The Ashes Retained
I couldn’t resist a short post to mark the success of England’s cricketers down under in successfully retaining The Ashes. After getting themselves comprehensively thrashed in the Third Test of the Ashes series in Perth, to tie the level the series 1-1 (with one match drawn), the pressure was on when the Fourth Test started on Boxing Day in Melbourne. However, it all seemed to get to the Australians more than the English: Australia were dismissed for a paltry 98 after being put into bat by England captain Andrew Strauss who won the toss. England finished the day on 157 without loss, with defeat for Australia already probable at stumps on the opening day. England batted all the second day and a bit of the third, amassing 513 all out, and then had Australia 169 for 6 at the end of Day Three. Although the last few Australian batsmen showed a bit of spirit on Day Four, they were eventually all out for 258, leaving England the victors by an innings and 157 runs, their second innings victory of the series.
Now they are 2-1 up in the series with one Test to play (at Sydney), which means they can’t lose the series and therefore keep the Ashes, which they won in England last year (2009). I hope England keep their focus and go on to win at Sydney too. I’d like to see them win the series outright. Incidentally, if I’ve done my sums right, Australia have now won 123 Ashes tests since the first in 1882, to England’s 99, so if England can win in Sydney it will be their 100th.
My Australian friends and colleagues will be wincing at this outcome, but although England have proved worthy winners this time I’m sure Australia will be back to winning ways before too long. As an English cricket fan, I’ve endured enough disappointments to make this victory especially sweet. I dare say when the Australians do reclaim the Ashes at some point in the future their supporters will feel the same. As it is in life, so it is in cricket – the good times make the bad times worth enduring.
I thought I’d mark this very special occasion with a poem called Brahma by Andrew Lang. It’s a clever parody of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the reference to Hinduism seems to fit with the theme of a cyclic universe of sporting success and failure.
If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he’s bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.
In the Dark 
December 29, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I heard that a little Ern had been retained in Australia. I thought Ernie Wise had been detained for some misdemeanour. Thank you for clearing up my confusion….
December 29, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Ernie Wise has been dead 11 years …
December 29, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Yes Rhodri, it’s Ern Malley… Look him up on Wikipedia.
December 29, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Indeed he has, which added to my confusion.
December 29, 2010 at 3:40 pm
John Major in his book seems to suggest that the short poem (Lang’s not Emerson’s) was inspired by the early 19th century cricketer, administrator, vicar, gambler and scoundrel the Revd Lord Frederick Beauclerk. Not sure of the provenance of this though, Lang would have been six when Beauclerk died.
December 29, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I remember hearing Mike Brearley in an interview talking about how cricket had a sort of existence of its own, on a different level to that of individual players and their exploits. He said he sometimes felt that the game was playing him rather than the other way around. That’s rather close to what is expressed by Lang’s poem.
December 29, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Brearley once described something as “alien to the essence of the game”. The exact way, no doubt, that Ricky Ponting would have put it…
December 29, 2010 at 7:59 pm
I wouldn’t trust John Major’s book about cricket’s history for the poetry of the game. He misattributes “No Lords this year” (written early in WWI) to Kipling, not Hornung; and he asserts that the Lord Byron who killed a man at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall (where a version of the laws of cricket were codified in 1774) was grandfather to the poet, rather than great-uncle. “Brahma” is Andrew Lang’s own name for the poem, and Googling of Lang and Beauclerk together give no obvious connection.
December 29, 2010 at 7:42 pm
The convicts were thrashed convincingly-an innings and 157 runs defeat which sticks at the gullets of these convicts as this is inflicted by Poms. The australian newspapers which were delirious when England was beaten at Perth are now in a state of ventricular fibillation, and the Aussies are foaming at the mouth not believing that a good team work of young Poms administered the defeat. If I remember, West Indies just after those speedsters were gone, were bragging that they will build the team in no time and are still doing it after a decade plus. Aussies are in a similar illusion, and we can keep the ashes urn for the next decade while they are indulging in recriminations.
December 29, 2010 at 8:14 pm
The Aussie conveyor belt of excellent players has ground to a halt, and they have failed to replace McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist and Hayden with people of remotely comparable quality. The stress has got to Ponting’s batting but it’s not really his fault. Quite simply, this England team is better than this Aussie team. Gloating is best done in private, but I do hope that it will reduce the amount of sledging that goes on in the middle.
I read Steve Waugh’s autobiography about the key series in the Caribbean in the mid-1990s when Australia took on and defeated the West Indies to become the best team in the world. They chose to pepper the West Indian quicks. *That’s* intent. But the order has moved on again. Watch the great struggle going on at the moment between India and South Africa, because those two and England are clearly the best at the moment.
Anton
December 29, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Cynic
I think there’s enough to celebrate in England’s victory without resorting to offensive stuff about “convicts”.
I’m also not sure the Australian press are any worse than the British…
Peter
December 30, 2010 at 11:25 am
Anton,
Do you think England will change anything for Sydney? I might be tempted to give Morgan a go for Collingwood…
Peter
December 30, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I wouldn’t change a winning team on an Ashes tour. The Aussies came back from an earlier thumping to level the series, and you don’t throw newbies in at the deep end unless you have to. Perhaps Sydney will be Colley’s last 5-day Test if he doesn’t come good, though.
