You might not be interested – maybe you think it’s just altogether 'too English' - but the Ashes cricket series between England and Australia is well under way.

Cricket has never had much currency in Scotland. I know some middle class chappies play it and we even have an national team that regularly has its arse felt by the likes of Yorkshire Reserves, The Sultanate of Oman Select and Lord Rockingham’s XI, but let’s face it, round our way cricket is generally regarded as a game only suitable for Cedric Soft and his effete mates.

Strange really, because in many ways cricket is perfectly suited to the Scottish psyche. 

For one thing, you spend a lot of time standing around doing absolutely hee-haw – and that’s when you’re actually out there, doing it on the playing field.

The rest of the time, when the other lot are in, it’s even less strenuous since - a quick thrash with the cudgel aside - all you do is basically doss around a clubhouse, never more than a short stagger from a licensed bar. 

And, given that it’s a summer game, there’s every possibility you can even sit outside in the pleasant alfresco, just about the only place these days you can safely – and without self-righteous complaint - light up a relaxing fag.  Sounds pretty Scottish to me.

Aye, there’s the rub. Summer. Getting through a five-day test match without incessant rain interruptions is an unlikely scenario in Scotland, given that high summer only lasts about five days if we’re lucky (except for this year, of course). It's this sad circumstance which might explain why Scottish cricket has never really taken off.

Then, again, as with most things in Scotland, it’s also a class thing. 

Similar to rugby, cricket is seen as being solidly bourgeois. And therefore boring. Likely to be played by blokes whose idea of an ultimate role model is Terry Scott. The kind of chap who wears a golf sweater and Hush Puppies at the same time. May or may not be called Julian.

If anything, cricket is maybe even more middle class than rugby, a game my Uncle Tam used to describe as being 'for toughies, played by softies'. Cricket on the other hand, being purportedly non-contact and genteel, evoked in Tam an even more politically incorrect – not to say indecorous – definition: 'a game for p***s played by p***s'.

The thing is, this is exactly what cricket isn’t. A soft game, I mean. Furthermore, contrary to perception, cricket isn’t mind numbingly boring either.

A day out at the cricket is an Australian must. It comes highly recommended for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact you can get a drink. And I mean a good drink.

These days it’s strictly controlled in so far as you have to purchase it from the licensed outlets, though I’m told that in days gone by, not all that long ago, you could bring your own.

There were imposed restrictions however. Over the course of the day, you could only bring a maximum of 24 cans.  Twenty four. Light weights.

Given that sorting out the Poms is an Australian national obsession, the current Ashes series is quite simply compulsive viewing, over here at any rate.

You think we like beating the English? The Aussies give us a decent run for our money. In fact, they might love it even more. And what’s more they actually manage to send them home to think again a lot more often than we ever have in recent times.

Now, without delving too deeply into the politics of the situation, there’s nothing better than giving your boss, your lord and master or your older brother a good bloody nose now and again. And doing it in sport is the best place, since it’s literally a level playing field and unlike smacking him across the dish with a wet rolled up towel, you’re a lot less likely to be horse-whipped, sacked or held down and given a Chinese burn for your troubles.

The Aussies, of course, are an entirely autonomous country, though they do share a head of state with the Old Dart, but old tensions run deep and even Australians without a trace of Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins still see working it right up the fundament of England as being as an essential citizenship requirement in addition to just historical atonement.

The Ashes contest is further enhanced by the fact that for the first time in many, many years, the Poms are favourites (at least on this side of the world). And even though the players try to play it down, there’s nothing as vomit-inducing - not to mention utterly indigestible - as a confident English media, a cohort who, it seems, only ever operate on two speeds: carping and negative or arrogantly gung-ho triumphant. 

Enough to give you the boak? I’ll say.

The Aussies, led by all round nice guy Michael Clark, an Aussie version of Ally McCoist in the days when he didn’t look like he was carrying the weight of the whole world under his eyes, are a young team, callow and untried.

England, on the other hand, comprise an older, more grizzled outfit, half of whom it seems to me are native South Africans flying under the Zola Budd Union Jack of convenience due to their skills and availability rather than any other intrinsic congenital prerequisite.

Listen to these boys talking. They’re about as English as, well, you and me - less so, actually.

Come on Aussie, come on. I mean, if you don’t support them, you must be, well, English, I suppose. In which case, good luck to you. But let’s hope you get well and trulied. 

Racist? Ah, as any good, true-blue Aussie would say: "Go bite your a**e".