We love a bit of melodrama here at TFT. It’s why I couldn’t resist this headline. Deliberately blowing things out of proportion – as if cricket is the only thing that matters – reminds us that it is, after all, only a game. The emotions we’ve felt over the last few weeks – despair, frustration, anger amongst them – are all understandable, but a little silly. Cricket is our hobby; it’s for fun. Our careers and livelihoods aren’t on the line. Nor will anybody die if / when England lose the Ashes...
Jimmy versus Clarke. What really happened …
Social media has been full of vitriol over the last few days. Arguments about who sledged who, who started it, and who’s the bigger tart, have strained relations between the English and our Aussies cousins. Whilst we side with Ian Chappell, who heard the live stump mic feed and roundly condemned the Aussie sledging as totally over the top (he said ‘good for Jimmy’ for standing up for himself), this hasn’t stopped the Aussie press from blaming Anderson for the whole...
England Under a Cloud
When was the last time England beat meaningful opposition away from home in the first test of an important series? I can’t remember exactly, but Geoff Boycott was probably in his twenties and Kim Barnett probably had hair. We always, always seem to start series slowly – and I’m afraid I can’t see it being any different in Brisbane this month. Even our triumph in 2010 started badly. Peter Siddle got a hat-trick and we conceded a huge first innings deficit. I can still remember that inane...
The Real Challenge this Winter
For English cricket, an Ashes tour down-under conjures up all kinds of images and emotions: there’s the abuse we get from Aussie fans sitting in Sydney’s infamous Bay 13, there are the painful memories of our batsmen having their heads knocked off at Perth, and who can forget the intimidating atmosphere on Boxing Day at the MCG when 90,000 Australians in canary yellow replica shirts start baying for English blood? An Ashes tour down under is every England cricketer’s Everest: emerge...
TFT Ashes player ratings
Now the dust has settled, and Darren Lehmann has gone home crying, it’s time to reflect on our players’ performance during the Ashes. Who triumphed in the crucial moments, and which players were largely passengers on the good ship HMS 3-0. We’ll try to be as fair as possible here – utilising statistics when necessary, but also looking behind the statistics too. Let us know if you agree or disagree. All Ashes player ratings are scores out of 10. Alastair Cook 4 – It’s almost blasphemous to...
The Ashes are ours. But we hardly set the world on fire.
Well, we did it. Or to be more accurate, the rain did it. Despite losing three quick wickets in the only short passage of play possible, we got an ill deserved draw and retained the Ashes. Hallelujah. The problem is, it all feels a bit empty. Nobody wanted it to materialise this way. Call me daft as a brush, but I didn’t want it to rain today. I wanted us to bat out the day with no alarms, just to demonstrate our blatant superiority: to show the Aussies that days 1-4 were an aberration, and...
