Big play

And so England retain the Ashes in Australia for the first time since 1986/87.

I still remain of my opinion (probably the only person in the world to think this) that test cricket is a silly game, all things considered; the idea of being able to play something for 5 days without getting a proper win/lose result is ludicrous, and the fact that the weather plays a key role in determining this, even more so. Having said that, when the gulf in performance between two sides seems as wide as it was in this Ashes series (third test strangely excepted), it doesn't really matter if you're playing test, one-day, 20-20 or tiddlywinks; Australia were at the end of the day, just too shit to compete. Sorry guys.

Who knows when this will happen again - probably another 24 years? Given UK government cuts to school funding, we'll probably never win again. So enjoy it while you can.

winners

Jeez Mick, I'd never have predicted this.

It just shows you what the guys can do when the weather holds long enough for them to do their thing.

Makes you wonder why we bother fielding a national football team when we have a sport we can (sometimes) win at?

Right, back to serious posts next week.

another cricket post

I know I said no more cricket posts but...

WELL DONE GUYS. First win against Australia at Lords since 1934 - bloody hell.

It's feeling more and more like 2005 every minute. I keep worrying that Tony Blair is going to return and take over the country...

The test match format is a stupid anachronism

Right, here's Hal Berstram getting back to what was once his primary assignment - the sports desk - with probably the only post I'll ever make about cricket.

The first test in the 2009 Ashes series - in Cardiff - has just finished. The result was a draw.

An exciting ending, with Monty Panesar and James Anderson hanging on until the end of the day with England on 9 wickets down...

...but also a travesty. Because Australia were much better than England and deserved to win.

So why didn't they win? The bleeding weather.

Any fool can draw a game where a substantial proportion of the playing time is lost to bad weather. It's absolutely ludicrous that test cricket was designed so that the unpredictabilities of the British weather played a key role in the process.

You might as well say that if the rain comes down at Wimbledon, the championship is "drawn" for that year - don't bother to reschedule the lost playing time, just give up on the whole thing. Or if a football match gets postponed due to bad weather in the Premiership - just draw it and give the teams one point each.

Sounds ludicrous - and it is. But this happens every year in test cricket.

I don't particularly like cricket anyway, but at least the one-day game gives a result (even if play has to be abandoned due to rain, they have a nifty thing called the Duckworth-Lewis method - sounds a bit like a dodgy form of contraception, but is in fact an algorithm designed to impute the winners from a partially completed match. Clever stuff.)

It would actually be fairly simple to change the test match format to guarantee a result; either play as many extra days as necessary until both sides have completed 2 innings (or, often more likely in England's case, they've gone down to an innings defeat) or play the bloody game under a stadium where they can close the roof if it rains. Given the crappy British weather you'd have thought someone would have sussed this out.

But of course cricket, like most sports in this country, is run by morons, and so the idiocy persists. Please someone knock me out with the cricket ball until it's all over. ZZZZZZ....