Saturday
Last Monday, England won the Ashes. (If I tell myself this often enough, I will eventually believe it.) And when I mentioned this fact (for fact it is) here, I mentioned also the rather fine new stand that they have just built at the Oval, where that final clinching game of the series was played.
Today I walked across the river to the Oval and took some photos of this new stand. And I have done a posting about how it looks at my personal blog, together with some pictures snapped from the TV coverage. And then I found this really great picture of it that someone else took:
Last Tuesday, London celebrated England winning the Ashes, and I also went along and took photos of that. They are not perfect photos, if only because I had such a lousy view of the proceedings. I ended up taking a lot of snaps of the giant TV screen they had behind everything, just as if I had been at home. But, this giant screen yielded some fine imagery, with no interference patterns or surprise black horizontal splodges of the kind that I get when I photo my TV at home, and I am very happy with the photos I did manage to take. You can see my favourites ones here.
Some of favourite pictures were of the words they stuck up for us all to sing:
So there you have it. England won the Ashes because God was on our side.
Brian Micklethwait: "England won the Ashes because God was on our side."
Which god? The god of the Musselmen, the Jewish god or the Christian god, Budda, Who?
Can we have shares in each or do we have to choose one or the other?
Posted by APL at September 17, 2005 09:01 AM
And I have done a posting
I hope you don't teach English, Brian.
It's called the OCS stand. Their sponsorship helped finance its construction so give them their due.
Posted by Colin at September 17, 2005 11:07 AM
The Cricket God is not to be blasphemed. He was angry because of Australian players making arrogant statements and He did smite them with thunderbolts and Freddy Flintoff.
I have no truck with the christian God; I despise and laugh at this "allah" person. But I would never push my luck with the Cricket God in the way that Glenn McGrath and Matthew Hayden, among others, did...
Oh, well... I did actually push my luck, come to think of it. Woe is me! I have been smited!
On matters concerning architecture; I understand that the Oval is actually owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, also known as the Prince of Wales. Given that personage is know to hold strong views on architecture, I wonder if he had any views on the grandstand. Personally, I thought the Oval looked fantastic until day five.
Posted by Scott Wickstein at September 17, 2005 11:36 AM
APL writes:
"Which god? The god of the Musselmen, the Jewish god or the Christian god, Budda, Who?"
The god of cricket is called Wisden.
As any fule kno.
Posted by GCooper at September 17, 2005 12:13 PM
I didn't go to the celebrations, much as I wanted to belt out Jerusalem again.
Having turned up to the rugby one, what I found was not a spontaneous party, but a crudely coreographed photo-op where some loon from the BBC told me when to cheer, when to wave my flag for the camera and when to sing. In fact, the only fun and spontaneous bit was booing Livingstone, but I assume that was edited out.
If those feet in ancient times really did walk upon England's mountains green, they'd have found themselves with Sue Barker sticking a microphone in their countenance divine, asked searching questions like "so, has it literally sunk in yet?" and being choked out of sight by a smoke machine belching confetti at them.
I thought a simple warm beer in a pub with some mates was a much better tribute.
Posted by Pete at September 17, 2005 01:23 PM
Pardon my ignorance: who was the architect or engineer of thet roof ? I think he deserves a honorable mention.
Posted by Jacob at September 17, 2005 03:29 PM
But I would never push my luck with the Cricket God in the way that Glenn McGrath and Matthew Hayden, among others, did...
Scott,... i believe that McGrath & Hayden committed (in predicting 5-0, or watever) , as you ozzies say, the ultimate "mozzing" of the series. How could they have won after such an error?
Posted by guddone at September 17, 2005 10:26 PM
I always thought of God as a sort of venerable Ritchie Benaud or indeed, dear old Henry Blofeld.
Posted by Johnathan Pearce at September 18, 2005 10:05 PM
"England won the Ashes because God was on our side." Possibly, but most likely because he felt sorry for you.
Posted by Geoff at September 19, 2005 04:23 AM
