Woe and Twice Woe...

I blame myself. 12.30 this morning I thought I'd better avoid the start of the last day of the second Test, just in case there should be some unbelievable - yet totally customary - England batting collapse. So fearful of this fate was I that I dared not watch lest my worry somehow communicated itself down the tube and across the oceans. Where was my confidence, where was my 'bottle'?

I, therefore, could not bring myself to tune in until an hour of so after the start of play for the day - the 'bad hour' according to Capt'n Freddie - only of course to be stunned beyond grief and belief at the hapless, hopeless position we were by then in. Watching the replays you could only but marvel at the lemming-esque quality of it all. There has to be something of the despairing mentally of the would-be suicide about our national sporting spirit - we will ourselves close to the edge and then simply must throw ourselves off and into oblivion.

How else to explain the wafting stroke of young Freddie himself: knowing how vital it was to remain in and around for hour upon hour, his bat lifts as if mesmerised towards a wide and harmless delivery, all but determined to snick it to slip for a regulation catch. You had to want that to happen at some tribal atavistic level for it to have occurred. As an inglorious moment it will remain in legend on a par with Harmless's first ball of the last Test and Guileless' woeful dropped catch of this.

Which Aussie was it once lambasted a touring England team "There's only three things wrong with England: they can't bowl, they can't bat and they can't field"? On that occasion England emerged triumphant in the end and the Aussie had had to have the good grace then to admit that whilst his judgement had been sound he had in fact been referring to the wrong team! This time though he has got it - so so sadly - spot on.

All, of course, the more galling that H's innocent if irksome question the other day - are the Ashes still on then? - proves to have been horribly prescient, for no the Ashes are indeed over and out!