Layer 416 . . . The Ashes, Test Match Cricket, Night Owls, Digital Lives, Tiredness, Energy, The Winter of our Disconnect, and the Gift of Time

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'And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here'.

So here I am pouring a glass of best malt whisky and breaking open a box of chocolate brazils - by way of middle of the night celebrations. It's all over now. An Ashes victory by three games to one - all three victories by an innings and plenty.

I've never been a massive sports fan, and could never understand the nutters who stay up all night listening to Test Match Special during Ashes series Down Under. So how come I've recently spent hours in the middle of the night following the Over By Over reports on the Guardian website whilst listening to TMS on the Radio 5 site? What's been so special about this team and this series?

I spent some time yesterday looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight - following  the swift removal of the remaining three Aussie wickets before midnight London time. First of all, however, there were the previous day's highlights to enjoy on ITV4 between 10.00 and 11.00 pm. Extremely enjoyable. Now for the main course - the final climax and the final celebrations . . .

Imagine the wretched feeling then - waking up at well past midnight, and realising that I'd fallen asleep and missed it all! The moment of victory! The excitement and the joy! The post-match comments and plaudits! What an idiot!

Except . . . wait! This is amazing! It's been raining in Sydney and play's been held up! Plus - the tail enders have been hanging around and are still in there, still holding on. Thank heavens for those much derided Aussies - Smith, Siddle, Hilfenhaus and Beer.

Then down they went, one after the other - Siddle caught by Anderson, after slogging into the outfield; Hilfenhaus caught behind; Beer getting his stumps smashed down by Tremlett - the perfect ending to a winter-long saga.

Truly a moment to savour. And I wasn't joking in the last blog when I said that Australia is fortunate to have been well and truly beaten by a clearly superior side, and not just pipped by a bunch of equally ordinary players. The Aussie commentators have rightly been able to concentrate on the brilliance of the English, making only passing references to the defeated Australians, relatively speaking.

Most of the English team were interviewed afterwards. How different, and how pleasant, they are - compared to the England footballers. The horrors of Rooney, Gerrard, Terry, Ferdinand et al. (Walcott is the exception - and he wasn't picked for the World Cup Finals. Remember Rooney cursing the English fans as he left the pitch following a diabolical and shambolic performance by both him and the team?) I could go on, as usual, about the importance of intelligence, but I won't.

Swann spoke intelligently about the dangers of hubris, the need to stay grounded, and so on. Strauss made a lighthearted comment about being personally responsible for the victory thanks to  passing on batting tips to Cook. (An antidote to the crass Pietersen comment about how it was him wot won it?)

I felt sorry for Trott - out for a duck in the Test in which his side scored a record total for a single innings by an England team in Australia, with no further opportunities in the series to redeem himself. Collingwood was also a slightly sad figure.

Interestingly Pietersen wasn't on the interview parade. Has he been advised to keep his stupid big mouth shut? Or has he finally worked that one out for himself?

So is cricket the new rock n roll? Er - no. But those of us who are currently enjoying the brilliance of this particular team would seem to have a lot to look forward to. Victory in the World Cup next year - the 50 overs one-day form of the game - would be the perfect follow-up to two consecutive Ashes victories, and the World 20-20 victory in South Africa last year.

Test match cricket may be a minority sport these days, enjoyed mainly by the likes of night owls, retired colonels and the Barmy Army, but it surely deserves better than to have its highlights broadcast at 10.00pm on ITV4 - a TV channel whose rubbish programmes are not even listed in proper newspapers.

The people who run the game should be held responsible for it becoming a minority sport, thanks to selling the broadcast rights to Sky Sports - a minority channel watched only by a few hundred thousand hard-core sports nuts.

Access is vital. I feel sorry for the kids of today, who have no chance of spending lazy summer days with their families watching enthralling Test matches (and Test series) unfold on open-access terrestial television. Maybe the majority of them would do so whilst multi-tasking on Nintendo thumb-twiddlers, and whilst updating Facebook pages on laptops and smartphones, but so what? Some of us also multi-task by making cups of tea, glancing at newspapers and pouring tots of whisky. This is the beauty of Test Match cricket - it's part of your daily life, whether on radio or TV, and not a substitute for it. Day or night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jan/07/ashes-england-australia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jan/07/the-ashes-2010-11-england-australia


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This week's Book of the Week on Radio 4 has been one of the best. A necessary, original and important book.

The Winter of Our Disconnect

By Susan Maushart. How one mother imposed techno-silence on three angry teenagers for six months

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x79zh

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/the-winter-of-their-disconnect-how-susan-maushart-and-her-family-lived-without-technology-for-six-months/story-e6frf00i-1225866993954

"There were lots of reasons why we pulled the plug on our electronic media ... or, I should say, why I did, because heaven knows my children would have sooner volunteered to go without food, water or hair products. At ages 14, 15 and 18, my daughters and my son don't use media. They inhabit media. And they do so exactly as fish inhabit a pond. Gracefully. Unblinkingly. And utterly without consciousness or curiosity as to how they got there.

They don't remember a time before email, or instant messaging, or Google. Even the media of their own childhood - VHS and dial-up, Nintendo 64 and "cordful" phones - they regard as relics, as quaint as inkwells.

They collectively refer to civilisation pre-high-definition flatscreen as "the black and white days".

