life as an england fan

Harmison - has gone from hero to zero.

By Nick Miller

See, this is the problem with being a hopeless optimist.

Every success is met with relief, every loss with disappointment that is all the more crushing because you believed.

And I really did. I really thought that Harmison would unleash another fearsome onslaught, that Anderson would swing the ball miles and Giles would prove everyone wrong.

Langer would fail, Ponting would blow up again and Martyn would nibble outside off.

What on earth was I thinking? I was told the terrible news on waking this morning, and my first response was 'If we can avoid an innings loss it might not be a bad result'.

And it's all England's fault. Not for being on the end of a sound tanning, but for being so damn good for a couple of years.

The series leading up to and including the Ashes in 2005 made me hope again for English cricket. We had the best all rounder in the world, the most exciting and aggressive batsman and most itimidating fast bowler.

This was it. After years of inevitability and defeats and last-Test-when-it-didn't-matter wins, we were finally back. Ashes series would come every two years without a sense of dread. We could even win on the sub-continent.

And then two days like this come along. It's enough to crush even the most hopeful of souls. I get the feeling that the last few years have been an elaborate ruse - a hoax to get my hopes up and then spectacularly knock them back down.

A friend of mine has it right. While a generally positive person in the real world, he is unrelentingly miserable and pessimistic when it comes to cricket, so therefore this morning he can happily worry about other things, rather than a shambolic performance at the Gabba.

The real fear is not even that England will lose the Ashes. The fear is that a heavy defeat in Australia will signal a return to the doom, despair and one cap wonder knee jerk selections of the nineties.

The fear is that the last couple of years have been a blip - an insustainable and all too brief run of success for the England side.

The chances are it won't, but at present my spirit is low, my optimism lower and my hopes non-existent.

This is what life as an England fan can do to a man.