Gotterdamerung at Headingley

Stokes - the moment of victory

Fantasy Bob's worldwide audience were scandalised yesterday to learn that he was not glued to the repeat of Test Match Special's commentary of the final day of the epic Headingley Test last summer.  Accusations of dereliction of duty are being made.  Legal advice is being taken.

FB is glad that so many enjoyed it and found it a welcome diversion from the cricket deprivation that current conditions are causing.  And he enjoyed some of the twitterating by fans pretending to be listening for the first time and expressing dismay at the fall of each English wicket or agonising over the DRS's.  Good fun seems to have been had by all.  But it wasn't for FB. After all, he knew the result.

He recalled how the events of that August Sunday afternoon last year.  FB had been watching the live transmission falling further into despondency with the clatter of each English wicket.  The outcome seemed clear.  There was only one team going to win.

Just after Jofra Archer had holed out he was summoned by Mrs FB.  'Time to go,' she said.  For they had tickets for the Edinburgh Festival's unmissable concert performance of Gotterdamerung.  Stuart Broad in next? Gotterdamerung seemed only too accurate a description what he had just been watching.  So, resigned to the inevitable, he killed the TV and set off to the Usher Hall for what was an exceptional evening's music.

At the first interval, an acquaintance said to him 'How about the cricket then?'  'Don't tell me,' he replied gloomily, before going on to speculate as to why Siegfried was so easily taken in by Hagen.  At the second interval, another acquaintance accosted him, 'How about the cricket then?'  Once more FB gloomily silenced them, before going on to venture that the horn chorale accompanying dawn rising after Hagen's sleep scene had been particularly well played.  The drama inexorably made its way to its climax - and Brunnhilde, as she always does, threw herself on Siegfried's funeral pyre, bringing an end to Valhalla and all the corrupted ways of the Gods to offer redemption and the hope of a new start.  It is truly overwhelming.

After the applause had died, and the audience had dispersed, FB was on the bus home when yet another acquaintance asked him, 'What about the cricket then.'  Again he responded dolefully, turning the conversation to Christine Goerke's majestic rendering of Brunnhilde's immolation.

Goerke - the moment of victory

Wandering home from the bus stop, FB wondered why so many had asked him about the cricket.   He is after all accustomed to being totally ignored.  Could something have happened?  He dismissed the thought as fantasy.  After all Stuart Broad had been next in, then Leach. 

Out of duty more than anything, he sat down to watch the highlights with only half an eye. That soon turned to full attention as he saw the match turn on its head by Stoke's outrageous batting, Leach's phlegmatic defence, Lyon's missed run out and Paine's wasted DRSs.  Fantastic.  But unrepeatable. 

FB would happily watch or listen to Gotterdamerung again and again (the Edinburgh performance  was actually broadcast on Radio 3 a couple of months later).  He knows the result but the drama and its ending overwhelms him every time. It is always new, always raw.  He might admire Stoke's skills and nerve - and he agrees that the Headingley Test was special, but he knows the result and there is no way it can overwhelm him again.  At the risk of antagonising further his already outraged fans worldwide, it is just another repeat.