What on earth has happened to Test cricket ?

I was brought up on a diet of Geoff Boycotting everything bar the odd single while on a carpet crawl to a century that took so long it often ruined any chance of victory for either side.

Test cricket has always had a leisurely, unhurried quality. The earliest matches would carry on until both teams 2nd innings had been completed. 

They didn’t do declarations back then and given the English weather and a tendency to walk off the pitch even if it becomes too cloudy, these games can and often did go on forever.

It was also generally played by toffs. Working class sports like football were looked down on as being ill mannered scruffy and unnecessarily brutal. 

Test match cricket was for connoisseurs, people who were prepared to spend days filling in obscure scorecards recording every ball that was bowled while the other half of the crowd sat dozing in deck chairs with a copy of the Daily Telegraph on their heads.

There is only one sign that could cover all this.

Test match cricket started with a 5 planet stellium in Pisces including a Solar Eclipse.

As eclipses go it was quite a benign one with all the planets bar Uranus favourably connected.

There’s always a sense that this much Pisces indicates something that doesn’t quite belong on planet earth. I’ve often found people with many Pisces placements to have a rather elastic notion of time.

This chart is definitely more Einstein ( Pisces Sun ) than Newton ( Capricorn )

” It’s sport Jim, but not as we know it “.

Neptune plays a much bigger role in cricket than it does in any other sporting arena. This was particularly evident 60 odd years later.

And if the first test chart was cosmic, this one is positively quantum.

The Pisces Sun is taken into the stratosphere by its conjunction with Jupiter.

Mercury in the sign is in exact opposition to Neptune and this forms a T square with an apex Mars in Sagittarius.

Uranus is rising in square to the Moon.

And Venus is in the 9th house opposite Pluto.

All indicating a journey that would never end, and so it coincided with the longest ever test match – 43 hours 16 minutes of action strung out over 12 days.

Bizarrely the match still ended in a draw because the ship that was to take the England team home had already left and they needed to take a train to catch it at its final South African port to board it, so they had to call stumps with the visitors still trying to chase a massive home lead.

Did I also mention that Neptune was opposite the first test Sun and Moon ?

Its also really interesting that Uranus was conjunct the Ascendant in both charts because one planetary return later

Brendan McCullum, like new captain and fellow New Zealander Ben Stokes was appointed coach in order to change the whole ethos of English test cricket with Uranus at 15 Taurus but also Neptune was 24 Pisces, in exact conjunction to the First Test Sun and Moon.

Despite the fact that he was born on the other side of the world, Bazball could have been predicted if your take on astrology was sufficiently Piscean.

McCullum has a stellium in Libra but the key to unlock this phenomena is the Moon in Virgo and its square to Neptune.

Every time Neptune has aspected the Sun / Moon of the first ever test, its been a very big deal for the Ashes.

In 1899 it was a square aspect. This was the first time a test series was extended to 5 matches and also W G Grace was still batting at 50 years old and looking like he was timeless himself.

The opposition in 1939 was the Timeless Test as already mentioned.

The second square occurred in 1981 with the miracle of Headingley, but also the birth of McCullum.

And the conjunction in 2022 with both his and Stokes’ appointments.

If Neptune opposite the First Test Sun dragged a cricket match out to twelve days, its conjunction to it has meant that these days they are considered sluggish if they get past three.

The style has changed so much since former Capricorn captain Joe Root was abysmally presiding over a humiliating tour of the West Indies, that if a 5th day was ever needed it would surely only be for the whole team to quantum jump over to Betelgeuse for a post match party and back again.

And the results ?

Ben Stokes has a winning, super confident Mars / Jupiter conjunction in Leo. The fact that its opposite Saturn just adds a steely resolve.

After Root had a record number of test losses in 2021, Stokes and McCullum have plundered 10 victories out of 13, and even the defeats have been written off as collateral damage for their biff, bash, bosh style of cricket.

