Ashes Buzz
A touch too old but much too good
Australia have won the Ashes, at speed, in style, and quite deservedly
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Australia have won the Ashes, at speed, in style, and quite deservedly. They have played much the better cricket. They haven’t always been at their best, but they have had something England have lacked: an intensity, born of hunger. One team has been on a cricket tour; the other has been on a mission.
In 2005, much was made of the idea that Michael Vaughan’s young team were not scarred by Ashes defeat. But defeat doesn’t have to be a scar. For Ricky Ponting, it has been a spur. He has been the man of the series, the outstanding performer on either side. His batting has been world-beating: from day one, there has been no sign of the shackles England put him in last time. His captaincy remains naïve on the tactical front – some of his field setting today was strangely defensive, as if he had 50 runs to play with rather than 250 – but he had a burning desire for vengeance which he managed to communicate to his team.
Full postCrushed by the stuff of folklore
At Brisbane, they were remorseless
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
At Brisbane, they were remorseless. At Adelaide, they were first dogged, then ruthless. Today, the Australians were first determined, then majestic. England’s management have made many blunders in this series, but today wasn’t about the losing side. It was about the winners. This is the way Test matches should be won.
When Adam Gilchrist came in, at 365 for five, the game was virtually up. England were hardly going to make 400 to win the Test, or bat two days to draw it, so they were already praying for a monsoon in the midst of a drought. Gilchrist’s innings was the icing on the cake. But what icing.
Andrew Flintoff nearly got him early on, squirting to gully, and what followed underlined just how much Flintoff had achieved in keeping the greatest number seven in history quiet through a whole series. Once Flintoff took himself off, Gilchrist played Twenty20: two runs per ball, a couple of fours per over off the quicks, and a string of sixes that were so massive, they should really have been eights. It was magical stuff. This series hasn’t delivered the knife-edge excitement of 2005, but here was something to go into Ashes folklore.
Full postEngland get Perthed
It’s pretty flat in western Australia, but England can turn most surfaces into a rollercoaster
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
It’s pretty flat in western Australia, but England can turn most surfaces into a rollercoaster. After soaring yesterday, they slumped today. Perth is a very particular place to bat. Whenever Australia have had a decent attack, it has been a graveyard for English batsmen, because the bounce and carry turns the typical English ploy of propping forward on off stump into catching practice for the cordon.
Some distinguished players have made hardly any Test runs at the WACA. Graham Gooch managed 116 (spread over 17 years), Alec Stewart 120, Mike Atherton 100, Ian Botham 92, Mike Gatting 92, Nasser Hussain 76, Michael Vaughan 43, Marcus Trescothick 38, Keith Fletcher 26. In modern times, only three types of Englishman have consistently been able to cope: left-handers (David Gower 471, Chris Broad 178), extreme technicians (Geoff Boycott 319, Mark Ramprakash 187), and South African exports (Allan Lamb 200, Robin Smith 101 in one match) – men who grew up an ocean away, rather than a whole world. The present England team don’t have any technicians, so today was all about representatives of the other two breeds: Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen.
Full postFletcher and Flintoff own up
Today two proud men finally admitted that they had made a mistake
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Today two proud men finally admitted that they had made a mistake. England’s team sheet had 11 names on it, but it boiled down to two words: mea culpa. By picking Monty Panesar and Sajid Mahmood, Messrs Fletcher and Flintoff conceded that they were wrong, and the rest of us were right.
Monty then went out and proved it, with a large helping of luck. He didn’t bowl as well as he can, but after all the brouhaha, he did well to bowl as well as he did. And he has earned some good fortune after handling the frustrations of the past few weeks with amazing good humour. Even after today’s triumph, he was still saying: “The selectors know what’s best for the team. I trust their judgment.” Which was highly magnanimous. And showed why he, among others, would have been a better pick for BBC Sports Personality of the Year than the talented, but not as yet very colourful, Zara Phillips.
Full postA tale of two puppies
Clarke and Bell are blondish right-handers who know what it is to be the great white hope of their country’s batting
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
There are many players in this series who have no real counterpart in the opposing team. Geraint Jones doesn’t bear much resemblance to Adam Gilchrist. Kevin Pietersen has little in common with Mike Hussey. And Shane Warne couldn’t easily be mistaken for either of England’s slow left-armers. But there are two players whose career paths have been quite similar: Michael Clarke and Ian Bell.
They’re both boyish, blondish right-handers who know what it is to be the great white hope of their country’s batting. Clarke is the only young cricketer in Australia who has been a regular in the Test team. At 25, he has played 24 Tests, scoring 1324 runs at an average of 40. Bell, a year younger, has played 20 Tests, making 1423 runs at an average of 45, which comes down to 38 if you discount the bonanza he enjoyed against Bangladesh in 2005.