The most arresting points made by today's extract from the book were about the tiredness brought on by relentless and excessive digital multi-tasking on the part of teenagers (and others), and how much better we become as people when we're not tired and have plenty of mental and physical energy. The point was also well made that time without access to digital media is potentially time available for reflection and meditation, which are also vital for living well.

It's a question of balance . . .
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Layer 415 . . . Ambition, Success, Zen, Rewards, Ashes, Acedia, Helping Others, Self-Development and Enlightenment

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Ambition

Becoming familiar with Zen, the Tao, the Watercourse Way, etc, helps to explain why quite a lot of us seem to lack personal ambition and haven't striven to become 'successful' either professionally or materially. In our society it's the mainstream view that we ought to be ambitious, set ourselves goals, and achieve as much recognition and reward as our society can offer.

Eastern philosophy, however, sees the development of the self, and seeking enlightenment, as the real goal of life. Through meditation, through becoming authentic and spontaneous, through trying to help others, and so on, we can develop ourselves without having to become wealthy or having to achieve high status. It's often been said that material wealth, worldly 'success' and great personal ambition may, in fact, be handicaps in achieving these other goals. Fully evolved humans appear to have very little regard for either material wealth or high status or personal ambition - other than living well and being the best human being they can be. As ever, Layer 22 for reference.

Self-Development

How to develop the self without becoming self-obsessed and self-centred? The usual things really - Zen practice.

Therefore at the beginning of this new year resolve to do the following:

Eat and drink moderately and well.

Have regular meals - don't snack throughout the day or graze on what's easily available.

This year eat and drink more fresh lemon juice, more honey, more green tea, more powdered vitamin C, more fish, more lentils and chick peas, more garlic, more fresh chillies, more olives, more tomatoes, more home-made soups . . . and drink more water.

Enjoy sensible amounts of meat, cheese, bread, coffee, tea, red wine, spirits, beer, sake, nuts, fruit and chocolate.

Go for more walks and make more contact with nature, the elements, the sky, the sun and the seasons. Meditate as you walk, and also find other times of the day to examine your own thoughts, calm your mind, allow your deepest thoughts and feelings to come to the surface and come into the light of day. Allow the light to turn fears and negative thoughts into something positive, or simply neutralise them.

Have a regular bedtime. Have a regular waking up and getting up time.

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Helping Others

I've been pondering what it means to help other people. Especially those who are nearest and dearest.

You have to accept that in order to help others they must first of all want to help themselves. They also have to genuinely want you to help them.

I know of at least two fairly reclusive individuals, semi drop-outs, who appear to be suffering from acedia.

 Acedia

Acedia (also accidie, from Latin acidĭa, and this from Greek ἀκηδία, negligence) describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression. Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life.

Acedia is essentially a flight from the world. It leads to not caring even that one does not care. The ultimate expression of this is a despair that ends in suicide.

As with those who followed him, Evagrius sees acedia as a temptation, and the great danger lies in giving in to it.

- Wikipedia

I presume there's a continuum that runs from extreme acedia right the way over to a state of spiritual joy, or satori.

I presume most people operate mostly or entirely somewhere in the middle - neither knowing nor caring about satori - let alone experiencing it -  but not completely in a state of torpor either.

As for depression . . . how DO most sufferers help themselves through it and get over it? By definition it's a state of feeling that nothing actually matters, that one is essentially worthless, and life is just a crock of pointless shit.

In the medieval Latin tradition of the seven deadly sins, acedia has generally been folded into the sin of sloth. Moral theologians, intellectual historians and cultural critics have variously construed acedia as the ancient depiction of a variety of psychological states, behaviors or existential conditions: primarily laziness, ennui or boredom. The demon of acedia manifests itself in a range of psychological and somatic symptoms that is far broader and more complex than the familiar tradition in the West.

Acedia is indicated by a range of signs. These signs (or symptoms) are typically divided into two basic categories: somatic and psychological. Acedia frequently presents signs somatically. Such bodily symptoms range from mere sleepiness to general sickness or debility . . .

A host of psychological symptoms can also signify the presence of acedia, which affects the mental state and behavior of the afflicted. Some commonly reported psychological signs revolve around a lack of attention to daily tasks and an overall dissatisfaction with life. The best-known of the psychological signs of acedia is tedium, boredom or general laziness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia

The Watercourse Way is not passive, and the Tao is not mere adaptability, mutability and passivity. To become one's true self involves actively seeking to discover one's true nature, and to differentiate it from that which we're told by others we ought to be. To use meditation as a aid is a very positive choice. The discovery of the true self is NOT a thing that many people care to actively pursue - out of fear, vanity, egocentricity, false pride, sloth, etc.

Ashes News

Ah yes - the cricket. What a joy it is to see young people who have dedicated themselves to being the very best they can be in life being brilliantly successful in their trade or profession by virtue of their application, concentration, determination, self-examination, selflessness and skill development. To perform as well as these guys are doing you need to be right 'in the zone' for just about 100% of the time - both on the pitch and off it.

Very well done Cook, Bell, Strauss, Prior, Anderson, Swann, Bresnan and Tremlett. Thank you all for living up to expectations yesterday, and also for helping Australians to feel that at least they lost to the better team. Another 500 in the first innings and another victory by an innings will do nicely.

Trott - will continue to improve, and will learn to avoid ducks. Not quite there yet, but soon will be.

