It’s full steam ahead this week, with talk of England that mainly involves slating India, talk of Sri Lanka that mainly involves slating Australia and some Big Bash banter. Plus factual errors galore.
With England being brilliant and wonderful and having no problems at all now Stuart Broad is definitely too injured to sneak his way back in, the fourth Test preview focuses almost entirely on their opponents.
Despite a slight wobble, England completed the formality of victory easily enough on the fifth morning to stand on the brink of a historic series victory.
An Indian collapse after lunch took them to the brink of defeat before R Ashwin showed up the folly of his team-mates, succeeding in taking the game to a fifth day and winning a tiny moral victory.
England sleepwalked their way to a big first innings lead despite their batsmen intermittently running themselves out for no apparent reason.
In the space of little over a fortnight, England seem to have remembered how to play cricket and followed up their bottom-smacking of India in Mumbai with a strong start in Kolkata.
No-one really enjoys being consistently good at cricket any more, that’s soooo 90s. Far better to swing between extremes. And we don’t mean those berks who did “More Than Words” in 1992.
The 51allout podcast was two-thirds deliriously happy this week, thanks to England’s drubbing of India and Australia’s non-drubbing of South Africa. They were less pleased to learn that Aussie Matt now lives dangerously close to a rather busy international airport.
After 30 years of lulling everyone into a false sense of security, England finally showed their true colours by going ballistic on a rank turner and destroyed their hosts in Mumbai.
A remarkable day for England brought back memories of the last time we were genuinely happy – back in 1988 when we briefly had a job designing toys.