That was the Sporting Week that was.: Mock The Week - The Ashes Series Special - Scenes ...: 1) England have regained the Ashes! I mean seriously who called that one? England are officially home and dry having regained the Ashes ...
Monday, 10 August 2015
That was the Sporting Week that was.: Mock The Week - The Ashes Series Special - Scenes ...
That was the Sporting Week that was.: Mock The Week - The Ashes Series Special - Scenes ...: 1) England have regained the Ashes! I mean seriously who called that one? England are officially home and dry having regained the Ashes ...
Mock The Week - The Ashes Series Special - Scenes you did not expect to see during the fourth test of the current Ashes series.
1) England have regained the Ashes!
I mean seriously who called that one? England are officially home and dry having regained the Ashes with a 3-1 victory with a test match to spare. At the beginning of the series pundits English and Australian alike were suggesting Australia would be travelling home with the little urn, after a closely thought contest. Well blow me down with a feather and call me Don Bradman, England in cricketing context have battered Australia into submission.
Once more no one, including the most fool hardy of Australians can deny that England have not deserved to regain the Ashes. Apart from a slight hiccup at Lords, the team have executed their skills to an extremely high level consistently throughout the series and hey presto it merits a result like this. Congratulations to the England boys. Well played.
2) Australia getting out for 60 before lunch on the first day of a test match.
Have Australian publishers had printing issues and forgotten to add the section to the cricket coaching manual on how a batsman plays a moving/swinging ball with the aim of staying at the crease? Or does the Australian cricket coaching manual just have the philosophy printed in big bold letters ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK?
Whatever the case, everyone knows despite England's fabulous bowling and fielding (Stokes is freak in that department by the way), Australia should never in a million years have found themselves bowling on the same morning they were put in to bat. You can fight fire with fire at times, but the art of survival is a more valuable skill in cricket at times. Australia though have mostly been in quicksand the entire series.
3) There have been 11 calendar days worth of play out of the scheduled 20 after four test matches.
Dear Australia you are not playing Twenty Twenty cricket at the moment. You are within your rights to take a bit of time and score the runs in your innnings in a day and a half, not an hour and a half. I mean a test match is scheduled to last FIVE, yes that's FIVE calendar days, not two days and 10 overs.
Even England in their Ashes - We'd sooner forget years - didn't manage to capitulate to that extent.
Admittedly this is not only a disease of Australian proportions, but lots of other international teams as well. What's the hurry? As England and New Zealand demonstrated earlier this season, you can play out a five day test and once more is was jolly entertaining as well.
4) Alastair Cook being a proactive and aggressive captain
Imagine the scene. I'm sitting in my office at work and I have a quick butchers to see what score England are on in the their first innings during this test match or whether they are all out and Australia are batting again. I swear I nearly fell off my seat when I thought I saw the information on my phone that England had declared. Alastair Cook doesn't declare! Declaring is like an alien concept to him. If England were 8 wickets down and 500 runs ahead with two sessions left of the final test match he still wouldn't declare. Surely it's a mistake!
It wasn't however, and what a pleasant surprise that was. I think Alastair Cook has learnt an awful lot about the art of captaincy in the space of the past 18 odd months, and most importantly the art of captaining without fear. Whether he has learnt that taking calculated risks can reap the desired rewards, in no small amount thanks to his New Zealand counterpart Brendon McCullum, or England's new coach Trevor Bayliss has had a word in his ear, it is refreshing to see this new attitude from Cook and it can only benefit England for future.
5) Australia making ludicrous, panic driven selection decisions.
Thursday morning I'm sitting in my office before the start of the 4th test, checking news on the toss and the two teams and something grabs my eye immediately. Apparently the Marsh Brothers were effectively about to cross paths in opposite directions, with Shaun taking over Mitchell's sport in the Aussie line up.
I believe the theory was the Aussies want to sure up their batting line up, and didn't that work beautifully.
What I have always heard from Lehmann during his tenure as coach of the Australian side is that he wants his teams to have a balance, hence an all-rounder with skills in both the batting and bowling department. So in the most crucial of Ashes matches, he and his fellow selectors decide the reduce the Australian bowling line up to four front line bowlers, who have exactly set the world on fire during this series. As Michael Vaughn rightly said, you know your country is in trouble when David Warner is bowling on the first day of a test match.
This has been indicative of Australian selection decisions throughout the series to be honest, but you can't help feeling that Mitchell Marsh is being effectively "screwed" by the Aussie establishment. I'm not even convinced that Michael Clarke even had any faith in his bowling. The Lords test match, Steve Smith gets to bowl before Mitchell M. Then in the final innings in the Edgbaston test he's not given the ball until 2 overs from the end and he has the winning runs scored off of him. Way to go Australia. Give the poor boy a complex.
6) An England Coach that does not appear to be obsessed with data.
I have one memory of England's disastrous World Cup campaign this year, and once more it has nothing whatsoever to do with England's performances on the field of play.
In fact it was an interview that the then coach Peter Moores gave following England's defeat by Bangladesh if I remember correctly "'We thought 275 was chaseable. We'll have to look at the data'
What the hell!
