England win The Ashes

For the first time in 20 years England have won the Ashes Test Cricket Series. The Ashes is one of the oldest Cricket competitions in the world and is a series of games between England and Australia. The Ashes name refers to the trophy which is an urn with something or someone’s ashes in it. (Have probably been told who/what they are in the past but have forgotten. And have too much of a life to look subject up.) The Test series was over 5 games and was incredibly hard fought, and the series wasn’t decided until very late in the day of the final game, last night. But England triumphed 2-1 with 2 draws as well.



Cricket is supposedly our national sport (or is it Football/Soccer?) and like many sports we invented, we’re not that good at them. In a very English way we wallow in being the defeated underdog, and get on with our lives reasonably happily. Whereas the Australians are very competitive and have that killer instinct in sport. And Cricket is probably more their national sport than ours. So beating them in this series was fantastic. Cricket has long been seen as a minor and fading sport in the UK, but the whole country has been getting behind the team over the last few weeks. And the country pretty much stopped yesterday to try and catch some of the final day of the series. Everyone is talking about the team at the moment and they did a parade through central London today, which drew crowds in the tens of thousands. National pride is running high and I think people are feeling good about themselves as well. I think this is great, particularly in London given recent events. It is very pertinent for me as half of my office are Australians and it’s nice to put one over them (in a nice way).



In recent times there has been a change in attitude towards sport in this country, probably directly linked to the fact that we are having some success internationally. At the end of 1993 England won the Rugby World Cup (again, rather pleasingly, beating the Australians) in an epic match. Then earlier this year London got the Olympics for 2012, and then yesterday England won the Ashes. On each occasion there have been huge celebrations in the centre of London and the city has really come together to celebrate. And a lot of the rest of the country has been joining in. Hopefully this will mean that resources will be put into developing future sports people. Whether you are into sport or not, I think it’s a good thing to have some success and everyone feels better when Britain wins. It lightens the mood across the country, and often brings groups and communities together.

But for the moment congratulations to the England Cricket players and lets build on this.

(I’ve realised this post contains some factual grey areas for which I apologise.)