The Ashes

Wah's Ashes 'lessons' are now essential reading in all schools.

Every 4 years or so Australia sends a team of infiltrators back to the ‘motherland’ just to show the British that we really don’t need the Queen to be our head of State.

Unfortunately in the last series over there in 2005 we were undermined by direct orders from the then Prime Minister of Australia - the hell bent monarchist John Howard - who threatened to throw the entire team into the Nauru detention centre on their return home unless they dropped the ball and handed the Ashes back to the Poms, which is exactly what Captain Poncy did in the first Test by winning the toss but deciding to bat on a wet wicket, or something like that.

We never really recovered from that first day and even though we pretended to ‘put up a good fight’, we went down narrowly in the end and thus the boys were allowed back home.

Anyway, the point of this post is to direct you to a brilliant series of blogs by Club Wah titled Ashes for the ignorant. Wah is providing this free public service to educate the ill-informed on the finer points of the great game. Well, it’s not so much the ‘finer points’ but what Wah does is to provide the ignorant with sufficient information to conduct an impressive conversation with those of us who are Ashes-mad. As Wah says:

The aim of Ashes for the Ignorant is not to teach the history of the ugly little fucking urn, Bradman, Bodyline and all that shit. It’s also not about the rules of cricket. No, Ashes for the Ignorant is about providing a rough guide on the important things that will make good Australians go without much sleep this winter. The course is mostly targeted at women, for situations such as:

• When colleagues start talking Ashes in the lunchroom
• You fancy a guy with a healthy knowledge of cricket
• You want your boyfriend/husband to like you again.

Hopefully, in the coming weeks Ashes for the Ignorant will teach you enough about The Ashes for you to enjoy the cricket so you won’t need to bore your guy with stupid questions like “who’s that?” “who’s winning?” or “which one is Lara Bingle’s boyfriend?”

I think Wah’s series of Ashes ‘lessons’ is so good I’ve suggested he syndicate it to the British tabloids. I could just imagine what they’d make of it. It comes highly recommended by educational authorities too. As one leading Melbourne school teacher recently said, “Ashes for the ignorant is the pinnacle of blogging”.

Click on the link in the title above and make sure you scroll down to the bottom and start at Lesson I.

Warning: Contains, er, colourful language.