When something bad happens, like a hugely expensive cruise ship sinking on its maiden voyage, or a carriage coming loose on a rollercoaster or Newcastle United failing to challenge at the top of the Premiership, it’s human nature to search for a scapegoat.
For the Titanic, it was the drunken captain who ploughed into an iceberg, for the carriage flying off the rollercoaster it’s the maintenance man and for Newcastle United it’s the affable Spaniard Albert Luque, so who can we blame for England’s Ashes whitewash?
I know, let’s go for the guy who is aloof in public, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and whose laid back attitude off the pitch infuriates the single-minded try hard brigade. Yes, let’s blame Steve Harmison because that’s precisely what former England captains Nasser Hussain and Geoff Boycott want to do.
It’s all Harmy’s fault because he hasn’t taken enough wickets, his attitude stinks, his body language isn’t rigid enough, he doesn’t care about cricket and he had the cheek to say in an interview the other day that he was looking forward to going home.
How dare you Steve, how dare you want to get away from the Ashes humiliation in Australia and how dare you say that you don’t know what you will be doing when you get back.
Honestly Steve, you should want to stay in Oz and talk to crowing Aussies everyday for the next three months and when you get home, you should head straight to the Riverside for 12 hours of net practice seven days a week, you fiend, because that’s what Nasser and Geoff would have done.
This of course is the same Nasser Hussain who never played in a victorious Ashes series and whose side only narrowly escaped from a series whitewash four years ago with a fortunate victory in Sydney. This is the same Nasser who clung on to the captaincy for far too long because of the kudos it gave him when everyone could see England needed a change in leadership.
This is the same Nasser Hussain who constantly complained about ex-pros criticising the England team and him and the same Nasser Hussain who retired as soon as he had got one last international century so he could have the last word on his critics.
As for Boycott, he is arguably one of the most selfish individuals to have played a team sport for England, a batsman who was always more interested in how many runs he scored than whether the team won and who made a habit of running partners out by calling risky singles to add to his total.
So thanks guys, let’s blame Harmison for everything that has gone wrong - and there has been plenty - Down Under.
No, the reason we lost the Ashes goes like this;
Harmison was under-prepared having played virtually no four day cricket in three months. As a rhythm bowler, he only started to find it when the series was already lost.
Why did he not play in Durham’s final Championship match of the season when fit? Why was he playing ill-suited one day cricket when he could have been playing club cricket in Australia or New Zealand to find his rhythm?
England did not spend enough time in Australia playing warm up games before the start of the series because they were playing in the stupid ICC Trophy.
Ashley Giles played instead of Monty Panesar in the first two tests, hardly took a wicket, didn’t score any runs and dropped Ricky Ponting. A bit like playing Stuart McGill instead of Shane Warne.
England lost three key players from the triumphant 2005 Series before a ball had been bowled. Captain Michael Vaughan, opening batsman Michael Trescothick and fast bowler Simon Jones. Take Ponting, Justin Langer and Brett Lee away from Australia and how would they have done?
Freddie Flintoff, England insipration in 2005, was not fully fit and struggled to cope with the extra burden of being captain as well as crucial all-rounder.
Australia were simply awesome as their old brigade, still smarting from the Ashes defeat 18 months ago, went out in style.
They, will however, have to completely rebuild their side following the retirement of Damien Martyn, Warne, Glenn McGrath, Langer and probably Matthew Hayden and Adam Glichrist as well.
England, in contrast, have a young team which will almost certainly still be together in two and a half years time. We’ll get them back, but in the meantime, let’s blame Harmison because that’s really constructive isn’t it?
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