance at the same time (50 hours for a Test match - really??)

UTTERLY bizarre behaviour.

Anyway, nothing can dampen my enthusiasm and nervous tension today. Bring it on!

Love cricket, and for those who find it boring: de gustibus non disputandem est, and other such high-falutin' phrases.

Definitely warrantd an editorial piece - thanks for that. Re the booing of Ponting, I agree that it was silly, pointless and eventually, tasteless. A bit more respect for one of the genuine greats of the game would be in order: at least from the fans, though I hope and expect that, on the field, our boys will show him no deference whatsoever.

Bring it on - sleep deprivation and all!

Oh come on: the only reason the Aussies objected to the booing of Punter was because it meant they had lost two titles and not just one.

No longer holder of the Ashes.

No longer the undisputed champions of boorish behaviour.

Still, at least they're the world's undisputed champion whingers! Anyone else remember "They made it reverse swing! They must be cheating!"? Or "He may not be physically capable of straightening his arm but we'll call him for chucking if he takes too many wickets"?

Congratulations to everyone who has come on here to explain why they don't like cricket - those of us that do, or at least thought we did, have never heard these reasoned and well-thought-out arguments before, and you've really made us think twice.

This test series would would be more interesting if the press didn't make more of it than it really is.

This is a test series between two cricket nations who are lolling in fifth and sixth places, I believe, in the test rankings. It will, likely, not have the pure joyous excitement of the last one-dayers between S. Africa and Pakistan where the Pakistani batsman wielded their bats like robed Saladins off the backs of fleet desert horses in the face of the World No. 2 team.

Let us pay homage to the best of batsmen we have just seen - Tendulkar, Dilsham, Sewag, Ponting, Matthews, Kallis, Amla to name a few, and savour them before the recent excellent memory fades.

In the days when the West Indies dominated every corner of the cricketing universe for nigh on twenty years, the premier talk here was still ,"the Ashes," a slight to honesty and the name of cricket and a worrying tribute to self delusion.

We have a reasonable team; let's hope they do well, but let's drop the delusions of grandeur, in every field, that have been holding us back as a naation since we thought we were the "master" race - a thought that has only held us back from joining the human Race in so many ways.

Here's to a good series.

This is a test series between two cricket nations who are lolling in fifth and sixth places, I believe, in the test rankings. It will, likely, not have the pure joyous excitement of the last one-dayers between S. Africa and Pakistan

Yes, because the Ashes is notorious for never throwing up exciting matches, isn't it?

You sound like the sort of football fan who's bought the Sky News marketing hook, line and sinker. The sort who thinks that the quality of a match is determined by the quality of the players, ignorant of the fact that great teams of great players can grind out dull draws whilst small clubs with mediocre talent can produce nine goal thrillers.

The sort who thinks that watching an encounter between two teams you care nothing about is more satisfying than watching your own team scrap against the old enemy, simply because the aesthetic quality is better in the former.

You're wrong.

We have a reasonable team; let's hope they do well, but let's drop the delusions of grandeur, in every field, that have been holding us back as a naation since we thought we were the "master" race - a thought that has only held us back from joining the human Race in so many ways.

You do realise you're writing about cricket and English cricket fans here, don't you? Not exactly famous for our sense of superiority or a belief that we can beat all-comers, are we? At the start of a series we stand a reasonable chance of winning, we're worried that things are going too well and assume we'll revert to our usual mediocrity - how does that tie-in with believing we're the "master race"?

The passion for the Ashes has nothing to do with "delusions of grandeur". It has to do with the history and tradition of the oldest rivalry in international cricket.

Let me put it another way: my local rugby club versus our nearest neighbours may not be as good or significant a game as All Blacks v Springboks but, round these parts, it matters a whole lot more.

If you don't understand the role of rivalry, tradition and support for a team, you don't understand sport.