The Ashes Blog

England: 147
Australia: 0/46
Australia wins by 10 wickets

It is finished. Australia has won the Ashes in the most convincing fashion possible, with a 5-0 rout of what really is a pretty decent England team.

I previously mentioned the need for KP to bat through to the end of the England innings. Well, he lasted 3 balls, and with England’s leading batsman back in the pavilion, the match was all but over. Chris Read looked out of his depth, scoring just the one boundary before being beautifully caught by Ponting in the slips.

Harmison and Anderson delayed the inevitable with some solid defensive work, but a lead of just 45 was never going to provide a challenge for the opposition. Appropriately, it was Glenn McGrath who took the 10th wicket with his final ball in Test match cricket.

When the Australians came out to bat, the England team admirably formed a guard of honour for the retiring Langer. Ironically, the English bowling to the Australians in the second innings was amongst the finest we’ve seen all summer. Anderson and Harmison were bowling well, and Hayden and Langer had to tread carefully to avoid some good line and length stuff. They survived, and the emotion of the occasion was almost becoming too much for Langer. With 7 runs needed, he asked Haydos for a quick finish. His good mate obliged, hitting a mammoth six over mid-on to bring the scores level. The two batsmen had another brief chat in the middle of the pitch, with the Queenslander perhaps asking the retiring Langer if he would like to hit the winning runs. Langer obviously wasn’t too fussed, as Hayden flicked the next ball for four and Australia had won by 10 wickets.

For Ponting, this was a significant and emotional time:

“Even when we took the last wicket, to think that would be the last time we’d be walking off with Glenn and Shane …
I was hoping to get a chance to bat with Lang. To realise that was the last opportunity I was going to have, it’s a pretty emotional time.

I grabbed hold of Michael Clarke on the way around the ground and had a word about the next era. For the next few years, hopefully it’s he and I and Michael Hussey being able to be the leaders and win games for our country.

I told him to sit back and have a look around. It’s 80-something years since its happened and it’s a moment we should all savour.”
- Ricky Ponting

Another of Australia’s greats will retire at the end of the Sydney Test, with Justin Langer saying that the timing’s right for him to hang up his boots. Speaking about Australia’s unexpected win in Adelaide, he said:

“I just wonder how it can get better than that? Everyone keeps saying ‘you’ll know when it’s time’. Well, at one o’clock two days ago I knew it was time – it just came to me.”

Langer is Australia’s warrior, and that gritty, hard-nosed determination will certainly be missed. He scored 3 double hundreds in his career, 23 centuries, and together with his good mate Matt Hayden was one of the most potent opening partnerships the game has ever known. He contemplated retirement after copping a heavy blow to the head from Makhaya Ntini last February, but, like Shane Warne, the desire to win back the Ashes was so strong that he had to continue on until the precious urn was back in Australian hands.

With so much determination flowing through this Australian team, is it any wonder that England have been blown away?

England: 3/266

So, England do know how to play this game after all. Flintoff won the toss, and England enjoyed the luxury of batting on a belter of a pitch. Things started slowly, and with Strauss and Cook gone cheaply, I thought they might have been in a bit of trouble. But with Bell, Collingwood, and finally Pietersen putting some big runs on the board, they were able to take control.

We can never tell quite how well England has done until the Australians get out there and have a bat, which I would expect would be some time late on day two. Whether that’s a result of an England declaration (they would need to score quickly if that’s the case … needing at least 500 on the board), or being knocked over, if the Aussies don’t commence their innings until day three then I doubt there will be enough time for a result and England would have wasted this perfect start.

Collingwood and Pietersen once again played the kind of smart, determined cricket that they showed on day four in Brisbane. They started extremely slowly, but were eventually able to get a few boundaries, whilst the man the Aussies call The Ego (Pietersen) had an intriguing battle with Warne. The ascendency moved back and forth between the two friends, although one wonders if that friendship might have been put on hold for now.

Meanwhile, Collingwood, who would have been 12th man if Marcus Trescothick had not gone home, is within sight of his first Ashes century, after scoring 96 in the first Test. If Trescothick’s depression is their heavy cloud, then Collingwood is the silver lining. He’s the gritty, determined player that England needs in their middle order, and so far, the Australians haven’t quite figured him out.

