The Ashes

As Australia’s cricketers started their colossal – and ultimately futile –chase of 546 runs for an Ashes victory at The Oval, it was accepted that the team’s only hope was for someone to play a ‘Bradmanesque’ innings.

Given that it’s more than 60 years since Sir Donald Bradman played his final Test on that same strip of dirt in south London, why is it that his name remains the benchmark against which all cricketers are still measured?

It’s because for more than a century, Test match cricket has seen Don Bradman – born 101 years ago today – separated by a colossal gap from everyone else in the game.

Continue reading "After all these years we’re yet to find another Bradman" »

Ricky Ponting’s shock at his team’s emphatic defeat at the hands of England in the deciding Ashes Test is revealed in his concern for his own future he expressed after the game.

“I really don’t know what to expect,” he said when asked about facing the music back in Australia. “Hopefully most of the questions being asked will be from journalists and not from people above me.”

England’s Daily Telegraph twisted the knife, pointing out that Australia was now fourth in the world rankings and that, combined with the loss of The Ashes, would be “a permanent stain” on Ponting’s career.

Continue reading "England reclaims The Ashes and twists the knife" »

And so it begins, although it seems strangely anticlimactic.  The reason for that could be because of the two week gap between matches, which was the norm until a few years ago when International tours became compressed affairs so the Test specialists could be shipped off and the one day specialists freighted in.

Now we add the Twenty 20 specialists to the mix as well, so we’re lucky they don’t run the 25 days of the 5 Tests consecutively, or play a Test during the day and a T20 fixture at night as a double header. 

We used to enjoy the fact that five Tests took five and a half months to play during which time the players would play a couple of counties between Tests, get to travel to Scotland or Ireland for a couple of beers matches on a local village green and come home in time to have a week’s rest before the first Shield game started.

Continue reading "There’s a spark missing from this Ashes series" »

It’s often said journalism is a mirror to the society it serves. Most cricket fans know which of these papers they would prefer to be reading this morning.

At the start of this Ashes series I set out 10 reasons to love the English and said at the time they would take some comfort from being classed as underdogs. But surely, the underdog tag is too kind this time. Beedogs, perhaps.

Anyway, below are some links to previews from English and Australian commentators on this deciding Test, including Shane Warne’s. But if England’s hopes rest on Andrew Flintoff playing a blinder in his final Test match and Australia are counting on Ricky Ponting, I know which side I’d prefer to be on. Share your thoughts, predictions, and sledges in the comments.

Continue reading "Ashes deciding Test: A tale of two Telegraphs" »

There’s further evidence today of the growing contempt that modern managers of sporting codes hold for fans of their games, with English cricket managers begging the crowd to be nice to Ricky Ponting when he walks to the middle in the fourth Ashes Test, getting underway at Headingley in a few hours’ time.

For a measure of how patronising and unnecessary this is, look no further than Australian batsman Shane Watson, who says the booing Ponting gets from the crowds is to be expected - and something players enjoy, even thrive on, when playing in England.

Cricket managers in Australia have shown a similar pattern of growing discomfort with what ordinary people consider a good day out. When the Poms were last here, the Barmy Army’s trumpeter was kicked out of the Gabba for playing his instrument, despite getting prior approval to blow it. (He’s been banned from the Headingley Test, too.)

Continue reading "Boo to English cricket bosses. And the Aussie ones, too" »

It’s a good thing the Aussies have their wives and girlfriends along for the Ashes tour.

Had they not been there, it’s quite probable we would have gone down to county side Northamptonshire because we’ve all been assured by Cricket Australia that the boys play better if the WAGs are in attendance.

Seeing as we have managed to win just one of the seven tour games so far, I tremor at the thought of what would have happened if CA hadn’t had the foresight to support the significant others/B-grade celebrities and female wannabes to stay with the cricketers for the first part of the Ashes.

Continue reading "WAGs aren’t about team happiness, but marketing" »

Mitchell Johnson is having a bad month at the office. It happens to all of us, even Australian representative cricketers.

But when the rest of us let the side down at work, we usually can’t get away with blaming our mum.

Kim Hughes and Shane Warne have both said Johnson’s woeful bowling figures of 8 for 331 in the first two Ashes Tests are partly because of his upset over the embarrassing public spat between his mum Vikki Harber and his fiance Jessica Bratich. Oh please.

Continue reading "Let Mitch Johnson grow up" »

WHEN mounting an argument sure to rub some people up the wrong way - such as, say, listing reasons to love the English on the first day of The Ashes - it can be useful to start by invoking supporting words of wisdom from a unifying, popular figure.

Step forward, Donald Rumsfeld.

The former US Defence Secretary - not exactly of Ghandi-esque stature in global public opinion - had a favourite phrase: that America would be vindicated in “the great sweep of human history”.

In the great sweep of sporting history, the English have been the objects of increasing ridicule. They deserve much of it, especially with their tragi-comic efforts in soccer and cricket during the 1990s. But with the 2009 Ashes series beginning this evening, Australian time, we’re sure to be in for weeks of tiresome jokes about whingeing Poms, underachievers, chokers, yob fans with beer bellies, along with general mirth at moments of English failure.

When Mitchell Johnson gets the ball in hand and eyes off Andrew Strauss in Cardiff before starting his run-up, it might be worth him - and Australians everywhere - pausing for a moment to reflect on England’s place in the great sweep of human history. For England, possibly more than any other nation, deserves respect.

[More Ashes: Luke Foley on English elitists | Phil Hillyard’s photo secrets]

And as one of the 10 reasons below argues, respecting England just might help Australia win The Ashes.

Continue reading "Ten reasons to love the Poms" »

My mates would say to me “Are you serious? You’re being sent to watch every ball of The Ashes, and you call that work?” It sounds like a dream job ... and believe me it is. But a lot goes in to photographing cricket, particularly an Ashes.

I was lucky enough to be given the assignment of covering the last two Ashes series for News Limited. The 2005 tour of England and then the return battle in the Australian summer of 06/07. In 2005 we set off at the beginning of June and wouldn’t return until mid September. It was a monster of a tour, including the one-dayers it was almost a 15 week trip. And sadly, England won.

The first thing you need to be a cricket photographer is stamina. There is no other sport like it. 540 balls a day, the best part of eight hours of action, five days in a row, countless training sessions, and the series last for months on end.

Continue reading "Shooting the Ashes: 540 balls a day, and you can’t miss one" »

Former Australian cricket team national coach John Buchanan is leaving his wooden spoon IPL franchise, the Kolkata Knight Riders.

This was no surprise to the cricket fraternity, not least former leg spinner and noted wine buff Stuart MacGill, who’d heard on the cricketing grapevine that Buchanan’s departure was a near certainty.

Buchanan’s main critic down the years has been Shane Warne. But it’s the thinking man’s leggie, MacGill, who’s unleashed the most stinging criticism yet of Buchanan, in the July issue of Alpha magazine.

Continue reading "Time to radically re-evaluate the Buchanan legacy" »