While Joe Root’s side are in a 42-day series, 1948-49 tourists had several months away in a schedule full of social obligations
They say everything looks worse in the middle of the night:
England fans know this well. To be fair, a full-bore batting collapse, precipitated by the first ball of the first day of the first Ashes Test, is a pretty bleak prospect at any time. Pull the trigger at midnight, however, and you’ve got yourself an eight-hour existential crisis.
While Pat Cummins was living the dream, those of us whose affiliations cluster closer to the Greenwich Meridian were tumbling in and out of a jet-laggy half-sleep, the place where reality meets our darkest fears. Australia’s bowling attack suddenly morphs into a personification of the Omicron virus and lays waste to the post-Brexit
economy. Santa shows up at your house, only wait he’s also Nathan Lyon and he’s stealing all the presents and letting Rudolph crap on your carpet. At least that 85-ball century from Travis Head wasn’t real. Was it? Oh God, pinch me.