THE Ashes, that most enduringly fascinating of sporting contests, gets underway today ? and the recommencement of cricketing hostilities with our Australian cousins comes just in the nick of time.
With Wimbledon having drawn to a tumultuous close with Andy Murray?s hoodoo-breaking victory, we need a sporting event of this scale to continue to keep the nation?s apparently all-encompassing fixation with football at bay.
It is an obsession that has now reached new levels of absurdity, to the point where ? even during the off-season ? soccer threatens to crowd out this country?s traditional summer sports.
The other week I clicked on an online sports section to find it dominated by news of England forward Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain?s holiday in Spain.
?The party goes on for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain out in Ibiza, with the Arsenal star showing off his toned physique on a yacht,? read the breathless reporting beneath the paparazzi snaps. ?The Ox later took a couple of his friends out for a spin in the dinghy too.?
Is even the most football-obsessed sports fan remotely interested in this sort of drivel? If I were a season ticket holder at the Emirates Stadium (annual cost ?1,470), I would be more inclined to resent the fact that my hard-earned wedge was funding the over-inflated wages that paid for this luxurious sunshine break in the first place. It wasn?t as if there was a lack of other sport to report on at the time. Wimbledon was in full swing ? with Laura Robson also still in contention ? while the British and Irish Lions were in the middle of their titanic series clash with Australia.
But then it is a depressing fact that the world inhabited by today?s footballers seems to chime with the showy, celebrity-obsessed culture which has come to pervade Britain.
It is why the average punter is more interested in seeing pictures of Wayne and Coleen Rooney out on the town than marvelling at the down-to-earth humility and clear-eyed dedication of athletes such as Murray or Yorkshire?s own triathlon stars the Brownlee brothers.
The reason why I, and I am sure so many others, embraced last summer?s Olympics so wholeheartedly was that they came as a blessed relief. For four glorious weeks, football was shoved unceremoniously from the sports agenda, with coverage relegated to a spot well inside the back page.
For that golden month we were spared the daily tittle tattle as to which player (or more likely their agent) was touting their services to another club, or the latest unedifying scandal engulfing the game.
Having said that, perhaps it was a pity the Great Britain team were knocked out of the Olympic tournament at such an early stage. Prolonged exposure to the company of the world?s finest sportsmen and women might just have done them some good.
The documentary shown the day after Andy Murray became the first Briton in 77 years to lift the men?s title in SW19 provided another reminder of the stark contrast between footballers and their fellow sportsmen.
It showed the new Wimbledon champion?s gruelling training regime which sees him spend endless hours on the practice courts followed by 10-minute stints in an ice bath. When he jets out to his training camp in Miami, he can see the fleshpots of the city?s South Beach from his bedroom window but never once indulges. Such a hermit-like existence has brought Murray the Olympic title, the US Open and now the big one. There?s the money too, of course, but it?s always been abundantly obvious that cash has never been Murray?s motivation.
Compare this with the well-publicised excess of so many of the nation?s footballers. On the same day that Murray documentary was screened, seven players from Crewe Alexandra were arrested on suspicion of rape, while former Newcastle United star Nile Ranger was charged with the same offence. Is it really any wonder we haven?t won the World Cup for half a century?
The media, it must be said, is complicit in all this. Its sycophantic treatment of footballers ? and the game in general ? has lifted these overpaid and often only moderately talented sportsmen to hero-like status.
My fervent hope ahead of this Ashes series, which begins at Trent Bridge in Nottingham today, is not for an England victory, although of course that is what every supporter is rooting for. No, I would settle for a truly compelling piece of sporting drama that shows the nation?s youngsters that football is not the only sport to get excited about. That role models such as Andy Murray or Alastair Cook are worth emulating and that you chase sporting excellence to be the best you can be, not for the dubious trappings it can bring.
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