Sports Desk

by Aodhan Elder

The Lions Tour

The reward for a season of putting your head between other men’s legs, being wrestled, man-handled, and at times enduring what looks like a minor sexual assault is a deferring of your summer holidays and more of the same. And it’s an honour.

In the professional era, the British and Irish Lions may look like an antiquated frivolity with little in the way of logic, but it’s that lack of logic which also provides the charm. Understanding the prestige and the purpose of the Lions goes a long way to figuring out how they will do against the reigning world champions, South Africa. First and foremost, the Lions are a losing team. They are the perpetual underdogs. Every four years they engage in a self constructed adversity. If it was all about the winning, they would have hung up their boarding passes years ago, but the romance of the Lions has to do with attempting the impossible.

In terms of desire and raw talent, the 15 players who will take to the field in the first Test will match, if not exceed, that of their opponents, but the task of molding those talented individuals into a team is a complex challenge. Some sports allow for a group of individuals to be thrown together at short notice and the end result may look somewhat cohesive, but the intricacies of rugby mean plays, patterns, and positions need to be worked on relentlessly.

Completely cognoscente of the challenge, the Lions will apply themselves to the task of beating the world champions. There are parallels with their last series win in 1997 when South Africa won the World Cup two years previous, but unlike then, this team is not coming to the end of its natural lifespan. These Springboks are still largely in their prime and the continuity they have enjoyed for the last few seasons is exactly what the Lions will be trying to achieve in a short space of time. Romance will have to take a backseat and backing the Boks to win the series 2/1 at odds of around 15/8 looks like the value bet.

The Ashes

Calling it cricket’s version of the Fall of Rome may be overstating it, but witnessing the decline of Australian cricket certainly has shades of a crumbling empire. For much of the last two decades, the Australians were the only show in town. For most of that time, not only were they the best team in the world, but they were the best by some distance. Without the likes of Hayden, Gilchrist, Warne, and McGrath to help shoulder the workload, Ricky Ponting has found himself leading a team on a downward trajectory.

For odds compilers, the Ashes series is a dilemma. The raw statistics of the last 20 years paint a vivid picture. Ten Ashes series have been played, nine of which have gone in favour of the Australians, with England taking ownership of the famous urn just once. A rather crude assessment based on the recent statistics alone would give the Aussies roughly a 90 per cent chance of winning this series. If we take into account just the series played in England, it would give them just an 80 per cent chance of winning. Whatever way you look at it, history would suggest Australian dominance looks inevitable, but the problem arises when the compilers try to reconcile the obvious recent decline with what we’ve witnessed over the last twenty years.

The recent results haven’t been atrocious — Australia clearly aren’t operating at the levels of before. Looking at the squads likely to contest the most famous clash in cricket, there will not be the gap in abilities that shaped the last two decades. Perhaps some of the achievements of the Australian players mean they are seen as the superior performers, but again this is based on history rather than recent feats. Throw into the mix the fact that England enjoy home advantage this time around, it looks to be a very close call, or at least closer than the odds of 5/2 for an England series victory would suggest. We can learn a lot from history, but we can make more money from the present.