The Ashes Series

I posted in July that the First Test had been a compulsive listening experience and so it has been throughout. That draw to begin with, our last two batsmen holding out almost impossibly, the incredible win at Lords for the first time in three quarters of a century, the rain-affected draw at Edgbaston, the appalling surrender to Australian supremacy at Headingly, from which many thought a disheartened England could never climb back, and the dramatic finale at the Oval, Australia’s top batsmen blown away in their first innings by a young man thought likely to lose his place in the team.

Even with an unprecedentedly high score to chase it looked, on a couple of occasions, as if Australia might just do it. But it was over abruptly, around the time of the aperitivo. I felt empty and purposeless for a while, wondering what it was I did before the Ashes started. Ah yes, something about a book.....