Black Tuesday (Or, Musings on the Point of it All)

This is a nightmare you can’t wake from no matter how hard you try.

A mess. A disaster. A humiliation. A complete embarrassment.

At around ten to one in the morning, as most of us were all drifting into the fitful alcohol-induced kip that marks this time of year as one of headaches and red-eye, Cameron Green of the Australia national cricket team castles James Anderson in Melbourne and Australia retain the Ashes after an England capitulation that took only eleven-and-a-bit days of test cricket to move from hope to abject humiliation.

Cue the lip-biting, brow-furrowing and face-wiping.

Joe Root is wheeled in front of the cameras and microphones. Right now, actually, not the dejected and broken cliche, but answering questions and going through the motions with the apathy of someone who is quite simply sick of it all. For weeks, chat from the England camp was one of corporate positivity. A misplaced upbeat-ism in the face of a potential looming disaster that can only be rivalled by the tone of the laughter over-heard by the cleaning staff at 10 Downing Street, as they sweep up the crumbs of Jacob’s Cream Cracker and Wensleydale from the floor, and throw yet another empty bottle of Merlot into the recycling bin with just enough force to let out a hint of that building frustration.

Right now, though, Root is broken. He knows this is the career-ender. The series has been such a disaster it is the point of no recovery. Less a Battle of Thermopylae brave fight to the death, more surrendering to a couple of French fishing boats while fighting over the last remaining scallops in the English Channel.

Back home, the knives are already out. The blame is already being proportioned. The old four-yearly Christmas favourites are being trotted out. The County Championship is not fit for purpose. The Hundred. Too much cricket. Not enough preparation. Focus on the white ball. The decline of cricket outside of the private school select. Some answers are obvious but unfeasible. Some not so much so but do-able. Compromises are discussed. Inevitably, the point is raised: “If this is so difficult to sort out, and so many people with so much to lose unwilling to do so, what’s the point of doing all of this at all?”

The fragile system of which England cricket is built, patched up for so many years with duct tape and superglue, has finally finished its slow collapse.