ashes

All posts tagged ashes

We awakened this morning to the sound of inevitability – a three-day thrashing to complete an Ashes whitewash that was on the cards as soon as The Urn was lost pre-Christmas.  The story was a familiar one this winter – an opening session-and-a-half that had the Aussie top-order all back in the hutch for less than a ton, then the turnaround that culminated on day three in an England side all-out within 35 overs to lose by almost as many runs as they totalled in the match.

Ashes 2014

When three’s not a crowd – Peter, Urn and Michael

Back at the end of the summer series, I commented that there wasn’t much between these sides, and certainly the three-nil home series result was flattering.  It would seem that, in a very short time, the Aussie coaches used the relative adversity of that result to stoke-up the performance levels in their squad – and it worked.   Harris has carried-on his good work of the summer – that opener of the second innings in Perth that got Cook was one of the best innings-first-balls I have ever seen;  in fact, had I bowled one like that, I might just have announced my immediate retirement, knowing I would probably be unable to reproduce it. Continue Reading

Was it any wonder that an Ashes series mired in controversy over technology, and the misjudgement (or more to the point misapplication) of it, should end with the farcical image of two umpires leading the teams from a field bathed in floodlight because, in the judgement of the rules, the light was too bad to continue.

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MIchael Clarke discusses the bad light with the Umpires after appearing to change his mind about continuing

It is one thing for spectators to part with their hard-earned to watch a fifth day that ultimately peters-out to a meaningless draw aided by the capricious English climate; such is the lot of a cricket fan, and ever will be.  But when a match is potentially rescued from such a fate by some positive captaincy, and devil-may-care batting, to lift the crowd towards a memorable climax of a one-sided series, why on earth should anyone want to pull the plug with just minutes left? Continue Reading