Pietersen - MUST do better. Not holding out much hope, though. Too big an ego. Too little EQ and SQ. Let alone IQ. This is a man who seems to believe that this Ashes success is all down to his heroic and selfless act of getting himself sacked from the captaincy. How immense is that? That's enough ego to fill a whole city. This is a man who gets himself out to crappy hook shots when good sense, concentration, hard graft, application and good judgement are needed.

Collingwood - possibly concentrate on becoming a useful medium pace bowler. We still need a good all-rounder at Number 6. As well as all-rounders at 7, 8, 9 and 10. Take a bow Mssrs Prior, Broad, Swann and Bresnan.

We can allow Jimmy Anderson to be in the team purely as a bowler, since he does so well as the night watchman. Tremlett and Finn to be his back-ups.

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Layer 410 . . . Furious Writers, Free Books, Education, Diana Athill, More Burlesque, Buzz Words, and Saving The Daily Show

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The batters have continued the good work from where the bowlers and the openers left off. Trott is back in the groove, with another big century. First innings lead is approaching 400 with only 5 wickets down. There are still three days to go. And Ponting has lost his rag.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/27/ashes-2010-australia-england-ponting
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/26/the-ashes-2010-england-australia-live

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The Boxing Day edition of The Observer carried several good articles and features.

Writers furious at plan to axe free books scheme for children

Philip Pullman, Carol Ann Duffy, Ian McEwan and Sir Andrew Motion round on decision to slash £13m government grant to the Booktrust charity

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/26/booktrust-funding-cut-pullman-motion

Britain's poet laureate has accused the government of behaving like "scrooge at his worst" after ministers decided to axe all funding for a free book scheme that benefits 3.3 million youngsters a year.

Carol Ann Duffy, who was appointed poet laureate in 2009, leads a series of writers who have attacked the decision to cut all government funding for the Booktrust charity which provides free books for children from the age of nine months until their first term of secondary school when they are 11.

Duffy said: "Support for Bookstart is support for the dreams and imaginations and futures of British children. To withdraw that support is to behave like Scrooge at his worst. Here's hoping the powers- that- be see the light in tiime, as he did."

Children's author Philip Pullman attacked the move as an "unforgivable disgrace", while the former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion described the cut as "an act of gross cultural vandalism".

These uncompromising views were echoed by Viv Bird, chief executive of the Booktrust charity, who said she was "astounded and appalled" when told all government support for their work was going to be scrapped. "There was no dialogue. It was completely devastating," she said.

The reaction by authors to Gove's latest move has been furious. "It's like seeing someone smashing aside a butterfly with the back of their hand: wanton destruction," said Pullman. "Sheer stupid vandalism, like smashing champagne bottles as a drunken undergraduate. It doesn't matter: someone else will clear it up. Well, if you miss the first years of a child's development, nothing can clear it up. It's gone. It won't happen. A whole generation will lose out."

Referring to the charity's early years programme aimed at babies, he said: "Bookstart is one of the most imaginative and generous schemes ever conceived. To put a gift of books into the hands of newborn children and their parents is to help open the door into the great treasury of reading, which is the inheritance of every one of us, and the only road to improvement and development and intellectual delight in every field of life."

Motion backed these words: "The decision to scrap Bookstart is an act of gross cultural vandalism. For the last 20-odd years the scheme has successfully introduced an enormous number of young people to both the pleasure and the necessity of reading and has been of tremendous benefit in the drive towards literacy. Very well organised, and very well run by Booktrust, it has become a national institution, and the envy of the world [24 other countries now run a similar scheme].

"The savings made by its abolition will be negligible; the damage done will be immense," Motion added.

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Diana Athill is still a rebel at 93, and ready to take on the Archbishop of Canterbury about God

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/26/diana-athill-rebel-at-93

During her special edition of the Radio 4 flagship news programme, she will be discussing infidelity and challenging the notion of religious faith in a prerecorded interview with none other than the archbishop of Canterbury.

Athill, a fearless champion of the right to live outside accepted moral codes, rejects the idea that we need a belief system as a guide or as an emotional crutch.

When, in the last decade, Athill published a series of provocative memoirs, she became a phenomenon in the book industry by tackling questions of age, morality, faith and sex at such a late stage in her career. "In Italy, they have published six editions of my book, Somewhere Towards the End. They have sold 20,000 and I suppose when I think about it the Italians are very fond of their old people."

Perhaps Athill is a natural subversive, and so makes a good radio interviewer?

"In so many families there is one person who is a questioner, I think," says Athill. "My brother and my sister, of whom I am very fond, both follow the family line. They still go to church, for example. I liked my parents, though, and I didn't want to violently rebel, so I went underground."

Athill's edition of Today will launch blithely into another taboo area: infidelity. "I have written a little piece about it I think they will use, although I do feel there is too much emphasis on sexual fidelity."

Athill will argue that there are two kinds of physical betrayal: the "awful" kind that marks a breakdown in a relationship, and the second kind, an unfaithful act that takes place when someone, "usually the man", succumbs to a little temptation.

"To mistake the second betrayal for the first is madness, because a marriage is far more important than that," she says.

The problem, she adds, is that women feel their value depends on it. "They are often really collapsed by it." Her own long, loving relationship with poet Barry Reckford notoriously involved a period of ménage à trois when he moved a younger woman into their Hampstead home.

