England win The Ashes!!

England win the Ashes 2-1

The month long carnival of test cricket finally draws to an end and we have a victor. England have won the Ashes 2-1 and the joy and emotion of British sports fans have probably reached a crescendo. It remains to be seen whether there is an open bus parade in Trafalgar Square in a reenactment of 2005 although in terms of the quality of play witnessed, this series fell way short of the benchmark set in 2005. Somehow this series always threatened to explode but fizzled out. There were occasional bursts of dazzling plays followed by some decidedly ordinary moments. I suppose this was to be expected with the two teams evenly matched in most disciplines of the game and eventually it was the solitary wicket which eluded Australia in Cardiff, that decided the Ashes.

None of this will matter to the English fans and media. Plenty of times in the series we got a taste of how the media influences public discussion on sport in England. The calls for the recall of Mark Ramprakash were entirely a media fantasy and were a reflection of the paranoia in the entire establishment following the debacle in Headingley. Compare that to the relative calm in the Australian management after they conceded the lead at Lords. In the end the selectors did well to retain faith in their chosen bunch of players and were repaid back in good measure by the performances of Stuart Broad and Jonathan Trott at the Oval.

I expected Australia to put up a fight in the final innings at Oval considering that they were a bit hard done by Asad Rauf in the first innings. And for a while, first Watson and Katich and then Ponting and Hussey gave the massive Sunday crowd plenty of nervous moments. In the end the enormity of the chase took its toll and after the run outs of Ponting and Clarke, the rest of Aussie wickets crumbled amidst deafening roars from the packed stadium and charged up England bowlers. The celebrations that followed were euphoric and expected. In reminders of Edgbaston in 2005, Andrew Flintoff managed to shake hands with his vanquished opponents before joining into his team huddle. Even the usually unruffled Mike Atherton looked a little overcome by emotion in the post match presentation, foolishly asking Ricky Ponting if there would be questions asked of his captaincy back home. To his credit Ponting handled the question with aplomb managing to invoke Atherton’s own troubled captaincy tenure in his response.
Andrew Struass managed to say all the right things in the presentation suggesting that this should not be the final frontier for England and should instead be a stepping-stone for further greatness. The victory should not paper over some of the cracks in this England team. The bowling attack still looks good only for English conditions and will surely struggle to take wickets abroad. Much has been said about the travails of Ravi Bopara and Ian bell but precious little has been said about Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood. The inability of these two to influence the game without being assisted by someone else in equal measure has somehow gone unnoticed by the scrutiny of the British press. Australia too have their own list of worries, and the lack of a quality spinner will remain their primary concern. The inconsistency of Mitchell Johnson highlights how young he is in terms of test match experience and he has been forced to lead this highly inexperienced bowling attack in such a short period of time.

It is indeed a telling fact that after this series Australia slip to number 4 in the test rankings and England remain at Number 5. In an event that is considered to be the saving grace of test cricket in this fast paced world of Twenty-20, the two participants are eventually middle of the table fare when it comes to overall world rankings. It will be interesting to follow the overall progression of these teams over the next couple of years in relation to South Africa and India. With talks of a two-tier test match system in the pipeline, it may be worthwhile to focus our attention on these four teams in the near future.

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