To spice up our coverage of the Ashes this year, we’re going to bring you an Aussie perspective every now and again. When we were growing up, and England were captained by the likes of Chris Cowdrey, we used to see Aussie fans as extremely confident (cocky, one might say) with a penchant for extracting the Michael. These days, as you’ll see below, the confidence is long gone and they mostly take the mickey out of themselves.
With thanks to Jeremy Pooley, a Sydney-based writer and co-author of the 17thManDiary …
Doubt and certainty
“If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, we shall end in certainties” – Francis Bacon.
In horse racing punters bet on the chance that good form can be carried into the next race. No one wants to bet on a nag at a billion to one, or a bolter that has pulled up, refused or unseated its rider.
Fortunately there are no comparable form and fitness guides to help us predict the outcome of the coming England v New Zealand series and the five Ashes tests with certainty. Nor can we gauge the quality of the player-coach-captain relationships that are so vital to success.
It is safe to say that neither TaylorGate, now that Ross Taylor has returned to the Black Cap squad, nor HomeworkGate would sit neatly anywhere in Andy Flower’s playbook. England have a steady ship. But what about New Zealand and Australia?
Ross Taylor and his Coach are communicating – even if it is across the 38th parallel – and every member of the Australian Ashes squad can now use a pair of skin callipers and recite three ways to improve team performance.
But are they united and ready to test England? Black Cap stalwarts might play up the remorseful three test grind in New Zealand as a David and Goliath contest that went the distance, but the contest was hardly of epic proportions and pleased no one.
It demonstrated that the Black Caps did not have the firepower to capture 20 wickets, even when they score a bundle of runs, and that England’s lower order can be frustratingly resilient.
For all the hoopla, no quacksalver worth his salt would have raised a weather eye to the fifth day ordeal England endured during the third test in April. (There’s nothing like Aussie slang eh. Ed)
When all is said and done, England created the circumstance by lazy play. The game puttered along to an unexciting draw in front of a dwindling crowd. It was a long day out; a punter would have been more entertained at the shooting gallery or the laughing clowns in sideshow alley.
Australians looked longingly across the ditch at this series as a cool respite from the heat and debacle of another tortured Tour of India. How a team can win comprehensively 4-0 at home then lose as convincingly 0-4 away to the same team within a year defies sensible explanation. Many Aussies would have settled for a single Test draw if it went for five full days, or an afternoon on a merry-go-round with the Men in Blue riding a purple yellow-speckled horse.
England must be looking forward to playing their antipodean colonies with the same pleasure and relief with which they welcomed the ANZACs to the Western Front in 1916: no prodigious spinners, no quality swing bowlers, and few batsmen with competent technique or a history of long innings on English wickets against swing and spin. Oh, joy!
Michael Clarke is sure that our boys will give a better account than in India. But he’ll need to score a hundred in each test to make sure. If Australia are going to put up a fight, they might need a typically short English summer, with unwelcome rain punctuating matches, to give Clarke’s back a rest now and again. But given the English punter loves a couple of consecutive sunny days at the cricket, it’s hard to deny them this simple pleasure.
Mathematics is an odd thing. If New Zealand manage to drawn the series with England – although it might require seven English bats do a knee each (and maybe a hamstring as well) for this to happen – and then England beat Australia comfortably, the Kiwis will have the bragging rights. This would be an odd result indeed.
There are rumours circling that Cricket Australia received four applications (believed to be from Ross Taylor, Daniel Vettori, Martin Crowe and Mike Hession) to join the Australian Ashes squad. CA thought they were a joke until they received 7 more applications from English cricketers (and cricket supporters) including KP and 4 more from the Men in Blue.
As someone in a privileged position, CA invited me to ascertain their validity. I concluded they were unusual but genuine: the whole cricketing world simply felt SORRY for us, and being keen lovers of the game, were simply offering a friendly hand until we could get back on our feet. It’s nice to know our supporters around the world are thinking of us.
However, as I haven’t had a good bet since Black Caviar won the Diamond Jubilee Stakes in January, maybe I’ll take a little flutter on Ross Taylor and Michael Clarke getting a ton during their first tests this series and see what happens. Australia’s odds will be good, and their form is as close to a certainty as Black Caviar would allow.”
Jeremy Pooley
Jeremy is a Sydney-based writer and co-author of the 17thManDiary, the daily diary of the last man selected on the Australian Ashes Tour to England 2013. Find them on www.17thManDiary.com