Writing, she has found, is an obsession that can make relationships difficult. "It is about having a strong addiction to something that is so important to you. It can become more important than your wife or partner. For me, it was different: perhaps from having a long discipline of being a handmaiden to other writers, or perhaps because of the way Barry and I were together. Not possessive at all."

It might well look as if Athill's world has shrunk down in old age to the size of the room in which she lives and the garden she looks out on, bemoaning a drop in the bird population that she has detected. Yet her world is still as wide as human thought, encompassing all that books continue to give her.

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It's Barbara Ellen's turn to wade in about burlesque.

This sub-porn for ladeez is not my idea of erotica

The movie Burlesque is a watered-down, weedy attempt to make stripping acceptable to women

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/25/barabara-ellen-pornography

In the film, Burlesque, Christina Aguilera plays a small-town girl with a dream. "I just wanna sing wearing slutty knickers!" Actually she doesn't say this, but she may as well have done.

. . . basques, pants, boas, leatherette, doffed sparkly bowler hats, and tapped canes. A queasy mix of Showgirls meets Seaside Special.

Shocking. But not in the way you'd think. Burlesque isn't a convention-defying movie about freedom, destiny, art; it is a boring movie about how nice your pants are.

The theme of "Cor, underwear!" was so strong I sat in the cinema feeling like a teenage boy furtively perusing the bra section of his mum's Kays catalogue.

I once spoke to renowned burlesque star Dita Von Teese, a doll-like beauty with flashing intelligent eyes. She told me that . . . burlesque was just stripping, and people who claimed otherwise were in denial.

This seems to be the true burlesque – clever creative strippers who got so good at putting a twist on what they do they turned it into an art form.

Yet in recent years burlesque seems to have fallen into the wrong hands, become restyled as sex with the safety brakes on, watered-down erotica that even women, Stephen Fry's pathetic sex-hating fools, can handle.

On the plus side, this has led to much nicer "burlesque-style" underwear, even in M&S. On the minus, it led to the kind of stripping a guy can get away with watching with workmates because: "It's not stripping, it's burlesque innit?" Hey, its so sanitised they can even take the little lady along.

Is this the real difference between stripping and burlesque – stripping is more honest? Men can't usually con their women into accepting stripping as an evening's entertainment the way they can with burlesque.

However, men can't be blamed for this. The most offensive thing about the movie Burlesque was how obviously this tedious feeble sub-pornographic baloney was aimed straight at the "ladeez". I simply don't think men would lower themselves going to the cinema for a 12A-rated peek at Xtina grinding and hair tossing in the style of Miss Piggy on heat.

Men wouldn't waste their time. The ones who are into porn have always stuck to their guns on this issue – they like the genuinely dirty stuff and that's that. You can't talk them out of it. It's not as if the internet has been getting any cleaner over the years.

Therefore the lukewarm weed-porn of something such as Burlesque must be aimed directly at women. And you wonder: how did women get so welded to this idea of sex as a fashion opportunity? How did they allow themselves to get conned?

The scratchy basques and tragic bowler hats of mainstream watered-down burlesque don't seem to be about female desire, or even male desire, rather female pleading and bartering for male desire. It makes Mr Fry look like he got it right.

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I like this humorous piece:

The buzz words of 2010 explained

Every year sees new words coined and old ones gain new meanings. Rafael Behr decodes some of the key terms of 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/26/buzz-words-of-2010-explained

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I'm distraught to hear that The Daily Show will no longer be shown daily on More4:

Give us back this day our Daily Show

The decision to drop Jon Stewart's show is a huge loss for all those who treasure proper television

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/25/jon-stewart-daily-show-dropped

by Sarfraz Mansoor

The Daily Show, my favourite TV programme, is being taken off the air. More4 has announced it would no longer broadcast it every night; instead, it would run a weekly round-up edition.

The Daily Show is essential viewing not just because it is funny but because it often does journalism better than the mainstream news media it so effectively skewers. The show brilliantly dismantles the absurdity of 24-hour rolling news.

In Jon Stewart The Daily Show has an anchor who has become a figurehead for those in the reasonable centre whose opinions are often drowned out in the polarised world of Fox and MSNBC. I find it bewildering that More4, where you are never more than 30 minutes from property porn, wants to ditch a show with such a strong international reputation. President Obama, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have all appeared, a sign of how important it is to the political classes.

The justification More4 gives is that The Daily Show only attracts an audience of around 80,000 – the audience might be small but it is devoted.

I am desperately hoping that some other broadcaster will swoop in and save The Daily Show. It's hard to imagine 2011 without it.

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Layer 409 . . . Boxing Day, Prague, Christianity, Jesus, Cricket, Sandie Shaw, Rowan Williams and Fair Shares of the Burden

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Bit of a strange Boxing Day morning for me.

First of all a pre-dawn phone call from Brother B on Skype, already ensconced at the pool side at the Hotel Splendide, on the slopes of Mount Kenya. As ever I'm not at liberty to divulge the contents of private conversations, so let's just say the old boy's feeling as frisky as ever. A splendid example to us all.

Clicking on the radio I stumbled upon a church service being broadcast from Prague - a city I like very much. You have to admit - some of those Christmas tunes are very good. Carols sung by choirs can be very uplifting. Carols played by brass bands are good as well.

As for the rest - oh dear.

