Triumphalists,
Utterly and completely exhausted; never did get to the fifth day of the Test match in Sydney this year, as is my wont.
Suffered enough the day before.
Decided the cost/benefit analysis was all wrong under the circumstances and it was not worth the time & effort to go and watch the Engerland captain bat as the last Pommy wickets of the summer fell around him on what turned out to be a hot & humid day [and this was before the news broke that Mr Dudley Root Esq had been a quivering mass of nerve endings on a drip in the hospital after sweltering through the 43 degree heat on Day 4, undoubtedly the most horrific day the pink-faced Yorkshireman had ever encountered].
Everyone suffered, the mercury got up to 44.9°C at my weatherboard gaff in Sydney's armpit, the punkahwallah had gone on strike, so there was nothing for it but to crawl into a dark crevice and hope to die.
Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, as they say in the classics.
Boom, boom!
After playing 25 days of Test cricket in six weeks carrying the burden of the Captaincy, at the denouement, Root ran into the hottest day in the Emerald City since the Great Depression at the same time as he was going at both ends, so getting any cordial into him to re-hydrate his limp carcass as it wilted in the thermometer-busting maelstrom was all but impossible.
Root was rooted.
Good and proper, just ask the express emergency dept. up there at St. Vincent's Private, they'll tell you.
Retiring ill [or as a scoreboard graphic seen on the telly called it 'rt. hurt'] twice in the same innings, and not resuming to leave your team at nine down and an innings and a mile behind, before the Bamford's called stumps, there being no other prospect than a resounding Australian victory, must have been truly awful.
The indignity surely would have been unbearable.
It will take a long time for Mr Rooty to recover from his delirium, but he will be forever scarred; put him in cotton wool and push him through an MRI scan while yr at it to see how much his head has been done in by Straya's "psych-war".
The bloke was buggered beyond belief, mentally and physically desiccated.
But never at any stage was there any call for Day 4 to be postponed due to the hellfire heat - the question simply never arose - "play up! play up! and play the game!"
If memory serves, the last time a Test player of any note ended up on a hospital drip due to heat stroke was 19 September 1986 during the tied test in Madras.
Never been to Madras, but it's farkin' hot at that time of year by all reports, and Dean Jones was having a few up-chuck vommies on the wicket square while he was pissing his pants and diarrhearetic-style-shit was running down his trousers and into his batting pads, just like Rooty.
But he made 200+, did Deano.
Tonked his double hundred after putting on 150 on the second day in a 42 degree horror while being goaded by A.B. as a "weak Victorian", and then went straight onto the hospital drip after finally giving up and throwing his wicket away on 210 after 502 minutes in a black hole.
Many crates of very powerful strong beer would not have even cut the mustard.
Asked to recall the day five years ago, Deano said "It wouldn't happen now because of litigious players and workplace safety. Should we be playing in 42 degrees? We go off for rain but we don't go off when it's 42."
Wrong.
Nothing has changed 31 years on.
Match awareness goes missing all the time.
...Deano of course arose from his death bed to witness Greg "Long Donger" Matthews [who had been driven utterly insane by the absurd heat during the course of the match to the point where he wore a long-sleeve jumper throughout the fifth day, even while bowling, taunting the paltry crowd at third man with "you call this hot? Try Australia, matey!"] trapping the No.11 Maninder Singh LBW for a duck to take the last wicket of the match to produce the now extremely rare tie, with Ravi Shastri not out 48 at the other end...
The heat-wave went on for five days in Madras, but there is no extant television footage of the match, not a single frame of history in the making survives.
No lessons learned.
The video tapes hit the bulk eraser and the film is lost, so the last flaming day of a thermonuclear test match in India might as well have been a tree falling in an old growth forest.
It is tempting to say "Poor ol' Rooty - couldn't hack it - but good on the Poms for coming over anyway, showing up, and trying their best knowing that they didn't have a team who were up for it", or "jolly good show, chaps, under trying circumstances" or "bad luck, old cock, better luck next time, carry on regardless", that sort of thing.
A bit of an old fashioned charitable pat on the back. .
Well, bugger that, there is no mercy in cricket - there is no mention of the word in The Laws of the game.
None.
No quarter is given, and no prisoners taken in this caper.
It's all done by the book.
