Ugly gloat the product of CA’s finest minds
The first time the Ashes changed hands in 1883, they were presented by Lady Janet Clarke and her music teacher, Florence Morphy, to English captain Ivo Bligh. The backdrop was Rupertswood, the Clarke family’s elegant mansion outside Sunbury. The next year, Bligh returned to Australia to marry Morphy – a clean sweep for Bligh.
In the most recent rite on Sunday, the prize was presented by one Australian captain, Mark Taylor, to another, Steve Smith. Among the accompanying party was the vice-something-or-other of Magellan, the series sponsor. I am presuming that the moment inspired you all to instantly buy half-a-dozen Magellans.
The backdrop to this presentation was a giant pair of inflatable hands, one in Australian colours holding up four fingers, the other, in English livery, clenched to signal zero. They might had been discarded from a children’s birthday party or a Mardi Gras float. The effect was as charming as a pneumatic cow pat.
But, heh, we’ve got the Ashes, so stuff England.
Bligh’s team were welcomed to Australia with a house party, also at Rupertswood. Joe Root’s team were greeted with veiled threats, and from Cricket Australia this subtle and achingly evocative slogan: #beatengland.
In televised ads, beanie-clad preschoolers were co-opted to the snarling cause. They were about as cute as junior Chopper Reads.
But we’ve got the Ashes, so England can sit on it.
In sports marketing’s race to the bottom, CA is winning ugly. At every turn, in every competition, in every format, it seeks to dumb down the game and patronise the fans. The banality would make sense only if it emerged that, somewhere in a back office, gurus are running a competition not only to take the public for fools, but to make fools of them, to see how infantile they dare be.
The prize is a complete set of life-sized, fully refundable Magellans.
But, look: Scoreboard. Ashes. Stick it where it fits, England.
Monday’s garish effort was the raising of many fingers, to England, to ideals of grace, humility, taste and sportsmanship, to the respect for opposition and the game they preach about elsewhere. Not content to let Ashes victory speak for itself, CA had to bellow over the top of it.
So what? Didn’t England celebrate in 2010 by performing the so-called sprinkler dance on the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and after that in 2013 by urinating on the pitch at The Oval?
Yes, they did. But there is no accounting for the spontaneous and sometimes misguided actions of sportspeople in their hours of euphoric triumph.
There is, or should be, accounting for responsible governing bodies. The English heroes of ‘13 would not have thought twice before pissing from a great height. CA thought for months, set their finest minds to work, set aside a budget, approved a design, commissioned a designer and builder, also made a contingency plan for 3-0, and in what should have been a memorable moment managed only to Piss From A Great Height (trademark).
If you were to read the summer’s official hashtag as ‘‘beaten gland’’, you might be close to the process that created this monstrosity.
Still, Ashes, heh! #beatengland, heh! Four-nil, England. Shove that up your Ivo.
Count them, one, two, three, four, nil.
Idiots.