Empire State of Mind

So we are tanking Australia in the Ashes, at least we should do because they are awful aren't they. Their best player is beautiful but insane, their batsmen seem to find new and interesting ways of getting themselves out in every collapse & their public have turned against them. They are as rubbish, no more rubbish, than we were when they were taking great delight in pulverising us for the 20 years of my adulthood.

So now we are taking great delight in jumping up and down on the graves of Warne, McGrath, Waugh et al. Apart from we aren't. We are pleased, but a bit of us thinks we are cheating because we aren't beating the best side anyone can remember. It is like if we won the football world cup but we avoided Brazil and 'only' had to beat Paraguay in the final, we wouldn't like that.

We are not comfortable bullies, we want to win, but we want to win only if the opposition nearly beat us instead and it feels like it has been a struggle. We remember 66, the ashes in 95, the Rugby in 2003 because we won, obviously, but also because we feel like we were beating someone good. We don't recall the Ashes in 07 as fondly, or the World 20-20 last year, or the Ryder Cup in Ireland in 06 because these contests were somehow in our eyes less worthy.

Like the the joke about the German who eternally apologises for the holocaust, are we inwardly embarrassed for our empire building ancestors and just don't want to be seen as an international bully?

Come one England, a W is W.