England, our England, the edge moves ever nearer: A hotel and a Test match: metaphors on the brink

WITH THE precarious elegance of a disappearing seaside hotel, English sportsmen slid closer to the edge of oblivion yesterday. From Manchester and Dunedin, the news reinforced the midweek tidings from Oslo: ground crumbling, evacuation urgently required.

Scarborough's 30-room Holbeck Hall is one picture of modern Englishness: a bogus half-timbered gentility whose slide towards the abyss presents the most irresistible metaphor for the country's condition since the farce at the start of the Grand National earlier this year. Yesterday, as the tidings came in from the cricket at Old Trafford and rugby in New Zealand, Holbeck Hall and its slow slippage to the sea began to look like a metaphor for a metaphor.

In Manchester, England's cricketers were facing their sixth consecutive Test defeat. After bowling England out in the morning to establish a first-innings lead of 79, Australia consolidated their advantage at the beginning of the six-match Ashes series. Before lunch Peter Such, the Essex off-spinner, added two wickets to his six for 67 in the first innings, but only one more Australian wicket fell as the visitors stretched their lead beyond 300, with two long days remaining.

In Dunedin, the British Lions lost to Otago by 37-24, the first defeat of their New Zealand tour. Ten Englishmen lined up in what was intended to be the Lions' selection to face the All Blacks next Saturday in the first of three Test matches. The Lions' defence conceded five tries, the ageing English forwards who comprised the back five of the pack taking much of the blame.

It will be a long summer, too, for England's World Cup footballers, who followed an undistinguished draw in Poland last weekend with Wednesday's 2-0 defeat in Norway, a calamity that brought the nation's scorn down on the head of Graham Taylor, the manager.

Yesterday he and his players boarded a transatlantic flight for a game with the United States on Wednesday, in Boston. Defeat, or even a draw, would push the manager closer to the edge, and English sports fans with him.

Ladbroke's last night offered odds against England and the Lions winning the following events: the Ashes, 8-1; World Cup, 50-1; rugby series, 11-4. An Englishman winning the Wimbledon singles is 500-1, and the odds against all four happening are 862,345 to 1.

Last night Holbeck Hall was thought to be only hours from complete destruction. Enthralled crowds watched large sections of the building, including the north- east wing, crash to the sea.

Test match report, page 32

(Photograph omitted)