Ok so the first question you’re asking is “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”. This will be followed by “Where have you been all these years?”. I can’t answer the first due to legal reasons however I can have a stab at some professionally poor excuses for the second. Life happened, work happened, and cricket—oblivious as always—proceeded without the faintest interest in whether we were throwing words at it. Regardless, we’re back and will hopefully be filling your eyeballs with insightful and mostly ridiculous cricket coverage and commentary accompanied by all the inane and overstated imagery we can create.
So what happened while we were AWOL? Australia kept busy. Home seasons stacked up like unread emails, players rotated in and out of formats, and the national team continued its favourite trick of looking brilliant one month and slightly confused the next. It was all comfortingly normal. Through all the churn, cricket remained the same glorious, illogical machine we fell in love with. One moment it’s high art; the next it’s a man losing a ball in the sun while 45,000 people reconsider modern civilisation. As always, cricket refused to behave and frankly, that’s why we love it.
England, though. England spent the past few years reinventing themselves every second Thursday and congratulating themselves loudly each time. A whole philosophy emerged, complete with slogans, declarations that resembled group therapy, and the kind of optimism that usually precedes disappointment. The cricket world nodded politely. Australia smirked in the corner.
And now here we are: the Ashes about to start, England talking like visionaries, Australia behaving like they’re the adult in the room, and everyone pretending they aren’t already calculating who’ll get blamed first. Tradition lives.
Domestic cricket rolled on too. The BBL found fresh hitters, the Shield quietly produced hopefuls, and half the country’s talent disappeared into global T20 leagues before returning with new techniques and jet lag. Meanwhile, the international schedule expanded to the point where even the ICC’s secretary’s secretary has a secretary.
Anyway we’re back now—sharper, more caffeinated, and made belligerent by age.. If you’re still with us, excellent. If not, then f**ck…. oh sorry, I meant good luck to you. As Australia and England set about to resume their favourite argument, it feels like a good time to start writing again.
