Ashes thread - England vs Australia * SPOILERS *

All over 5-0 totally deserved victory for Australia.

Props to Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath & Justin Langer as well 3 of the real greats. Will probably never see a better bowling duo than Warne & McGrath in our lifetimes.
 
Well done aussies... hats off to them all, also hats off especially for warne mcgrath and langer... what a way to end it

We have been way out of touch with the determination of australia in this series...

even with trescothick and vaughan i doubt we could have retained the ashes.

england thought they made it in 2005, typical we all get carried away when we win... then we forgot we have to do it again.

Now they cant leave thinking lets get it right for 2009...

lets get it right from now...this day of us getting nailed 5-0 should be day one of the next big plan
 
im glad that this is the last time that il ever have to post more groanings in this thread! aweful series and i just wish that i knew nothing about cricket and i could just get this past me. Serious lot of work to do in the england camp.


Hope the one dayers go ok but as the bbc commentators said on the text commentary "at least if its bad it only lasts one day!"


Roll on 2009 until we get the ashes back!
 
Yeah the tone of hussian was shocking, he was really laying into him, saying that Glenn Mcgrath lived in a caravan for 13 months and worked in a bank for a year and played cricket on weekends and that was after leaving the bush his home and family and moving to sydney? to become what he is today, harmison has it easy.

and now england are pampered and aussie are down to earth.
 
and more records tumble, the most important 5-0 score, only twice in history has this happened, the last time was the era of timeless tests where there was no draw so this occasion all the more special. has there been a more crap england side? not only beaten but completely demoralised. i cant see england getting the ashes back for many years, sad as the ashes used to be about close competition, now it seems its just about how much england can be whipped. i wonder if the queen will be giving the australian team some recognition? can anyone say flash in the pan?
 
5-0 is all i can say, what an utter shambles the English team has become. If anything this series loss has brought them back down to earth in more ways than one.

Congrats to the Aussies, they sytematically destroyed England piece by piece...what an absolutely awesome demolition job they done on England :eek:. Superb cricket by the Aussies and they thoroughly deserve it imho.

England im afraid to say have got no guts, no backbone/spine and absolutely no class. How the **** they lost that test in adelaide after having a ginger nut get a double century and a south african english wannabe who got 150 and still ended up losing the test is beyond me..really it is. Shame on you England, what a massive disappointment for the travelling English fans ie the Barmy Army. This 5-0 whitewash is going to be a bitter pill to swallow..no matter what Flintoff says tbh. Mind you it sets up the next Ashes series nicely, Aussies knwoing they beat England 5-0 and England desperate to get the Ashes back.

Aussie cricket is not going to be the same though without Warne, McGrath and Langer but im pretty sure that they wont have any problems replacing those 3...no matter what the English think lol. The biggest difference between the Aussies and England is that the Aussies have a spine and guts, they would never give up so easily...and that was blatantly shown in the Adelaide test where they should have lost but ended up winning. I for one will be and am saddened at the departure of Warne and McGrath...probably 2 of hte greatest bowlers the game has ever seen.

As for Boycott, i absolutely love him...he says it like it should be said...England were pathetic absolutely mind blowingly pathetic. As for his comments about the MBE's, well he has a point...how Collingwood got one for being a bit part player, who made 7 is beyond me. If anything each and every one of them should have them taken back for this shambles of a defeat.

Anyways i do hope England get back on their feet after this disastrous tour. If they had won the Ashes down under ie retaining them then i would give them their just dues but i was right all along...England had no chance of retaining them and forget about Tresco, Vaughan and Jones...even having them in the team wouldnt have saved them from losing the Ashes..perhaps they wouldnt have suffered a 5-0 series whitewash but i dont think for one minute that those 3 would have made any difference to the outcome tbh. The Aussies were absolutely brutal in their demolition of England. Fact of the matter is the current English team has a lot of talent, just sad that they have no guts or backbone and as Holding said last night...some of them need their attitudes looking at ie KP is one that sticks out...i dont think hes much of a team player tbh..plays some stupidly rash shots at times.

Anyhow congrats to the Aussies, what an awesome cricketing performance by them..absolute dominance from the word go and at the moment, no one can touch them.
 
Well done to the Aussies, I must say 5-0 is a bit flattering because we should never in a million years have lost in Adelaide.

Still with the passion and will to win that Australia have showed throughout they deserve it, to me our guys just don't seem to give a **** it's like they are just there to make up the numbers.
 
I was absoutely crying last night, hilarious, how pathetic are we at cricket, what a disgrace, lost 4 wickets for about 8 measly runs or summit. :D :D

Aussies only needed 46 to win, they knocked em off in about 2 minutes without losing a wicket, and overall we were about 20 for 8 or summit, how pathetic.
 
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mmj_uk said:
Well done to the Aussies, I must say 5-0 is a bit flattering because we should never in a million years have lost in Adelaide.

Still with the passion and will to win that Australia have showed throughout they deserve it, to me our guys just don't seem to give a **** it's like they are just there to make up the numbers.
Click to expand...

i don't fully agree with this, yes they shouldn't have lost in adelaide, but australia are just a simply better team, if both teams wer playing at their strongest who would you put you money on? England are just not as good plain and simple, preparation was direbolical! we went into the ashes coming off a one day series loss and a 2-0 loss in test against pakistan! good prep that guys
 
harris1986 said:
we went into the ashes coming off a one day series loss and a 2-0 loss in test against pakistan! good prep that guys
Click to expand...

