If Australia had ever lost 0-5 in England there would’ve been uproar from Perth to Port Macquarie and from Darwin to Devonport. It would have been a national humiliation – the nadir of Australian sporting history. And they would’ve made sure that it never, ever, happened again. If only the ECB cared about the Ashes as much. We’ve been beaten 0-5 twice in the space of eight years, and the last time it happened there wasn’t so much as a review into what went wrong...
A Plea To Joe Root, Our (Potential) Saviour
Oh Joe. What have you done? You’ve only gone and given us hope. You should know better than encouraging us. Now we all have to put up with blog posts like this one, which naively assume England are going to get close on day five … when in reality we’re going to lose our last six wickets in a flurry half an hour before lunch. At least we’ll have the memories though: the recollections of actually winning a day’s play down under for the first time since 2011. I can...
Adelaide
Day Three Oh what could have been. England’s bowlers finally turned up on the third evening and proved what we knew all along: Australia’s batting is weak and contains several flawed batsmen. What a pity our own flawed batsmen had already effectively lost the game. Although we might take a little heart from reducing the Aussies to 53-4, and some pundits are talking about momentum swings and England actually ‘having a sniff’ now, the bottom line is that the Canary Yellows...
One Watch Down. And Now My Next Watch Begins.
One-nil down. Where do you go from there? If you happen to be the England cricket team in Australia, usually only further down. All the way, crashing through the basement into the hard earth beneath. For a short while, much like with the England Football team before a major tournament, I allowed myself to believe. Australia are not all that I thought. We were showing blemishes of form and Australia appeared happily undecided on their selection. At precisely 2am in the wee small hours of...
Ben Stokes, Moral Dilemmas, and Fence-Sitting
Much as bloggers like the sound of their own voice – and I definitely fall into this category myself – I don’t like making too many moral judgements. I wasn’t at that Bristol nightclub when Ben Stokes went a little crazy (I was safely tucked up in bed with a brandy and an episode of South Park), and I have no idea whether his actions were criminal or whether the bloke with a broken eye socket had it coming. All I know is that it’s not right to abuse a gay couple...
Are England Dead Ducks?
Everyone panic! We’re going to lose this five match series 6-0. Steve Smith is the new Bradman, Pat Cummins is the new Dennis Lillee, and Nathan Lyon is a genius who bowls hand grenades. In fact, we might as well raise the white flag now. England are the Frank Spencer of world cricket while Australia have the cunning of Carlos The Jackal and the strength of Hercules. Give me a break. In all honesty a ten wicket defeat at Brisbane is pretty much par for the course. Few teams leave the...