The big talking point at the start of the innings was the England lineup. For the second Test in a row, Duncan Fletcher has surprised us all by leaving Monty Panesar out of the side. That may yet prove to be a monumentous mistake:

“Monty Panesar, on the other hand, is just the kind of attacking bowler England needs at present. With the Adelaide Oval wicket turning sharply, even on day one, Panesar’s more aggressive approach to finger spin seemed far more likely to unsettle Australia’s batsmen, especially on the evidence of his net sessions this week, when he appeared to have regained the flight absent in recent tour matches.”
- The Age

The next few days may yet prove Fletcher’s decision to be the right one, though I very much doubt it. It’s possible that Fletcher is obsessed with maintaining the same XI, which he did with much success in the 2005 series. But things are different now, and Fletcher has to recognise that.

I was at the Gabba myself today, and although it wasn’t a terribly memorable day’s play, it was an interesting one. Australia declared early … the only thing holding them back was Justin Langer’s century. With that milestone knocked over, it was back into the sheds with the score at 1/202. That gave them a total for the match of 10 wickets for 804 runs. Not too shabby, really.

Andrew Strauss was once again the first to go, as Stuart Clark got him out hooking, caught by super-sub Ryan Broad. Cook played well for his 43, but the big partnership of the day was between Collingwood and Pietersen. Australia didn’t quite know how to pin them down, and the runs flowed. The crowd were fairly quiet, though the England fans slowly upped the volume as their two stoic batsmen showed a bit of grit. Unfortunately for Mr Collingwood the pressure was too much for him, as he had a brain explosion on 96 and was stumped by Gilchrist off the bowling of Warne. However, he was still happy with how it all went:

“We wanted to fight today because we haven’t played as well as we can. It was about fighting and pride and a bit of passion, and not just talking about it but going out there and showing it.”

That’s the one thing that really came out of day four – England’s recovery. Some people had written England off for the entire tour, but I’ve known all along that they would eventually fight back. Day four at the Gabba was the beginning of that epic climb back up the hill of competitiveness.

What do others say?

The Age: England become Lions

The Corridor: England fight back, and some thoughts on coaches

The Guardian: Odd couple lift English spirits

Australia 3/346

Let’s face it, it couldn’t have been much worse for England. Well, they could have had a series-ending injury to a key player, but aside from that, pretty much everything else made this Black Thursday for the England cricket team.

The bus trip from their hotel to the Gabba was, according to Ashley Giles, “a quiet place this morning”. The enormity of the task ahead had made them all nervous. It showed.

So often the very first ball of the first Test sets the tone … it makes a statement. Stephen Harmison’s first delivery certainly did that, as he sent it wide and into the hands of his captain standing at second slip. The nerves were showing. The pressure, that overpowering, confidence-draining pressure, was hanging all over Harmison, and he couldn’t cope. Apparently that gave the Australians “a bit of a lift“. After two overs Harmison was taken off. What a contrast to last year.

As for the other bowlers, all 7 of them, they all had brief moments of greatness, though the general quality of bowling on offer was pretty low. Will Luke and the Cricinfo commentary team were scathing:

“Hoggard is not doing much and at around 80mph, Ponting and Martyn will have been more tested in the pre-match nets …”

“That had “hit me, please” all over it”

However, Patrick Kidd at The Times suggests 10 reasons why England should remain positive, including:

Mike Dickson at The Daily Mail reckons England could be looking at an innings defeat, although I wouldn’t be so despondent just yet if I were an English fan.

For the Australians, Hayden and Langer got them off to a great start. Langer was at his attacking best, obviously keen to silence those who were calling for his departure. But the star of the Aussie innings was Captain Ponting, who scored his 32nd Test match hundred. He was superb all day, and I think he looks determined enough to make a double hundred at the Gabba. Unless England’s bowling improves, there won’t be much to stop him except himself.

I thought it would be interesting to do a statistical comparison of the two sides to see how they will fare against each other, statistically speaking. What I’ve done is add up the batting averages for all 11 players in each side to give a team batting average. I’ve then added up the bowling averages for Australia and England, and this gives us a team bowling average. To the Australian batting averages I added the England team bowling average to give a final total (and vice versa for England). So if a side has a very good, and therefore low, bowling average then they won’t be adding too many runs to the oppositions total team average, so it seems to me like a fair comparison: Read the rest of this entry »