Full postThe fantasy of the balanced side
Both teams set out to play this Ashes series with a balanced side - five bowlers and five specialist batsmen
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Both teams set out to play this Ashes series with a balanced side – five bowlers and five specialist batsmen. So far, neither has managed it.
Australia abandoned the policy before the first Test, when their allrounder, Shane Watson, pulled up lame. They reverted to six batsmen and four bowlers, and it has mostly worked a treat. The sixth batsman, Michael Clarke, has made runs, and the fifth bowler was missed only on the first two days at Adelaide, when England tucked into Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne as never before. Now, following Damien Martyn’s sudden retirement, the Aussies are flirting with balance again by bringing back Andrew Symonds as their allrounder.
England went ahead and played a balanced side – or tried to. They picked five bowlers and six batsmen, with Andrew Flintoff as the pivot, just like in their glory years of 2004 and 2005. But it hasn’t worked out like that. The balanced side has been a fantasy.
Full postEngland beaten by three phenomenal players
Well that was a rude awakening for England fans on a blustery morning – but what a scintillating performance by Australia
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Well that was a rude awakening for England fans on a blustery morning – but what a scintillating performance by Australia. In Steve Waugh's time, the Aussies used to say that it should take something special to beat them. As England lick their wounds, they can at least tell themselves that the same applied: it took something very special to beat them.
They were defeated today by their own timidity, but also by three phenomenal players, two of them bang in form, one returning to it. Shane Warne, who had been at his worst over the weekend, ricocheted back to his best. Outrageous fortune supplied his first wicket as Andrew Strauss was given out caught off his pad. Outrageous willpower did the rest, with help from some skilled reverse-swing from a revitalised Brett Lee. Pride, which had come before Warne’s fall, came swiftly after it too: he may even have been fired up by the stick he took in the press. His wickets in this series have come at a most uncharacteristic cost – an average of 40, and a strike rate of 85 – yet he has still produced two vital four-fors.
The two men in form were Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey. On a day when everybody else either got out or scratched around, they made a hundred between them off only 124 balls, and added a nerve-settling, gate-closing, match-deciding 83 off 16 overs. Ponting’s 49 was almost a failure by his current Elysian standards, but it was just what was needed. Hussey has batted three times in this series, and every time he has built a crucial partnership with Ponting. Today he showed his extraordinary flexibility by abandoning his Test-match grafting and slipping into one-day finisher mode. He was Allan Border in the first innings and Michael Bevan in the second.
Full postWhat HAS happened at Adelaide
Today the Adelaide Test went from tortuous to worse
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Today the Adelaide Test went from tortuous to worse. For much of the day it was like watching a traffic jam. If the match peters out into a draw tomorrow, it will be tempting to write it off as a non-event. But some signficant things have happened…
1. Matthew Hoggard has finally taken a big haul against Australia. His performance here was in a great Yorkshire tradition – not of Fred Trueman, but of Darren Gough and Craig White, who both worked out how to bowl wily cutters on subcontinental featherbeds. “I like a good s***heap,” White used to say. Hoggard, who learnt at the feet of those two, is the new king of the s***heap. Today, his Test career average quietly slipped below 30 – and passed Steve Harmison’s, travelling in the opposite direction.
2. We have again seen the folly of picking a defensive slow bowler whose main contribution is a few runs at no.8. And now both teams are doing it.
Full postWhen Warnie met Nemesis
Hubris, in tragedy, is followed inexorably by Nemesis – the goddess of retribution, whose job it is to take mortals down a peg
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
A few days ago, Shane Warne was dismissing England’s batting – in the middle at the Gabba, and in the papers afterwards. England still can’t play me, he said. Only Pietersen played me well, Collingwood was lucky, I’m all over Bell. Warne is usually a better read than most players because he isn’t bland, but this was cheap stuff. It was what the players call mind games. And what the ancient Greeks called Hubris.
Hubris, in tragedy, is followed inexorably by Nemesis – the goddess of retribution, whose job it is to take mortals down a peg. In Adelaide, she paid Warne a visit. First she rendered him wicketless on a dry, turning pitch. Then she put an idea into his head: if he couldn’t get wickets by attacking, he could go right on the defensive and bore Kevin Pietersen out.
Full postShocking selection, stolid batting
Until Duncan Fletcher came along in 1999, the England team had some powerful traditions
Tim de Lisle
25-Feb-2013
Until Duncan Fletcher came along in 1999, the England team had some powerful traditions. The selection was haphazard and irresponsible. The bowling was inconsistent. And the batting, with the odd glorious exception, was apt to be stolid. All three of these tendencies, Fletcher and his men now seem hell-bent on restoring.
Adelaide, the most old-fashioned of Australia’s Test grounds, produced an old-fashioned day of vigilance and attrition on one side, perseverance and mind games on the other, and perfect balance overall. In other words, Test cricket.
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