TagPeter Siddle

Robson, Jordan, Vince, Ali impress selectors

As Paul Downton, David Collier and Gordon Lord* (more on him later) sit down and decide who the next England head coach will be, the players are stating their cases too. One man who’s guaranteed a place, Alastair “The ECB were so right to get rid of KP, but I can’t tell you why” Cook, scored his first century in any form of cricket since November. Ian Bell also scored an unbeaten century for Warwickshire. More interestingly, however, Sam “tie me kangaroo down sport” Robson also made a century...

Don’t believe your own hype – day two at the MCG

After winning the Ashes on the back of a brilliant attack, which won’t be around for much longer, the Aussies suffered what happens to all teams who get cocky and kid themselves they’re the best in the world. We’ve seen it all before with England. When we won the Ashes and then beat India at home in 2011, our players started talking about ‘legacy’ and ‘dominating’ world cricket for years to come. It was all pie in the sky. England hadn’t really been tested against the best attacks, yet we...

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...

Why England will retain the Ashes – Part II

Here’s the second part of Shaun Edward’s epic Ashes preview … Two: Batting Long.  Or, if you’re being less kind, batting dull. In the last victorious Ashes series, the main plan was to bat once, and bat long.  It worked, England winning all three of their matches by an innings, having racked up scores of 620, 513 and 644.  Even in the drawn opener at the Gabba they saved the game  with a truly monstrous 517-1 declared. I’ll be honest: when Andrew Strauss hung up the boots and...

Intimidated? I don’t think so

Part of my Christmas ritual (and probably yours too) is staying up to watch the first session of the Boxing Day test from the MCG. It used to be a dispiriting experience fifteen years ago. A succession of worthy challengers (some of which contained great bowlers like Ambrose, Walsh and Waqar Younis) would turn up with high hopes, but concede four hundred runs in a day and lose by an innings. How on earth was England’s attack (which at this point was led by Alan Mullally) going to take a single...

Unnecessary sledging is a slippery slope

Much has been made of Jimmy Anderson’s verbal confrontations with the Aussies during the first three tests. Stuart Clark, who I admit is not my favourite person, even suggested that Anderson had become Australia’s ‘twelfth man’; his logic was that Jimmy’s sledging irked the Australians and motivated them to play so well at Perth. Clark was of course talking balderdash – the Aussies were clearly fired up before the series even started – but his sentiments raised an important issue. Does sledging...

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