We went into the Ashes having beaten Pakistan 3-0 (or 2-0 however you look at it) and drawn against Sri Lanka. :confused:

Anyway, time for some stat attacks. Innings scores by both teams over the series;

1st
Aus
602/9
202/1

Eng
157
370

2nd
513
168/4

551/6
129

3rd
244
527/5

215
350

4th
419
DNB

159
161

5th
393
46/0

291
147

An average Australian innings was worth 346, and discounting their final innings to win 5-0, it was worth 383.5 runs. England on the other hand made an average of 253 an innings. It took England 52 runs to take a wicket, and the Aussies 26.4 runs. Shockingly England only managed to take 59 out of a possible 100 wickets in the series. Australia took 96.
 
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We were thoroughly humiliated and got exactly what we deserved, whitewashed, but we MUST learn from this.

There were a few things that wound me up, starting with the pathetic warm up we had. We should have been over there for at least a month beforehand, playing as good a set of teams as we could, especially considering a few of our players hadn't played for a while, coming off injuries etc.

Trescothick going home didn't help, not playing Monty from the off didn't help, an inexperienced captain didn't help, Harmison firing blanks didn't help, we could go on and on and on.

I do not think that Collingwood, Bell, Read/Jones :( , Mahmood and Anderson are of international quality, Strauss had some bad decisions, but wasn't up to scratch, Cook looks like a great prospect, Freddie tried, but wasn't fully fit to me and that coupled with his captaincy put a lot of pressure on him, Monty played quite well and will get even better with time and Harmison hadn't played enough before the start and didn't look interested to me.

The only two players that you can't fault in my book were, Pietersen, who is maturing all the time as a test player and Hoggy, who gave his all as always.

The main thing that this series showed was how seriously hurt the Aussies were after the 2005 Ashes, they took the defeat onboard and worked really hard to get their revenge and with the set of players that they had, coupled with an extreme determination, nobody would have beaten them.

We have to stand up and take the criticism, let the powers that be do a thorough examination of our system as a whole and gear up for the 2009 series.

I'd also like to thank Martyn, Langer, Warne and McGrath for their superb efforts over the years and as a goodbye, I'd like to say GOOD RIDDANCE. :D

One last point, if anyone's still reading, I'd like to heap praise upon The Barmy Army, who are the best set of fans in the world, spend thousands following England and never stop singing, they deserved more reward for their efforts. But I still think the nucleus of our side is very encouraging and when all our players are fit, we will be more than a match for the other sides in the world and possibly the Aussies, depending how the newbies progress.

Roll on 2009.
 
Agree with everything apart from Bell, Kev. He got a couple of good scores, only worry was he wasn't able to convert them to 100s. Thing is, he's still very young (25?) and has time to mature. We need to stick with him, Cook and Pietersen and we'll have a very good middle order. Would love to see Vaughany back captaining and opening if possible, with Cook, Bell and Pietersen at 3,4 and 5. Wondering whether we should drop a bowler and have 6 batsmen, Fred, wicky and three bowlers? The 5th bowler was rarely used this series, whoever it was. Bell, KP and Vaughan can all be used as part time bowlers. If we use Colly as the seventh batsmen, he can bowl too.
 
When your team loose the ashes 5-0 and your captain makes a statement saying he was happy with the whole teams performance and he couldn't ask for anymore from them, somehow makes no sense whats so ever.

I could understand it if England were a nobody team but this isn't the case. This is not something you expect your captain to say after loosing 5-0.

Flintoff hasn't acted very much like a captain.
 
I reckon they went with 5 because they feared Flintoffs heel might not be able to hack 5 days of cricket on the trott. Infact in hindsight that is an incredible calamity because for the number of bowlers we had it was unproductive and only served to lengthen the tail. Double whammy.

Its all so obvious (now) why they kept banging on about runs down the order. They were trying make up for the loss of a specialist batter in order to accomodate a 5th bowler to cover for Flintoff.

Its pretty ironic that the oppositions old fart brigade could cope but we couldnt. That just shows age doesnt matter, what matters is fitness and form. We lacked both fitness and form.

I think in hindsight if Flintoffs heel was such a concern that 5 bowlers were required if he were to play, then he shouldnt have played at all.

It looks like they gambled on Flintoff and we have paid the price quite heavily. Not saying we would have won but we may not have lost so badly.

When the tail is so long that puts pressure on the batsmen. Now we've got Bell and Cook at 2 and 3, two kids who are rookies playing in the biggest test match in the world. I'm not surprised they folded.

I personally think unless you are exceptionally talented, test cricket of this magnitude should be reserved for veterans with experience, not kids straight out of the academy. Back to County cricket for Bell and Cook, IMO. Infact, same with Harmison and Mahmood.
 
Nah, Cook certainly needs to stay in the side, he certainly didn't play any worse than any of the other batsman and is one of three players to get a century. He's a class act with more centuries at this stage than Gowar had. Not only that but he's played in some tough series: India away, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and an ashes series in Aus. Bell is more debatable perhaps but Cook needs to stay in the side for the longterm good of English cricket.
 
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