So right on cue the English cricketers have reverted to type. Having played like gods for the past fortnight, last night they looked like a pissed pub side. It had to happen, of course, as the night before I was feeling so very, very smug with their performance that I decided to share with the (cricketing) world a little ditty I’d been sent to me by a mate in Sydney.

In the middle of the afternoon’s play, as Aussie wickets were tumbling, my mate Corky who’s working Down Under sent me a text of this song doing the rounds down there about English fast bowler Chris Tremlett.

Oh the weather outside is baking,
The Aussies are for the taking,
And since Tremlett’s stole the show,
Let him bowl, let him bowl, let him bowl.

There’s a mob called testmatchsofa.com who are broadcasting live coverage of the whole ashes series as a sort of boys pub chat alternative to the BBC and Sky. So I decided to tweet them with this Christmas cricket song, hoping they might circulate it. Click here link to hear the result.

Notice that these three lads are, as incredible as it may seem, completely unaware of what The Sharp Single is, the poor naive fools. The other result is, of course, as soon as I decide to start crowing about how great my beloved English team was, they started playing like…well..Englishmen. I’ve never been guilty of counting my chickens, and this is exactly why I, especially when it concerns English cricket. I tempted fate and it bit me right on the arse.

So now I’m desperately trying to compose some spoof version of “In the Bleak Mid Winter” which depicts our batting order as useless arseholes which may reverse our fortunes in Perth tonight, but I feel it’ll be too little too late. So you can blame me. Or really blame Corky. Yes it’s Corky’s fault really. And the pitch. And the umpires. And James Anderson’s missus. And…