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England Retain The Ashes – Start the Bar!

Anyone else put a bottle of champagne in the fridge before the start of play last night? I put in two. I’ve been waiting for England to triumph in Australia for twenty four years so I was going to make the most of it. When the final wicket fell, I even considered standing on the sofa and randomly spraying Bollinger around my living room (in commemoration of Doug the Rug’s wayward bowling at Adelaide). Sky’s decision to go on air half an hour early was great too. Cricket is unique amongst sports...

Day four at Melbourne

And so it came to pass that England whooped Australia’s behinds by an innings and 157 runs and retained the Ashes at the MCG. And The Full Toss was well pleased. Hallelujah. What a Christmas the England cricket team has given us. A week ago, I really thought it would all go down to the final test. But it’s easy to forget how strongly Andrew Strauss’ men usually bounce back after they’ve been given a hiding. Melbourne was payback time, and the Australians were dispatched as efficiently as the...

Day three at Melbourne

Stumps: Australia 169-6 and 98. England 513. The living daydream continues. Is all this really happening? We are on the brink of a second innings-victory over Australia, in Australia, to retain the Ashes. Come again? The Baggy Greens pummeled us for eight consecutive Ashes series from 1989 to 2002/3, and punished our 2005 impudence by inflicting the 5-0 humiliation of four years ago. And so deep are the scars of Australian hegemony, so real our paranoia (despite the fact we actually won the...

Captain Cranky is fan dabi dozi for England

The phrase ‘a bulldog chewing a wasp’ was made for Ricky Ponting. As England piled on the runs yesterday, the Aussie skipper was not a happy man. The metaphorical raincloud appeared above his head, he chewed his gum at an increasingly frenetic rate, and his outrageous dissent after lunch (when the third umpire refused to give Kevin Pietersen out caught behind) was as ugly as anything we’ve seen on a cricket field this winter. When Ponting trudged back into the outfield, hands on hips...

Day two at Melbourne

Let’s wait for a couple of days until we gloat properly at the meltdown of the Australian cricket team. There is a match to be won first. It strikes us, watching from afar, that when Trott and Prior resume tomorrow morning, they need to be ruthless, and also to remember that there are three full days left in this test match. It’s not a case of gaily scampering a few more runs before a declaration. Our objective should be to bat Australia into oblivion. With five wickets still in...

Day one at Melbourne

Yes, that actually happened. You weren’t dreaming. Nor was it a hallucination brought on by a surfeit of egg-nog and brandy butter. We really did bowl out Australia for 98 – their lowest total against us since 1967. If you add in our flawless reply with the bat, today’s play was the perfect Christmas present for all us England supporters whose morale dropped after Perth. There is still, of course, a long way to go – and we have to bat last on a pitch whose bounce is...

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