Stokes’ and McCullum’s first sortie was a home match against their own mates

Napoleon Bonaparte claimed he would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good. And given he had the Sun in Leo square a 1st house Jupiter he would know.

A Mars / Jupiter conjunction for this test were in trine to Stokes own pairing of those two in Leo.

Jupiter was also sextile McCullum’s Sun so they couldn’t have wished for a better astrological start.

England won the series 3 – 0.

Next up were South Africa, England lost the 1st match but by the end of the series in September, Jupiter had retrograded back to trine Stokes’ Mars and England took it 2 – 1.

Jupiter was still in the same area trine Ben Stokes Venus for the 3 – 0 win over Pakistan.

So the two generals were having a lucky 2022.

But by the time the return series in New Zealand had started, Jupiter had moved on.

England still played well and should have won both tests but ended up tying the series 1 – 1 by losing the 2nd by one run.

Maybe the generals are not going to have it all their own way in 2023.

Will this be a blip or will the last test defeat in the aptly named Wellington be the start of Bazball’s own Waterloo.

We all know the Ashes is the real test. And Jupiter will no longer be in Aries. 

And this time they will be up against another lucky general.

It’s utterly bizarre that the captains of both England and Australia have their Mars placements exactly on top of each other ( the noon charts give an orb of 3 minutes ).

And whereas Ben has the conjunction with Jupiter, Pat has the sextile.

And with the same Jupiter transits, Pat Cummins led Australia to two 2 – 0 victories against West Indies and South Africa.

But in losing the first two of the current series in India, without Jupiter on board, it looks as if the Aussie general is fresh out of the stuff.

So what will happen when these two Leo Martians play the game of thrones ?

Will Cummins come out on top ?

Or will he be hacked off by Stokes haka ?

It’s difficult to pick the transits for the Ashes series for either captain.

The first test of a 5 match series is always of vital importance. 

Win that and it’s very difficult to lose the series, particularly in England where the weather could be relied on to take at least one of them. 

I wrote an article about the disastrous Ashes tour of 2017 which England lost 4 – 0, showing quite clearly that the contest charts for each game predicted the result.

But this article also exposes a kind of astrological match fixing by the Aussies that any penal colony would be proud of – Ashes To Ashes – Astrological Match Fixing Down Under

The fact that each tour down under starts in Brisbane in late November means the strong likelihood of an Aquarius Ascendant giving the home side two rulers ( Saturn and Aquarius ) to the Leo Descendant’s one ( Sun ).

This doubles the chances of the Moon applying to the home side’s significator.

When the Aussies come back to England the first match is generally scheduled with a Virgo Ascendant meaning the Poms only have one ( Mercury ) and the tourists again have two ( Jupiter and Neptune ).

And the MCC are so stupid that they never noticed this.

So Cummins boys are cunning and Stokes’ are stuck ?

Baz and Ben won’t care about this, they will just believe they can win it anyway. And the contest chart for the first match is certainly in agreement with them.

The Moon closely applying to conjunct Mercury is a pretty clear win for the home side.

Saturn closely conjunct the Descendant would tend to agree. So its 1 – 0 England.

The chart for the 2nd test looks pretty good too.

The Moon here is applying to a trine to Mercury although after that it moves on to oppose Jupiter for Australia, so they could come back from a poor start to snatch it. Or maybe a draw.

The chart for the 3rd test gives us nothing to go on.

But the 4th one could hardly be clearer.

The Moon is applying to conjunct Mercury for England and is separating from a square to Jupiter for Australia.

This really indicates a home win and could also be saying Old Trafford is where the Aussies lose the Ashes.

The 5th of the series is less emphatic.

Libra is now rising so as the Moon is applying to square Venus and doing nothing to Mars I will take England to win this one too.

And given Jupiter will be square Brendan McCullum’s Mars and opposite his Venus for much of August and September, no doubt he will make the quantum jump back home and be hitting the Sauvignon Blanc.

And convinced Bazball is here to stay.

Posted on 7th March 2023

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