December 30, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I know next to nothing about cricket (stupid game), but I am old enough to remember the Wales rugby team from the 1970s. 3 Grand Slams and 5 (I think) Triple Crowns. Then the Welsh rugby team won essentially nothing until the Grand Slam of 2005. Why? I think a period of dominance is often followed by a very fallow period in sport, probably because the country fails to make changes and rests on its laurels. Wales were truly innovative as a rugby playing team in the 1970s, but did not develop so by the time the 1980s had come, and the game had moved on, the Welsh approach hadn’t. Look at England and their fallow period since winning the rugby World Cup in 2003, they’ve done nothing since.
Sport, thankfully, is cyclical; it would be very boring were it not.
December 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm
And ditto for the West Indies cricket team.
December 30, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I think the point is that these are team games. It’s not enough to have one or two outstanding individuals. Teams achieve dominance when they have a number of excellent players all at the peak of their powers at the same time. Think of the great Welsh rugby side of the 70s and you think not of one man, but several giants: JPR Williams, Gareth Williams, Phil Bennett, etc. When people of this stature retire it’s difficult to replace all of them from a small population.
Australia has produced many great cricketers over the last 20 years or so, so they have kept their dominance going amazingly well, but as Anton points out the cupboard now seems pretty bare. It’s especially surprising that they can’t find a strike bowler better than Mitchell Johnson, who isn’t anywhere near consistent enough to be a test player.
December 30, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Gareth Edwards, not Gareth Williams, Peter. Fancy getting the name of the player voted the greatest rugby player of all time wrong 🙂
Yes, it is very true that world dominating teams achieve their success through having several world class players at the time time. The Welsh team of the 1970s had Gareth Edwards, Barry John (then Phil Bennet), JPR Williams, Gerald Davies and a few in the forwards (Mervyn Davies, Graham Price) who would have all made a World 15. Same is true of the England team that won the Rugby World cup in 2003.
What is strange is that success seems to lead to a country not ensuring that, when the “golden generation” have retired, there are not young players of exceptional talent waiting to replace them. Maybe this just shows that it is more down to accident than nurturing that, from time to time, a golden generation seems to come along in a particular country in a particular sport.
December 30, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Actually I meant to say Gareth Edwards and JJ Williams but somehow they got fused together!
Great though he obviously was, Barry John didn’t play all that many games.
December 31, 2010 at 11:01 am
Barry John and Phil Bennet were quite different kinds of players. It’s true that Barry John retired way too young, but during his 6 years of playing for Wales (1966-1972), and in particular the 1971 Lions tour of New Zealand, he became probably the greatest outside half of his time. He had the ability to “ghost’ around the opposition (something he couldn’t do anymore as he’s about twice the size he was as a player).
Phil Bennet, on the other hand, had the most devastating side-step, a bit like Shane Williams does today. He sidestepping in that famous try that the Babarians scored against NZ where Gareth Edwards finished off the move Phil Bennet started near the try-line was just amazing.
I saw Phil Bennet in the Hilton in Cardiff in 2005, he’s tiny.
December 31, 2010 at 11:17 am
I’ve got that Barbarians vs All Blacks game on DVD – with the 2003 World Cup final and the amazing 1999 France vs NZ semi the contribution of rugby to my sporting DVDs.
December 31, 2010 at 11:20 am
December 31, 2010 at 11:31 am
An amazing try. I was lucky enough to be there – we were just taking our seats in the South stand when Phil Bennet started his side-stepping. And, we had to stand on our seats to see Gareth Edwards dive over in the corner.
December 31, 2010 at 11:39 am
And the sublime Barry John
December 30, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Things may not be so bleak for Australia, I read last week that Mick Lewis is making a comeback, even if Warne won’t .
January 1, 2011 at 11:17 am
I’ve been thinking a little bit more about successful teams, and I think a possible exception to the rule that a successful team requires several world class players coming together at the same time is the Chicago Bulls basketball team of the 1990s. Led of course by Michael Jordan. They won 6 NBA championships (1991-93 and 1996-98). When MJ briefly left to pursue other things (including a stint in baseball), the team didn’t even with their division, which is two notches below winning the Championships. They seemed to fall into mediocrity without him.
And, the New Zealand rugby team seem to have consistently been the number 1 rated team in the World for the last 25 years, so seem to have maintained a conveyor belt of world class talent. How they have gone into each rugby World cup as favourites, and yet have only won the inaugural one in 1987, is perhaps the biggest mystery.
January 1, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Amazing stuff!
January 1, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Strange name, Michael Jordan Dunks.
Basketball is indescribably tedious, as these clips prove.
January 2, 2011 at 9:35 am
I must say I’ve never understood it as a spectator sport. I gather it was invented as an indoor/winter sport in a spare barn of an east coast boarding school, and that the basket was specifically designed to be too high for slam-dunking…
January 2, 2011 at 9:44 am
He also started up Dunkin Donuts…
January 2, 2011 at 9:46 am
After 9 years of living in the USA, I can honestly say basketball was the only American sport I found remotely interesting. Baseball and American Football are just plain tedious. At least there is non-stop action in basketball. Given the severity of the winters in a large swathe of the US, I can well believe it was invented specifically to have an indoor sport for the winter months.
January 2, 2011 at 9:38 am
Jordan Dunks can be found in Matthew 3:6.