Those dreary bloody preachers. I found myself thinking - what if Jesus was a pretty funky guy? What if he had a sense of humour, and lots of joi de vivre? What if he liked to sing and dance and party? What then would he make of the dull, po-faced, dreary people who profess to act in his name?

It's not that these people don't sometimes say some worthwhile things about the state of the world - but then the other religions all do that as well, as do atheists.

No - I think Jesus might forgive the fact that people acting in his name have created world-wide multi-national corporations, based on the Christian franchise, but I think he'd be damned keen, if he returned, to show how his message ought to have been broadcast, and how organisations acting in his name ought to be run.

With flair. With imagination. With intelligence. With joy. With wit and panache.

In fact Jesus must be wringing his hands in despair at the kinds of people who claim authority and ownership of his message. The Pope, for one. All Christian fundamentalists. The happy clappy nutters. The cultists. The Irish Christian Brothers (and Sisters). The brain-dead conservatives who make every church service and every  funeral such an unbearably dull and frustrating experience.

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Radio 5 Live Sports Extra was playing the Test Match commentary highlights on a loop, so I listened to it continuously for an hour or so. My oh my.

Boycott's first comment of the day was, "A draw will do this Test. I can't see how England are going to win this. And I'm supposed to know what I'm talking about. That's why I'm an expert."

Yes, Geoffrey.

When it was all over he said, " I'm so sad for Australia - there are tears running down my face . . . " Clearly a man - an expert indeed - who couldn't give a monkey's about being completely and utterly wrong. Especially after England had scored 157 runs for the loss of NO wickets.

It's undignified to gloat in these circumstances, so I'm going to make no mention of Australia's first innings total.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/25/ashes-2010-fourth-test-australia-england

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Continuing with the radio thing, Sandie Shaw was on Desert Island Discs. I can remember how popular she was back in the 60s, even though her singing style wasn't exactly . . . gripping - as far as I was concerned. Evidently she eventually decided for herself  that singing wasn't really her thing. First she became a Buddhist, which gave her 'courage'. Then she became a psychotherapist.

She ended her second marriage because she needed to find a 'spiritual companion' . . .

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To be fair to Rowan Williams, the Archbish said some good things yesterday:

Rich must shoulder their fair share of the burden, says Rowan Williams

• Archbishop of Canterbury gives his Christmas Day sermon
• The Queen highlights sport as a way of building communities
• Pope Benedict urges Catholics in China to have hope

See this? Williams says something worthwhile and meaningful. The Queen drones on about the importance of sport. The Pope tells Chinese Roman Catholics (who they?) to have 'hope'. Please!

There is a "lasting sense" that the most prosperous in society have yet to shoulder their load in the economic downturn, the archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.

In a rebuke to the rich in Britain, Rowan Williams used his Christmas Day sermon to stress the importance of people working together to rebuild confidence and trust. "That confidence isn't in huge supply at the moment, given the massive crises of trust that have shaken us all in the last couple of years and the lasting sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load."

Williams also warned of hardship ahead and its likely impact on society. "We can and will as a society bear hardship if we are confident that it is being fairly shared; and we shall have that confidence only if there are signs that everyone is committed to their neighbour, that no one is just forgotten, that no interest group or pressure group is able to opt out."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/26/archbishop-of-canterbury-christmas-day-sermon

Worth taking a look at this for the mad rantings of a CiF poster called MACDONALDBANK.
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Layer 394 . . . Tests, Talent, Ability, Experience, Luck, Confidence, Virtue, Intelligence and Cricket

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Having gone to bed with the lunch score on 80 for 1 it was amazing to wake up and find that the day had ended with England not only still batting but on 315 with only two wickets down.

Not surprising - just amazing.
 
Cook had made another undefeated century and Pieterson was approaching his first century and best score in about two years.

And let's remind ourselves - this is against Australia, in Australia.

However, the real pleasure is not really to do with who the opponents are. The real joy is in seeing a group of very fine sportsmen playing superbly well as a team, and as individuals. They've worked hard to get to where they are, and they deserve to be doing this well.

We sort of knew that Australia are no longer the force they were a few years ago, when Warne and McGrath were in their prime.

What we didn't know was whether this England team had matured to the extent that they were ready to defend the Ashes in Australia. What we've waited for is to see a group of excellent English (or England-qualified) players in their sporting prime playing to their full potential.

Take Cook, for example. Strauss has always said he had no doubts about Cook's calibre and his ability, but many did doubt it when he was going through a very hard time earlier this year - seemingly with faults in his technique, and often falling victim to bad luck.

Not any more. His luck has changed for the better: he's not been giving snicks when he's played and missed, and his mishits have avoided fielders. Not that there have been very many of them. In this series he's now scored over 400 runs for only once out - which is phenominal, especially for an opening bat. Even when he's given a chance to a fielder the catch has tended to go down. Luck really does seem to even itself out when you have class and ability.

You can go right through the team and say dozens of positive things.

Strauss we already knew about. He gets better with age and experience, and the captaincy has been an inspiration rather than a burden to him.

Trott is starting to really worry the Aussies. They can't really cope with his confidence, calmness, unflappability, judgement, stamina, concentration and determination, to say nothing of his cricketing brain. His brilliant run-out when fielding in the Aussie first innings was a bonus.

