Let’s get back to the future

Now that the West Indies series is out of the way, we can start to talk about the Ashes (we’re English, so that limited over stuff in between doesn’t count).

We can probably expect the selection debate to reach an even higher fever pitch than it has already.  Australia announce their squad tomorrow.  English fans have a full six weeks or so of full on debate, argument, well constructed opinion, poorly constructed opinion and hostility towards one another to enjoy before we find out our XI for the 1st test in Cardiff.

From the England Fan on the Street (EFS) we will now hear a renewed chorus of calls for the recall of Michael Vaughan, Steve Harmison or Matthew Hoggard, no matter what Ravi Bopara or Graham Onions have achieved.  Again, being English, we must also belittle the recent achievements of others – it was only the West Indies after all.  Geoff Boycott’s mum could have scored those two hundreds or taken those wickets.

We’re not interested in what somebody did last week, or even the week before.  We focus on what somebody did four, five, six years ago and never mind that they haven’t come remotely close to doing it again since.  Why do you think Steve Harmison’s test career has lasted this long?

So, the fact that Michael Vaughan scored a lot of runs against Australia over six years ago is held up as evidence that he is the man for the job again this time around.  The media tell us that he has “pedigree”.  Then again, so does that years Crufts winner, but that doesn’t mean that, come 2009, it hasn’t seen better days.

Many tumultuous things have happened since those heady times.  The world economy has folded like the England batting lineup in the 1990s.  A mortgage is harder to get than an LBW from Dickie Bird.  Take That have reformed (why was there not a hotline for people traumatised by the announcement?).  Apparantly, terrorists aren’t above targeting sport.

Then there are the things that haven’t happened in that time.  Ian Bell hasn’t scored a test century batting at number 3, or without one of his team mates also scoring one.  Michael Vaughan hasn’t scored a first class century for Yorkshire.  Steve Harmison hasn’t turned up for the start of a series looking like he’s that bothered.  Freddie Flintoff hasn’t been able to reduce the cost of his medical insurance.

Yet still people assume without a second thought that the men who did the job in 2005 can do so again.  Get real.  To the EFS we say: forget 2005.  Forget Vaughan’s runs in 2003.  Forget that Steve Harmison used to bowl somewhere near the stumps at over 90mph.  We have even argued against the instant recall of Andrew Flintoff.

We must convince ourselves that these things never happened, that they were just some imagined fantasy that we indulged in as a coping mechanism in the face of all those years of Ashes pain.  Whilst we’re at it, we might drag out the repressed memories of 2006/7 and check out how the aforementioned performed in that series, if at all.

This is 2009.  It is time to embrace the future, and consign the past to that dusty cupboard where you keep those long forgotten photo albums, clothes you wouldn’t be seen dead in these days and that gadget you bought because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

2009 can be the year of cocky Essex boys, of posh Essex boys, of bowlers named after vegetables, of spin twins.