Normality is the order of the day as the late nights watching England trouncing the Aussies and the cold weather are behind us. There was something special about seeing the snow outside then curling up on the sofa with a glass of red and a quilt watching in history in the making in the sunshine thousands of miles away. It is kind of poignant that this week I have started working again, the Jet Stream has moved back over the country helping the temperatures rocket in to double figures and the cricket is over. This winter will live long in my memory.

However the Australian sporting public and press have really got on my nerves in the past week in the way they have dealt with the hammering dished out by England. At no point are they giving credit to an England side that reached unprecedented levels of near sporting perfection in this series. Anyone who understands cricket, or in fact sport in general, will see that the preparation, dedication, and team work in the England set up is at a level never witnessed before and that has what has made a decent but not brilliant Australian side crumble to near total ineptitude. I wrote a blog recently titled “Beware the wounded Aussie” and as it happened when England relaxed in Perth they were battered by Australia who are no mugs given the opportunity. The way England responded and moved up a few gears walloping the Aussies twice by an innings has left me astounded by the level of their performance.

For those of you who are not cricket lovers and are still reading this, in the last two tests Australia have scored a total of 917 in four innings at a cost of 40 wickets whilst England have scored 1157 at the cost of 20 wickets and as a series total Australia were  2043 for 90 whilst we were 2864 for 56 with six of our top seven batsmen scoring centuries. So credit where credit is due you whingeing Aussies, England have been brilliant (apart from Perth) and ground you in to the dirt as you have deserted stadiums like rats leaving sinking ships. Never in the history of England beatings by the Aussies at Lords or the Oval has there been an empty seat in the house, the mass desertion at the MCG and the SCG was like seeing thousands of spoilt kids who have had their toys taken away. Tasting the bitterness of defeat makes victory all the better, but you Aussies will never know that, because you ran away too scared to witness what it feels like, and rather than watching a team reaching new heights you chose to refuse to give credit to England and turned on your own team instead. And do you know what, I loved every bloody minute of it, never accuse of being whingeing Poms again.

Me being me though, I have to have a down side to everything and in this case it has to be certain sections of the Barmy Army that appear across the world when England play cricket. I don’t know if I am envious or what, but I just can’t warm to some of them, particularly that prat who waves the St Georges flag with his back to the game. I would detest him if I was trying to watch the game and he was in my way, he is just one of these attention seeking clowns attaching himself to glory. I met some of the Barmy Army when I watched England in Mumbai in 2006 and I found them a boorish bunch who laughed at their own jokes and knew surprisingly little about the game. However, it has to be said that I may have just been unlucky as it is a fact that of life that if there is a fucking idiot in the vicinity he will be instantly attracted to spending an afternoon prodding me, reading me shit text jokes out loud, and telling preposterous stories that I am supposed to believe as he pursues an all out invasion my personal space. Maybe these people see me as someone who hasn’t got the balls to give them the frightful kicking they wholeheartedly deserve.

It needs to be  said that Andrew Strauss and many other members of the team have commended the Barmy Army for their support and even I must admit that the atmosphere generated by the English must have been huge encouragement for the players, so I really should get off my perch and leave them alone. When I saw the celebrations around the bars of Sydney on the TV huge pangs of jealousy went through me as it dawned on me that I could have been there as I have enough contacts in Australia to have a cheap holiday and I had no work commitments here.

Maybe that’s why I hate some of the Barmy Army, because they have tasted something I never will, though I will never warm to that prat with the flag or the dickhead who ruined my afternoon of cricket in Mumbai or Bombay as he kept hilariously insisting on calling it.