Pieterson is changing from a talented biffer and slogger, who was a tad too full of his own brilliance, into something approaching measured, balanced, and thoughtful. His travails of the past two years have seemingly caused him to shed some of his ego and arrogance. His continuing willingness to take huge risks in his quest for personal glory was starting to piss off everybody. Having been dropped from the team he's been forced to reflect on his attitude and his willingness to harness his talents in the most appropriate way for the benefit of the team as a whole. He now knows that Morgan is waiting in the wings, ready to step in at the first opportunity or any hint of self-inflicted failure.

Collingwood - Mr Dependable - may now be able to play with more natural aggression  - if he gets a chance to bat that is  - instead of having to play cautious consolidation  or recovery or resistance innings.

Ian Bell has always played well when he's not having to bat under pressure to survive and to make a decent score because of the failings of the other batsmen. He's matured with hard experience, and is now a complete batsman, capable of brilliance against any opposition.

Matt Prior is now the best and most dependable wicketkeeper/batsman England has had in ages. We've known from the start that he can make big scores, and the initial doubts were about his skills behind the stumps. However, he's become a very good keeper over time - not faultless, but no more error prone than the other high-class specialist keepers.

Graeme Swann one of three all-rounders in the team. He can bat very effectively, and has taken part in some incredible batting rescue acts. He's also become a superb spin bowler - easily in the top three in the world.

Stuart Broad, on his day, is a terrific all-rounder. He's played some real blinders with the bat, and he's capable of knocking over top-class batsmen with his class bowling.

Jimmy Anderson has worked long and hard to become a genuinely feared strike bowler, with a combination of pace, control and swing.

Steve Finn is the least experienced of the bowlers but one who's already shown he's got buckets of potential and enthusiasm. He's already taken plenty of wickets in his short time at the top.

The Ashes 2010: Jonathan Trott racks up seriously impressive figures

Batsman equals England's highest Test average as he helps tourists pile on the runs against wrongfooted Aussies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/04/jonathan-trott-ashes-england-cricket

by David Hopps

No England batsman in history has a higher Test average than Jonathan Trott. Herbert Sutcliffe matches him exactly, but the rest of the great names trail in their wake. You may suspect such a statistic cannot be taken seriously. But Trott will take it seriously. He is a serious man.

Twenty innings is the accepted minimum at which a Test average is deemed to be significant and Trott has now played 26. His average has swollen to 60.73. When you make a hundred at the Gabba, it does tend to have a positive effect on your statistics.

Add in their unbroken stand of 329 in the first Test at The Gabba and Trott and Alastair Cook batted for more than nine-and-a-half hours and scored 502 runs before Australia managed to split them.

The Ashes 2010: Centurion Alastair Cook stays cool to fry Australia

Cook follows 235 in Brisbane with unbeaten ton in 37C heat

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/04/ashes-alastair-cook-century-england

Shivnarine Chanderpaul has batted as long without being dismissed more than once, but Shiv apart, Cook's breaking of the 1000-minute barrier is almost unique.

In each Test, he has been mentioned in the same sentence as Don Bradman, which is not a bad way to start an Australian tour. In Brisbane, his unbeaten 235 broke Bradman's record highest score at The Gabba. Here, he drew level with Bradman by recording his 15th Test hundred by the age of 26, a feat that only Sachin Tendulkar, with 19, has surpassed.

There has never been an England Ashes tour like it for smashing batting records set by the famous names of yesteryear. Cook's 371 runs and rising without being dismissed had already outdone Wally Hammond's record before he resumed his innings on the third day.

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by Vic Marks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/04/ashes-cook-england-australia-second-test

Alastair Cook has a damn good case for a pay rise. After seven days of Test cricket England's opening batsman has been absent from the field for the sum total of 11 overs.

By the end of play Cook had batted for 22 hours in the series for 438 runs and one dismissal.

Cook had entered into that wonderful, rare bubble in which the batsman glides along as if everything is happening in slow motion – especially the progress of the ball towards him. He merely played every delivery on its merits, tapped the crease and then waited for the next one.

Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen joined in the affair and by the close of the second day England were 317 for two and already in possession of a lead of 72. This game rarely goes to plan. But for two days England have adhered so closely to their blueprint that minds are boggling, particularly one suspects the minds of the Australian captain and selectors.

Cook's union with Trott, if combined with what they achieved in the second innings at the Gabba, was worth 502 runs and lasted 574 minutes. Here they had added 173 runs when Trott was eventually caught at midwicket for 78. But in came Pietersen eager to make his mark and all the Aussies could do was sweat some more.

Australia had been pummelled.

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Personally I've waited decades to enjoy the sight of an England cricket team that's not only capable of making huge scores against the likes of Australia, but can do so with flair and ruthless application.

It's icing on the cake that the team members seem a very likeable, very balanced, very mature and a very grounded bunch. Spiritually and emotionally intelligent.

All that remains is to keep up what they've begun, and to carry on getting better.

And for Pieterson to sort out his hair issues - facial and otherwise.
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Layer 390 . . . Snow, Cricket, Defending The Ashes, Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence

The first snowfall of the season fell on my neighbourhood last night, and it's still falling as I write this piece. It's not yet December.

We spent yesterday anticipating the snow, which had already covered much of Scotland, Wales and the north of England. I've had several conversations already with people who bemoan the snow and cold, since I maintain I'd rather have a PROPER winter, with snow instead of rain - since rain ought to fall mainly in autumn and spring, and never in summer - and with cold blue skies and bright sunshine between the snowfalls instead of our usual dull, cloudy, rainy, dampness and grimness. I love proper seasons.

