There is something about sports journalism: mixed metaphors; poor use of words; clumsy sentence construction; lack of clarity; and just manglish in general.
This article in the SMH suffers from a number of those problems. (How did it get through the subbies in its current form? The imminence of Australia day?)
Let’s see. Start with the heading:
Fourth ODI: England finally win after setting Australia record run chase
Just the usual problem with lack of the collective singular; it should be “England finally wins…”. There is one England team. It wins or loses.
Same problem in the opening paragraph: “England have finally won a game of cricket against Australia”. England has won. The team has won. The country represented by the team has won.
Next this:
They’ve gone to every major city and back again before returning to their first stop on a horror tour to at long last taste success in the fourth one-day international at the WACA, albeit against a severely under-strength Australian team.
Clumsy. The have returned “to the first stop of their horror tour to taste success — at long last — in…”.
But just look at this shocker:
Not even a century to opener Aaron Finch – his second of the series – could deny England of a result many predicted they would enjoy more often than their opponents throughout the summer.
How do you deny someone “of” something? And the last dozen words … clumsy.
There’s more in the remainder; I’ll leave it to you, other than this gem:
Outside of Finch, none of the Australians managed to get past 26…
I surely hope that there was no Australian inside of Finch.