2009 Ashes Series - England vs. Australia **Spoilers**

14 million?

Sorry, that is just laughable.

I'd imagine 1.4 million at any one time is a more realistic figure.

Although, the thought of 14 million cons watching their team lose in HD is quite nice.
 
Rosbif said:
14 million?

Sorry, that is just laughable.

I'd imagine 1.4 million at any one time is a more realistic figure.

Although, the thought of 14 million cons watching their team lose in HD is quite nice.
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MarcLister said:
Cumulative figures? 14 million viewers in total for the whole 5 Test match series?
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Yes, cumulative figures. They had an average audience of ~1 million per night.

Rosbif, a few points if I may:

(a) the overwhelming majority of British settlers in Australia were free men and women who emigrated voluntarily

(b) the overwhelming majority of Australians (~80%) are not descended from convicts

(c) those Australians who do have convict ancestry, are usually proud of the fact

While I'm on the subject, it's worth pointing out that Great Britain was (ironically!) the original convict nation. The government only began sending sent her vast criminal population to other countries when it became impossible to house them all. No other nation in history has ever had this problem. (Perhaps no other nation in history has been so prone to criminality?)

Britain's first country of choice was America, which received large numbers of convicts for ~40 years. The British only switched to Australia after being comprehensively thrashed by the Yanks in their war of independence.

I don't have convict ancestry myself, but you might be one of the many Brits who do.
 
Evangelion said:
No it doesn't get you any closer to gaining the Ashes. Even if you draw repeatedly for the next four games, Australia still retains the Ashes. England needs to win games to take the Ashes. She can't win them by drawing.
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HangTime said:
Yes, yes she can win them by drawing. The last time the Ashes were played in England, we drew a couple of games, and we won the Ashes. Had we lost those games instead of drawing them, we would have lost the series. It's a 5 match series, not a 1 match series.
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Penny dropped yet, Evangelion? :)
 
Well, there's an argument to suggest we did - had that game not been drawn, the urn would have been heading back to Australia :)

I understand that a winner's mentality (something Australians are regarded to have) is never to be satisfied with a draw, but equally in the grand scheme of things the difference between a draw and a loss, is just as much as between a win and a draw. Or in other words converting a loss into a draw is just as much of a victory as converting a draw into a win.
 
I think Matthew Hayden said on commentary that we (obviously partially) owe the Ashes to Anderson and Panesar, ie. for not getting out at Cardiff.
 
Bear said:
Its been on the highlights on CH5 yesterday and on the news on GMTV this morning. Fantastic throw.
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I caught the programme online and finally saw the run out and the highlights of all the final day's play :) It made me reminiscent of C4's 2005 coverage. And I realised why Geoffrey Boycott wasn't on TMS, he was working for C5 :(
 
One thing about the Edgbaston test, ever since then I've always counted it as a bit of a robbery, you know, had we not lost ~2 days to rain then England would have won.

But the other day they were recapping the series and showed the scorecard. Australia may have been heavily behind on the 1st innings, but at stumps on day 5 they had a 262 run lead with only 5 wickets down. Clarke going along nicely at 100-odd not out and his partner had played himself in. It's not inconceivable that were it not for rain delays they could have set us a 4th innings target approaching 400.
 
Another thing about this series, we won 4 out of 5 tosses and I think some people can underestimate the importance of winning the toss. I remember Mike Atherton was (in)famous for his bad luck in losing the toss and I think that is a not insignificant part of the reason he never won the Ashes despite a team I would argue was stronger than today's England side.

Arguably the 5th test and hence the Ashes in 2009 were decided on the flip of a coin, ultimately.
 
dirtydog said:
Another thing about this series, we won 4 out of 5 tosses and I think some people can underestimate the importance of winning the toss. I remember Mike Atherton was (in)famous for his bad luck in losing the toss and I think that is a not insignificant part of the reason he never won the Ashes despite a team I would argue was stronger than today's England side.

Arguably the 5th test and hence the Ashes in 2009 were decided on the flip of a coin, ultimately.
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Very true, that was a huge toss to win. I think in 2005 we had similar luck with the coin, although Ponting made that huge mistake to put us into bat which helped!
 
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