In case you hadn't heard...

God forbid that we should forget to write something here about England winning the Ashes. After all, there may well be people who hadn't even realised and, but for all the English blogs on the internet, would still be ignorant about it now.

I am being cautiously happy about the whole thing; certainly it feels like pay-back time for when I lost house cricket at school eleven years ago, though strictly speaking that was not against the Australians.

I just can't help feeling that the Ashes are, and always have been, a bit of an insult. An urn containing the bails which were burnt in 1882 to signify "the death of English cricket" - well, hang on, I'm not sure we want those, do we? Why can't we burn our own bails to represent the misplaced confidence of those surly Antipodeans? That'd put 'em in their place. It would also be a more lasting gesture for when the Aussies win the Ashes back next time round.

I think I'd feel happier if Ian Botham had been playing yesterday. Perhaps they think he's a bit past it, I don't know, but I remember him fondly from A Question of Sport and he was always very good at the brilliant "What happens next?" round. That surely would have put him in a good position to anticipate the moves of the Australians.