To quote Tim Nice-But-Dim, “what a thoroughly bloody nice bloke!” He had all the attributes of a traditional public school England cricket captain: pleasant, well-mannered, modest, soft-spoken and pretty handy with the bat – which should have meant he was utterly bloody useless at winning anything.Only Strauss proved himself to be straight out of the Douglas Jardine school of captaincy – grind away relentlessly at the opposition until they damn well beg for mercy (but, unlike the great architect of bodyline bowling, be modest, self-effacing and ever so courteous while ruthlessly crushing the competition).
Of course it would have been lovely if England had managed to retain their No. 1 spot against South Africa, and it would have been most welcome not to lose 3-0 to Pakistan in the Gulf – but, hell, multiple Ashes victories against the old enemy and whitewashing India last year to grab the top spot are sports memories as cherishable as Mo Farrah, Sir Chris Hoy and Jessica Ennis’s Olympic feats. Yes, Australia were a team in sharp decline and many of India’s best players looked like they were due a Zimmer-frame – but you can only play the team which turns up on the day, and you played them brilliantly.
As for the side that knocked you off a peak that England had never previously scaled, well… South Africa are a better team, and that’s that. Of course, better sides can lose occasionally, but rarely over the course of a Test series. As a batsman you were as effective as your technique allowed (i.e. you made the best of your talent), and your loss of form in recent years was no doubt the result of age and the pressures of captaincy (especially when having to deal with a horrible arse like Kevin Pietersen). As a captain, you have played an absolute blinder.
Back in the early 1980s I – embarrassingly – approached Ian Botham and Mike Brearley at a reception and thanked them for winning the Ashes (me and about ten thousand other idiots, I suspect), and I’m sure I’d do something equally stupid should Andrew Strauss ever be unlucky enough to bump into me. But the chap is an absolute hero. Even in a year when there’ll be stiff competition for sporting gongs, he’ll undoubtedly be granted a knighthood – if it was up to me this true English sporting hero would be given a Dukedom.
Strauss is, apparently, a raving Tory: with any luck, Boris Johnson (who, I suspect, may have a touch of Jardine about him) will invite Strauss to join his front bench team once David Cameron (a classic example of the useless public school leader who sees it as his job to oversee decline) has been left alone with the whiskey bottle and loaded gun.
Fair point, Scott but he's no JayTee. Could he hack it as skipper in a man's game of swearing your nuts off, screaming at the ref, doing the old dying swan to get a penalty and shagging yer mate's missus while he's out on loan?
ReplyDeleteI think we all know the answer to that one.
Man in the Shed. Exactly.
ReplyDeleteThanks mate. And what's more, I've never seen any evidence of the names of his kids tattoed on his arm. Don't he care or something? Plus he can't gob to save his life and he's not got enough hair for a Top style, like Meireles or Becks.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and he doesn't even get injured within five minutes of arriving at the crease and have to take six months off on a measly £200,000 a week. Not only that, he doesn't have a crowd-pleasing routine for when he scores a century - no sucking his thumb, or pretending he's holding a baby or doing robot dancing or screaming obscenities into the nearest TV camera. As for bringing the game into disrepute - forget it! What a useless tosser!
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