You can't deny that snow makes ordinary landscapes and cityscapes look beautiful. So my suggestion is - get yourself some proper winter clothing and footwear, be prepared for journeys to take longer - possibly a lot longer - and if at all possible curl up in a warm room at home, or in front of a log fire in a pub; relax, unwind, enjoy conversations and home entertainments, and go for walks in the wondrous snow. Take photos, enjoy the sight of people making snowpeople and having snowball fights, and join in whenever possible. Tae out flasks of tea and coffee, and whisky. Have fun. Look out for those who are too old or too nervous or too infirm to get out and walk in the snow. Take care of those who don't have warm clothes and warm homes. Drive carefully, if you really have to drive.

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Some of my happiest memories of childhood are the times we played and made slides and rode on toboggans in the snow. The snowball fights, the giant snowmen, the crunching of fresh snow underfoot; the running around on lawns in parks and back gardens where the pristine snow was unmarked by a single footprint.

But looking back, one of the strangest things about my childhood, which in most ways was pretty conventional, was the number of hours, and days, I spent in the company of my dad watching Test Match cricket on black and white TV. Not that it felt strange back then, when there  were only two TV stations, and one TV per household, and it was the God-given right of the BBC to screen every minute of every home Test Match on live television.

Dad and me didn't really do a lot of things together, for all sorts of reasons. In early childhood I had Matchbox and Dinky toys to organise and drive around, and toy soldiers and cowboys to train, deploy and fight battles with.

In middle childhood I needed to be out with friends, armed to the teeth with six-shooters, automatic pistols and submachine guns, and sometimes bows and arrows, making dens and tracking one another down prior to almighty shoot-outs.

In later childhood there were bikes to ride, a big wide world to explore, football and cricket matches to play in, and girls to hang out with. Dad couldn't, and didn't, ride bikes or play sports.

But every summer there was live Test Match cricket on TV, which dad and I used to watch, whenever he wasn't out at work. Hours and hours of quiet and often silent contemplation  and meditation, without the distraction of telephones, texts, emails, iPods, Playstations, Nintendos and the Internet. Just dad, me, and the lucid, enlightening and thoughtful commentators.

What's more, in the era of May, Barrington, Lawrie, Dexter and Boycott the tempo of the cricket could be extremely slow, and the games could be extremely dull - at least from the point of view of strike rates, which was a term unknown back then. Scoring one or two runs per over was often the norm. Fiendish fast bowlers and near-unplayable spinners seemed often to dominate low-scoring games on tricky pitches.

And yet there was a high level of interest that kept us watching, when for me the sunny streets and my mates might otherwise have been calling.

You probably need to have played cricket to really appreciate it. What a mad game it can be - when two teams of eleven players can be on the pitch for five days and still end up with neither of them winning.

It's when you try yourself to master the arts and skills of cricket that you really get to know it. Just throwing and catching a hard, heavy ball can be a problem, let alone bowling accurately at a distant set of stumps with a batter standing in the way . . .

How to keep your arm straight when you bowl . . . How to run in fast towards the pitch and how to let go of the ball at precisely the right moment, with your arm high above your head, your front foot just beyond the stumps,  and with your fingers aligned with the seam of the ball in precisely the right manner and with exactly the right amount of grip . . .

How to bowl bouncers and yorkers and good length balls that actually hit the stumps . . . How to make the ball swerve or loop, and how to make it change direction after hitting the pitch . . . Not that this was too much of a problem on the rough grass that we used in our locality - but it was another story trying to do it in a controlled way that actually knocked over a stump or two.

As for the arts and crafts of spin bowling . . . On this you could spend hours - experimenting with different grips, and different flicks of the wrist, and working out whether you could do off-spin or leg-spin. Experimenting with flight, and speed, and toying with batters who were expecting spin but weren't expecting balls that kept going straight and true . . .

On the TV you could see the best players in the world showing off their skills and talents, and you could appreciate how good they were at their jobs, especially when your own efforts were so comparitively poor.

As a parks and gardens batsman you could become quite good at slogging and driving and hooking poor bowling, but there on the screen you could see great batsmen hitting big scores against great bowlers.

I say you could see it on the TV, but that was nowhere near as well as you can see it now, in glorious full colour, in high definition, on big screens and with the benefit of ultra-slow motion and telescopic lens, and with multiple camera angles. Not to mention Hawkeye. It was cricket, Jim, but not as we now know it.

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This current Ashes series in Australia could turn out to be one of the best ever - with evenly matched teams, interesting characters, and plenty of 'edge' to the proceedings. England are the holders of the trophy, and Australia are desperate to regain it.

During the final day of the (drawn) first Test we saw a magnificent Gabba stadium seemingly deserted apart from joyous Poms, who were celebrating England scoring over 500 runs in their second innings for the loss of only one wicket - thanks to some brilliant batting from Strauss, Cook and Trott, and some pretty indifferent bowling and fielding from the opposition. Even Ponting dropped a couple.

It's unknown in living memory for the top three England batsmen to all score centuries in the same innings. We're normally pretty ecstatic if they all score 50 or so, especially if they're playing Australia, home or away.