Torture is rampant.
Not only is it tolerated, it's perfectly legal, encouraged, and it's celebrated.
Never mind the out-of-control climactic conditions - said it before, say it again - putting the boot on the throat and grinding Poms into the dust and clean out of the equation, slowly, is one of the finest sights in world sport, and is rightly lauded.
While a win by a single run or wicket will do, and is usually described as "thrilling", putting yr opponents on the rack and getting to work on tightening the screws is generally called a "magnificent effort".
In a sweet irony, by the time the tourists got through the blast furnace of that day, they we're in more trouble than the early settlers, hence the pointlessness of going to the ground on the last day of the tour.
On a lighter note, My Spy at the Ground, who had the Bakelite earpiece in throughout, reported that if there was any doubt that the radio commentary of the cricket is chockablock full of long-winded verbosity and verbiage offered this example as confirmation.
As Straya were piling on the runs on Day 3, Jim "The Foghorn" Maxwell - who'd likely had a glass or three of a thumping good Hunter Valley red cordial at lunch - broadcast to the world "there are two verbs in the England slips cordon - Cook and Root".
Not nouns, verbs, very specific about that.
You've got to forgive the bloke for his momentary lapse - probably just reminiscing about his younger days there in a roundabout way, you'd have to guess.
Who knows?
In the meantime, the Stats Guru has given the beads of the trusty ol' abacus a whirr and will give you any number of powerpoint presentations on how records tumbled left, right, and centre, and how the Poms were outclassed, outplayed, outfoxed, done like a dinner...had - like kippers for breakfast - so it's probably best to just to have a quick lookie at the margins to illustrate the point.
1st Test: The Brisbane Gabbatoir - won by ten wickets - maintaining Straya's unbeaten run at the ground at 29 years and counting.
Jeesh...Skipper Smiffy wasn't even born the last time they lost there.
Must get up there one year in the safe and certain knowledge that it's been rigged so the home side will never lose.
Perhaps that's just the Sydneysider in me: as a tribe we can't stand losing, and are very fickle and flaky when it comes to teams on a losing trot; always overkeen to see a winner.
Smiffy tonking up a classy first innings not out hundred set the tone for the entirety of the series.
Everyone knew where this one was heading after taking a priceless 1-0 lead.
2nd Test: Adelaide's Pink Stink Ep.3 - won by 120 runs - in a silly glow-in-the-dark canter.
3rd Test: Last days at the WACA Ground, Perth - won by an innings and 41 runs - Smiffy's magnificent double century in glorious weather put the issue beyond doubt.
4th Test: Melbourne - tame draw - on a pitch that had been badly baked in a patty pan - the Pommy opener Cooky took 634 minutes going large with a career-saving double century on a six-lane highway, so there was precious little time left for anything else.
5th Test: Sydney - in a heat wave - won by an innings and 123 runs taking the opportunity that presented itself to absolutely murder the opposition stone dead. There is no beating 600+ at the SCG, and then finding yrself batting on the last day on a dust heap turning at right angles.
The Pommy vice-captain Jimmy "wot's the score, Jimmy?" Anderson, standing in for his indisposed skipper who was asleep on a gurney in the dressing room during the presentations, was in deep denial when he claimed on interview post-match that England were not "blown away" [ah, huh?] and that "upheaval" in the team was unnecessary.
[They'll probably just sack their turn-coat Strayan coach in Trevor Bayliss and then blunder on].
The Poms have been sent home packing [via New Zealand] with their tails between their legs after copping a gigantic tusk up the runter.
There won't be any MBE's waiting at the Palace or ticker-tape parades for you lot when you finally get back to the Heart of the Empire, oh no, siree.
That must hurt.
So, that's it, we come to the 8th of January, and it's the test season over, Four-Zip.
Ashes in the dilly bag, until 2019 in the Old Dart - then, watch out!
Now for Seth Efreaker, four tests in March, always a hard ask on The Veldt.
But, winning away is the measure of a great team.
It's on Smiffy's 'bucket list' to join the "Invincibles".
MJ Clarke can only rue the one thing that eluded him as Captain, winning that Stoopid Little Urn in the Britarse Isles, prompting him to fall on his own sword.
But those days have gone away.
Onwards and upwards.
