England are No. 1? Lord help us
Reasons why the change at the top of the Test cricket rankings is not good news
S Aga
29-Aug-2011
No. 17: This sort of thing wouldn't have happened in the good old days when England were rubbish • PA Photos
The country that brought you Mark Ealham and Dominic Cork is top of Test cricket's table. Can this be a good thing? The answer, dear reader, is no
1. Think of all the Fire in Luton-type films that are in the works at the moment, and weep. Starring Tim Bresnan as Malcolm Marshall. With a soul-stirring score by, um, the Arctic Monkeys.
2. The 4-0 result has destroyed Duncan Fletcher, who was as much a part of building this England side as anybody else. Thus England have callously defecated upon their own heritage. This is just not cricket.
3. Little boys will model themselves on Jonathan Trott. Do you need to be told this is bad?
4. Little girls will model their beauty regimens on Stuart Broad's, and be reduced to gibbering wrecks when they find they cannot cope with the work involved.
5. If it was KP and Peter Moores in charge, that would have been something at least. The two Andys are so dull, people will desert cricket in droves for the high-octane excitement of watching lawns grow.
6. They look set to stay at No. 1 for a while. A unipolar world is bad because it puts people to sleep. Remember Australia?
7. Stuart Broad is in the world's No. 1 side. Think about that for a moment. Vomit. Repeat.
8. Having waxed successful, Graeme Swann will become fat, complacent and unfunny, and won't get up to japes like he used to. (See cat-trapped-under-floorboards incident.)
9. If England are going to win everything, it doesn't give Bob Willis much chance to be the curmudgeonly old stick in the mud we know and love. There will be no point to Bob Willis then. A world in which that is allowed to happen is sick and wrong.
10. If England are going to win everything, they'll need an inexhaustible supply of fresh talent. i.e. South African cricket will be wrecked for the foreseeable future.
11. How awful for poor Lalit Modi, in exile in England, having to be sneered at in the checkout line in Tesco by old ladies and told that his IPL ruined Indian cricket. (All right, Fortnum and Mason, then.)
12. England will be big-headed and intolerable. (Ibid Ashes 2005.) Or they'll be wracked by self-doubt and feelings of not deserving No. 1 and not being able to hold on. Or they'll be studiedly level-headed and self-effacing. Any which way, they'll be insufferable.
13. Ian Botham and Nasser Hussain will crow even more. Is this technically possible? No one knows, but they're going to give it the old school try.
14. Speaking of, brace yourself for a barrage of articles asking if Broady is the next Beefy.
15. Greater numbers of English supporters will take to following their team around the world. This will involve many hundreds of flabby-chested shirtless men slow-cooking themselves in open stands in sunny climes while drinking themselves into a stupor. This is only marginally less nauseating than watch a reality dance competition.
16. At this rate Alastair Cook will soon have made more hundreds than Don Bradman and, god forbid, Sachin Tendulkar even. The horror.