The commentators (on the single hour per day of highlights on ITV4 and ITV4+1) kept on talking about the 'wheels falling off' the Aussie effort to contain the magnificent batters, but all things considered they all seemed to me to play with sportsmanship and dignity, which is a big plus, I'd say.

In my own terms, the wheels fall off when people start losing their rag, become overly and unneccessarily and unproductively aggressive, become abusive and unpleasant, and start to show all the signs of failing to contain destructive emotions.

Machismo is often a preening display of the so-called manly virtues such as boldness, aggression and physical strength. Manliness, as such, is the ability to contain frustration, disappointment and anger when things go wrong and/or you find yourself dealing with opponents who are playing a blinder, often with all the available luck on their side. A better term for this is emotional intelligence.

The Australians showed proper appreciation and respect for some very able adversaries. This is what I'd call spiritual intelligence.

On the England side, their players showed a different sort of manliness and sportmanship in their hour of non-triumphant triumph.

David Hopps, in the Guardian, summed it up very well:

"The day when Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe are surpassed, for longevity at any rate, is not a day for egotism, it is a day for humility, and Strauss's sense of perspective on one of the finest days of his career provided further proof that English cricket is in good hands."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/28/andrew-strauss-alastair-cook-ashes-2010

Hopps also wrote about the finest cricketers being unassuming, and showing geniality and resilience. These are also characteristics of spiritual intelligence. As is the ability to keep things in perspective, an ability to curb egotism, and an ability to demonstrate humility. As are clarity of thought, having the courage of one's convictions, and having the ability to inspire others - all of which which Mike Selvey wrote about in his match report. All of us do well to cultivate these virtues and values.

Let David Hopps, however, have the final say:

"It was accurate to observe this is not a great Australian attack and that the pitch at The Gabba was playing quietly. But it is more accurate simply to reflect that England began their second innings 221 behind, with more than two days remaining, that after only three days their reputation was on the line and by the end of the day they had responded so magnificently that they had summoned memories of giants from the past. History will tell you that this was one of England's great Ashes days."

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These days I prefer to listen to live broadcasts of Test Matches on the BBC's Test Match Special on Radio 5 Live Sports Extra. The wonders of digital radio! However, since these current Test matches are taking place during the hours I prefer to sleep, I look for an extended and practically ball-by-ball commentary on the Internet - on the Guardian website's OBO - Over By Over. Here there's written commentary plus amusing and sometimes enlightening emails and texts from around the world. Reading the whole thing whilst having breakfast is a treat. Here's a selection of recent comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/28/the-ashes-2010-first-test-fifth-day

"I'm now sitting here with the single man's holy trinity of cricket on the TV, and OBO and Football Manager on the laptop. I have never seen Australians look so dejected either on the field or in the streets or in the stands - its fantastic. Australians under the age of 30 or so just have never seen their attack being so brutally demoralised in this manner - to the point where the Barmy Army were chanting "Are you England in disguise?" yesterday. I just can't wait to go back into work tomorrow, especially as all my colleagues were bombarding me with sledge e-mails and texts during Saturday."

Alastair Cook's 230 is the highest Test score at the Gabba, ahead of Don Bradman's 226 against some poor helpless suckers back in the day.

It's 512 for one. Someone should make an emoticon for this, although I don't know if one graphic can simultaneously portray confusion, joy, incredulity, delirum, delirium tremens, confusion, joy and multiple statgasms.

This has been an extraordinary innings, one that nobody on the planet could have imagined. Cook ends on 235, Trott on 135, their partnership an unbeaten 329 and England's lead 296.

TEA:  "I'm in a hotel room in Miami Beach with a dodgy internet connection and I'm reading that England are 517-1. If only! Real score please?"

Andrew Goulden feels a T-shirt coming on: "I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned but a T-shirt with '517-1, it doesn't get any better' would look pretty natty I feel. Maybe having a picture of a downcast Ponting underneath would really set it off. Or a shot of Johnson dropping that catch off Strauss. Either would do nicely." OBO Enterprises in on the case.

"Suggestion for Neil Gouldson (21st over): I've found an easy way to explain cricket-related happiness/despair with as little language as possible is to pretend the score works as in football. Point to the 517 and say "England" (ying guo), point to the 1 and say "Australia".
They will understand."

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More statgasms here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/29/england-australia-records-ashes-2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/nov/29/ashes-alastair-cook-andrew-strauss

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Also heard on the radio yesterday, some pillock on Thought For Today saying,

"Christianity doesn't exist to make the world a better place. It exists to get souls into heaven."

"Justice, peace and the common good are not as important as the state of an individual's soul."

This kind of either/or dumb-arse dualistic thinking, which is typical of Christian fundamentalists - especially the rich, evangelical TV broadcasting variety - is what causes so many of the world's problems and keeps so many people in a state of spiritual ignorance. And that's without even considering the irrationality of believing in concepts like God and heaven.

As a matter of fact, I think Jesus did care about making the world a better place. I think that's why he threw out the moneylenders, why he healed the sick, and why he fed the masses.

The bozo on the radio also spoke about "Justifying oneself in the eyes of God." So what happens if billions of Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus and atheists don't even believe in one almighty God, let alone set about justifying themselves in His eyes? Do they all automatically go to everlasting hell, since they clearly haven't aimed to get into heaven? Even if they've led blameless, enlightened and spiritually intelligent lives?

How the hell can the BBC carry on letting nutters like this speak this kind of nonsense to the world at large?
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