Thank god England appear to have brought in a coach in Trevor Bayliss, who is primarily concerned that when the players head out onto the cricket ground, they are playing without fear that haven't fulfilled a required a statistical target. It is a showcase for their talent and talent alone.
And boy have England flourished!
I mean seriously who called that one? England are officially home and dry having regained the Ashes with a 3-1 victory with a test match to spare. At the beginning of the series pundits English and Australian alike were suggesting Australia would be travelling home with the little urn, after a closely thought contest. Well blow me down with a feather and call me Don Bradman, England in cricketing context have battered Australia into submission.
Once more no one, including the most fool hardy of Australians can deny that England have not deserved to regain the Ashes. Apart from a slight hiccup at Lords, the team have executed their skills to an extremely high level consistently throughout the series and hey presto it merits a result like this. Congratulations to the England boys. Well played.
2) Australia getting out for 60 before lunch on the first day of a test match.
Have Australian publishers had printing issues and forgotten to add the section to the cricket coaching manual on how a batsman plays a moving/swinging ball with the aim of staying at the crease? Or does the Australian cricket coaching manual just have the philosophy printed in big bold letters ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK?
Whatever the case, everyone knows despite England's fabulous bowling and fielding (Stokes is freak in that department by the way), Australia should never in a million years have found themselves bowling on the same morning they were put in to bat. You can fight fire with fire at times, but the art of survival is a more valuable skill in cricket at times. Australia though have mostly been in quicksand the entire series.
3) There have been 11 calendar days worth of play out of the scheduled 20 after four test matches.
Dear Australia you are not playing Twenty Twenty cricket at the moment. You are within your rights to take a bit of time and score the runs in your innnings in a day and a half, not an hour and a half. I mean a test match is scheduled to last FIVE, yes that's FIVE calendar days, not two days and 10 overs.
Even England in their Ashes - We'd sooner forget years - didn't manage to capitulate to that extent.
Admittedly this is not only a disease of Australian proportions, but lots of other international teams as well. What's the hurry? As England and New Zealand demonstrated earlier this season, you can play out a five day test and once more is was jolly entertaining as well.
4) Alastair Cook being a proactive and aggressive captain
Imagine the scene. I'm sitting in my office at work and I have a quick butchers to see what score England are on in the their first innings during this test match or whether they are all out and Australia are batting again. I swear I nearly fell off my seat when I thought I saw the information on my phone that England had declared. Alastair Cook doesn't declare! Declaring is like an alien concept to him. If England were 8 wickets down and 500 runs ahead with two sessions left of the final test match he still wouldn't declare. Surely it's a mistake!
It wasn't however, and what a pleasant surprise that was. I think Alastair Cook has learnt an awful lot about the art of captaincy in the space of the past 18 odd months, and most importantly the art of captaining without fear. Whether he has learnt that taking calculated risks can reap the desired rewards, in no small amount thanks to his New Zealand counterpart Brendon McCullum, or England's new coach Trevor Bayliss has had a word in his ear, it is refreshing to see this new attitude from Cook and it can only benefit England for future.
5) Australia making ludicrous, panic driven selection decisions.
Thursday morning I'm sitting in my office before the start of the 4th test, checking news on the toss and the two teams and something grabs my eye immediately. Apparently the Marsh Brothers were effectively about to cross paths in opposite directions, with Shaun taking over Mitchell's sport in the Aussie line up.
I believe the theory was the Aussies want to sure up their batting line up, and didn't that work beautifully.
What I have always heard from Lehmann during his tenure as coach of the Australian side is that he wants his teams to have a balance, hence an all-rounder with skills in both the batting and bowling department. So in the most crucial of Ashes matches, he and his fellow selectors decide the reduce the Australian bowling line up to four front line bowlers, who have exactly set the world on fire during this series. As Michael Vaughn rightly said, you know your country is in trouble when David Warner is bowling on the first day of a test match.
This has been indicative of Australian selection decisions throughout the series to be honest, but you can't help feeling that Mitchell Marsh is being effectively "screwed" by the Aussie establishment. I'm not even convinced that Michael Clarke even had any faith in his bowling. The Lords test match, Steve Smith gets to bowl before Mitchell M. Then in the final innings in the Edgbaston test he's not given the ball until 2 overs from the end and he has the winning runs scored off of him. Way to go Australia. Give the poor boy a complex.
6) An England Coach that does not appear to be obsessed with data.
I have one memory of England's disastrous World Cup campaign this year, and once more it has nothing whatsoever to do with England's performances on the field of play.
In fact it was an interview that the then coach Peter Moores gave following England's defeat by Bangladesh if I remember correctly "'We thought 275 was chaseable. We'll have to look at the data'
What the hell!
Thank god England appear to have brought in a coach in Trevor Bayliss, who is primarily concerned that when the players head out onto the cricket ground, they are playing without fear that haven't fulfilled a required a statistical target. It is a showcase for their talent and talent alone.
And boy have England flourished!
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