Confessing Evangelical

...England have won the Ashes! Yay!

At times, it seems like my only memories of cricket are of 5-0 drubbings by the West Indies in the 1980s, and humiliating defeats by the likes of Zimbabwe during the 1990s (one such result prompting the immortal newspaper headline, "England find a new way to lose"). So seeing Michael Vaughan kiss the Ashes was a very sweet moment.

(Incidentally, is that the first time an England captain has kissed the Ashes at all? Can't imagine earlier captains - Len Hutton? Ray Illingworth? Brian Close??? - doing anything so demonstrative. A gruff, manly handshake on the pavilion balcony would be about your limit.)

Freddie Flintoff won the Compton-Miller Medal for Man of the Series - thoroughly deserved, though to be honest (and to float for a moment on a cloud of happy magnanimity) I'd have given it to Shane Warne, as the man who actually made a series of it at all. What a summer.

Must dash - the highlights have just started...

Update: Al has the best picture I've seen so far, here. So that's what happiness looks like!