Stumping Enmity: The Symptom of a Soured Country

A great number of words have been spilled on the digital ground since Sunday.

A great deal of regret dries on the boards of the Long Room floor.

A great waste of anger, flung out from the home of cricket.

For the second time in a week a minority sport made the front pages, in its endless effort to keep the rest of the country at bay.

‘I have never heard anything like what I just heard then’, broadcaster Mel Farrell noted, in response to the taunts and hecklings of the home crowd. Jonathan Agnew labelled the atmosphere ‘febrile’. And to an ever-growing pile of labels, I offer one more: soured.

This is a country that needs an explanation. Not an excuse – there’s no excusing what the business card traders of Lord’s chose to do – but a casting of light, on the scale of the reaction.

England has soured.

It’s soured at the mortgage hike that’s suddenly bleeding a formally-comfortable middle class.

It’s soured at the trains, that press gang commuters into cattle carts as they stare into the spare seclusion of the posh carriage.

It’s soured at the water system, at profits that have flooded out into shareholders’ pockets whilst pipes flood out into the dirt.

It’s soured at the rivers, waterways tainted and spoiled by the merchants of human waste.

It’s soured at the energy bills, and childcare bills, and care bills, and broadband bills, and food bills, that drive all the fun clear out of pay packets.

It’s soured at the weeks it waits for NHS appointments, the years it waits for surgeries, or the free dental treatment it can no longer get.

It’s soured at a Government that ordered it to do what it said, not what it did, when the country was at its most vulnerable.

It’s soured at nothing working.

And now, for those who are spellbound by a sport so good at bewitching, it’s soured at the promise of a national team being dashed on the rocks of reality.

After so much joy, the rising of our phoenix from its flames - four-nil last time, four-zip in 17/18, not gaining them in between - we had the permission to feel confident about English victory again. We had a natural, neat conclusion we all thought was coming, the story of a journey finally being reached.

And then, Australia won the first two games of the Ashes, because sometimes the other team wins.

But, that’s not how it feels to some.

To some, it feels like one more thing has soured.

They’re scrabbling around for something to blame it on – Stoke’s ‘match-winning moment’ reference – the idea that if not for this, we’d have won, and should’ve last week anyway.

If not for this, we’d be two up, and on the way to five straight games of glory.

If not for this, everything would feel right again, at least for a while.

But now, it’s soured and spoiled, like the country around them, and that disappointment has spilled over from the stands and streets, into a sport.

It’s just a game, but in the moment, it wasn’t for them.