King Charles has 41 days to consider his position. That’s the time between Saturday’s long-dreaded – sorry, awaited – coronation and the first Ashes Test. If by that day, the King of Australia does not throw in his lot with Pat Cummins and his men, we rise up. Agreed?
The juxtaposition of these events, each in its own way crowning, highlights the logical impossibility of the King’s sovereignty over Australia. One way or the other, he’s going to have to barrack against his royal personage.
Then Prince Charles meets the Australians in 2015.Credit: Ryan Pierse
Sport holds a mirror up to society, right? On Saturday, it will show not that Charles is wearing no clothes, but that he is wearing those clothes.
I mean.
In them, he will receive Anthony Albanese’s oath of allegiance. Back home, there will also be swearing. C’mon, Your Maj, who’s it to be? If we’re pledging you our undying loyalty, the least you can do in return is declare yourself for your Antipodean subjects in the battles to come.
The late Queen Elizabeth II meets England cricketers before an Ashes Test.Credit: AP
But you can’t, of course. You might be king of a pretty much now mythical realm, but you can’t have a bob each way in the Ashes. You can’t be head of state and head of its auldest enemy at the same time. Yes, it’s only cricket, and that’s the point. If we’re going to have enemies, better that it’s at cricket than war. That’s the Ashes in a nutshell.
In our lexicon, the king of us and them is someone who is adept at playing people off against one another, not someone trying to reign over both.
Inevitably, this leads to the question about who made you king of us anyway?
We know, we know: at your end, descent from a German royal house that despite the absurdity your bounden people somehow have never questioned, and at this end inheritance of a relict colonial arrangement that somehow we’ve never questioned enough to throw off, more fool us.
Cricketing royalty: Steve Smith poses in the Long Room at Lord’s in 2019.Credit: Getty Images
As constitutional fairy tales go, it’s right up there with Monty Python’s King Arthur: “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.”
Actually, if it was Ricky Ponting’s Kookaburra instead of Excalibur, we might just come at it.
Tumbling one upon the other, the coronation and Ashes should make things abundantly clear. We were once Empire together, but that was a long time ago. Once, it was not uncommon for a man to play for both countries, but no one has since the 19th century.
We’re different. You like a bit of pomp and circumstance, we prefer Pat and Marnus. We’re happy to be mates, but not to be subjects. Haven’t we made that obvious enough in however many Ashes series?
Stuart Broad did a right royal job on Australia at Trent Bridge in 2015.Credit: Laurence Griffiths
Besides, there are now a lot of people in this country who couldn’t give a tassel for either the Ashes or the monarchy. Charles is claiming dominion over an Australia that doesn’t really exist any more.
We’ll settle for dominion over the Ashes. We note that Stuart Broad says the last series in Australia was “void” because not everything was to England’s satisfaction. We’ve learned a lot in his country lately about unilaterally declaring that there was nothing where there so plainly was something. We won’t cop Ashes Nullus.
And we won’t cop for King and country when it’s so clearly King versus country.
