Stiff Upper Lip Time

Yesterday England had a chance to rise above mediocrity and sneak into the semifinals of the World Cup. Instead, they suffered a humiliating thrashing at the hands of South Africa. It was, as Jonathan Agnew described, England cricket "laid bare".

An amazing thing happens, though, when England's cricketers break the hearts of their supporters. It unleashes the brilliance of English sarcasm. While the match was pretty dismal cricket by all accounts, the BBC text narration (credited to Tom Fordyce) and associated comments were sometimes amusing. Here's a gem from the 7th over of England's innings:

Kaboom! Vaughan gets off the mark after a mere 20 deliveries, getting a thick edge through gully for one. You can't defend against those sort of fireworks. Bell does the same, and England are rampant.

I also like Fordyce's summary of the rivalry:

In case you're unaware of the history behind this particular showdown, Pietersen left his homeland for England because of the quota system - South African rules state that no team can field more than three massive egos in any one match.

The user comments were sometimes fun, too, such as one spectator who found a unique way of coping with the frustration of watching England's opening batsmen:

Why can I not shrug off the Benny Hill theme tune currently ringing in my ears?

The sarcasm only got sharper after a Mr. Rhodes complained about the negativity of the narration. This inspired some positive spin of the circumstances:

Rhodes version: "Huge, huge improvement from Mahmood - nine fewer runs off this over than his last one."


Unfortuately, Sajid Mahmoud was a pretty easy target. On a good day he can be a very fine bowler, but yesterday, and probably too many other days in this World Cup, that was not the case. Even his fielding was grist for the mill:

Mahmood then produces a sublime moment on the point boundary by jogging across to Kallis's gentle cut and booting it accidentally over the rope for four, in the manner of a clown entertaining children.

England still have one more match to go, but they can look forward to facing more sarcasm and bitterness, as well as calls for change which are hard to dispute at this point. If you had asked me before the tournament whether it was reasonable to expect England to finish 5th or 6th, I'd have said "yes" without hesitation, but with the manner in which the batting crawled along and then collapsed against South Africa, a reasonable result has become a humiliation. It seems their style of play in one-day matches works well against the minnows but only work against the big boys when KP ignites, or if a couple of tailenders bat exceptionally well. Even in those cases, - when England batted well against Sri Lanka and Australia, for example - it wasn't always enough. England will leave this tournament having lost to all four of the semifinalists.