Why An England Ashes Victory Matters

1. It obviously depends on what happens in South Africa, but for now at least, Australia is on the ropes. If England manage to pull off a series defeat, they will finally and forever be knocked off their perch, and the door will swing wide open on their mediocrity. 

2. It will erase the horrors of the last Ashes, which evidently still haunts the team. (I think Pietersen noted once how difficult it was to hear cries of  “Five-Oh” when he was in Australia before losing a rib to McGrath.)

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The IPL Auction Shockers

Before the IPL auction, some media observers pointed out that England’s dressing room might have an awkward morning-after. Flintoff and Pietersen were both expected to raise $950,000, but what would happen if no one bid for them, and what about their teammates — Collingwood and Shah — who were valued nearly 10 times lower?

I don’t think I completely buy that, though. Boys may be boys, and $1.1 million is certainly more than what Shah or Collingwood eventually received. On the other hand, none of these bids actually reflects cricketing sense. It reminds me of that a card game popular in India in the mid-1990s, when the market suddenly realized how lucrative the game could be. Essentially, you had cards with statistics of a player, and your opponent had his own. You then would pick one statistic — average, or number of innings, whatever — and if yours was higher, you could take your opponent’s card.

It didn’t really make sense then, but, what the hell, we were 10 years old.