Le quatorze juillet

I had indigestion watching the countdown last night, though that might have also been about eating too much Bastille Day lunch.

It was a good show. Tension was relieved by heckling the pretty boys: "Don't come the Blue Steel with me, Mr Finn, your cheekbones won't save you now!"

The commentary seems unusually weighted towards the English, numbers-wise, this series. I haven't seen any Australians in the commentary box on the television – where's Warnie? – and on the radio there's just Jim Maxwell and Glenn McGrath against Aggers, Bloers, Tuffers, Boycott and another one whose name I can never remember but who is definitely English. It's not that they're not appreciative of the Australians or not critical of the English, but in a game like this especially, they can't not have an undertone of excitement at an English success and an undertone of anxiety at an Australian one. That's why you balance the numbers in the commentary box, so everyone has someone to emote with. And even as Australians, Jim and Glenn don't give you a whole lot to work with on that front. 

Geoffrey Boycott offers some relief because he has the sort of temperament that relishes misfortune and is suspicious of success. When the English are doing well, he is the voice of doom, and when they don't do well, he is the cackle of glee. Of course, a lot of his satisfaction is because he "could have told you that was going to happen." Like Terry Alderman, Geoffrey lives in a state of permanent amazement at other people's stupidity, but he has a lot more fun with it.

Glenn isn't exactly setting the airwaves on fire with his contributions. The other day he was trying to get mileage out of the fact that the Australian uniforms are cream and the English ones are white. He didn't actually have anything to say about it, it was just "So... one thing you notice is... the Australians, their clothes are cream, and the English... they wear white..." and then dead air as the other commentator waited for a point that never came. He may have followed it up with a plug for his wife's art gallery in Chippendale. 

He did call Aggers (I think it was Aggers) on the POV problem though when the latter referred to the wickets of Agar and Starc as "relieving the tension a bit". A pause, and then Glenn: "Well, a relief in tension for... the English spectators". And Aggers actually tried to argue that a couple of wickets could equally be a relief in tension for Australian viewers, but he sort of tapered off. He seemed to realise that he was basically saying that Australians would be grateful for the opportunity to abandon all hope ("Now I can give up. What a relief!"). Yeah, thanks a lot.

Can't think of pithy sign-off... ever notice the Australians wear cream and the English wear white?