Look! It's still twitching

There's something weirdly macabre about doing a post-mortem on a beast that's still technically alive. That's what's happening with the England team.

Australia won the Ashes after the last Test and now we all get to pick at England's faults as they show them off in a series they've already lost. There isn't even any belief that they'll restore pride with a consolation win. Everyone knows what's happening, but we're still watching. It's grotesque cruelty on a grand scale.

Today's fresh autopsy evidence probably revolves around England's consistently bad batting on surfaces which have been, for the most part, pretty darn decent. Something like that anyway.

Maybe we'll just start lying and reporting England wins. Everyone's doing 'the facts' on the rest of the internet. 'The facts' are passé.

There really is no doubt about it. This Ashes is making us angry rather than amazed.

England 159 all out and 161 all out
Australia 419 all out

2007 World Cup: Angry or amazed?

Clearly we're angry. This World Cup was the worst yet the moment we heard what had happened to Bob Woolmer. Take that out of the equation and it was still a disaster.

One of the main problems was the sheer predictability of the whole thing. At almost every stage of the tournament, you could be relatively certain who was going to progress to the next round. Stretch proceedings out over weeks and weeks and weeks and this flaw is magnified.

If Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa are going to contest the semi finals, as seemed evident about a month ago, let's see them. Instead there was a protracted period of going through the motions.

There were only a few matches in the entire tournament which actually mattered. The final was probably the most closely-contested of these, which effectively means that out of 51 games, not one was meaningfully exciting. The best match was England against the West Indies when both teams had already been knocked out.

The Cricket World Cup is often referred to as a showcase, but it was treated as anything but. The concept is surely that the tournament functions as an advert for cricket. Instead it was treated as a window of opportunity during which as much money as possible could be made. If the World Cup's a good one, then it will create new cricket-followers. These people will support the game over the whole of the next four years and beyond. Cashing-in is short-sighted and damaging.

The most infuriating example of this was the ticket-pricing policy and the way the fans were treated. Tickets were often the equivalent of two weeks' wages for locals and they were hoping to fill 20,000 seater stadia on islands with a population of 80,000. There's no other word for that but stupidity.

Once inside the ground, instruments were barred, as were alcohol and even plastic bottles. You also weren't permitted to leave the ground and re-enter. If a match is joyless for an undersized crowd, the TV can't hide this. An enthusiastic and raucous crowd can conceal all manner of sins on the field.

At least the final didn't end in shambolic circumstances with both teams needlessly retaking the field for a couple of overs when the match had already been decided - as happened when England won the 2005 Ashes. Oh, wait...

Sarcastic handclap everyone: [Clap]...[clap]...

C&G Trophy round-up

Miraculously, the Somerset v Kent match has made us both angry and amazed. Marcus Trescothick reassured England fans throughout the land by larruping 158 off only 132 balls. Unfortunately, it was at the expense of a Kent side who, thus far, are flirting with the word 'hapless' under the leadership of King Cricket muse/dumpling, Rob Key. Rob further ruined our day by scoring only 11. An England call does not look to be in the offing.

Elsewhere, Jon Lewis continued to make us ponder whether he's in magnificent form or whether he's of magnificent class by taking 4-14 against Middlesex. We reckon he's a decidedly good county bowler in great form. We aren't backing him for international duty unless there's some huge crisis. In the interests of efficiency we'll link to the previous post commenting on a good Jon Lewis performance, but if we're honest, it's not worth reading. Masochists click here.

Matthew Hoggard cliché article satisfactorily completed

Well that's that done and dusted. It's out there in the mainstream and nobody will have any excuse for laboured 'honest toiler' references again.

So everyone give, er, Paul Coupar of Wisden a pat on the back for this article.

We're not totally sure how we feel about this. We're not amazed, so we guess that we must be angry. Seems harsh considering he agrees with us, but there you go.

King Cricket - new rating system explained

After going throught the emotional mincer over the weekend, we have decided to simplify things. From now on, we will be either 'angry' or 'amazed' at every cricketing event. There are no other options.

The credit for this complex rating system should go to the UK's Channel 4. During David Blaine's interminable stunt where he hung in a box over the Thames, viewers were asked to vote through their remote control as to how they felt about it. The options were (a) angry or (b) amazed.

We tried to hammer in 'nonplussed' in the form of binary code, but only succeeding in switching to BBC1 which was pretty much the best result we could have hoped for.

Hopefully we'll have more success applying this system to cricket.