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akes them superhuman in the eyes of us more earthbound mortals stuart broad was not only in it but he had made himself at home rearranged the furniture and signed a nine over five wickets for 22 runs lease with michael clarke s scalp as down payment clarke can count himself unlucky to have been the recipient of two best of series destined for youtube unplayable deliveries the other of course being the thunderbolt sent down by jimmy anderson at trent bridge broad was deservedly man of the match for that performance but ian bell deserves his share of the laurels as well even with 17 test centuries to his name before this series there have always been niggling doubts about his ticker his appetite for a fight when his side are up against it and tough runs are required his three centuries this series have set england back on an even keel when the early loss of their top three has seen them listing to starboard his partnership with pietersen was wonderful to watch particularly with memories of the latter s magnificent old trafford knock still fresh in the memory if pietersen is wagner batsmanship as bombastic spectacle all blaring brass and thundering timpani bell is a haydn string quartet with those legato cover drives and glissando deflections to third man elegant salon cricket at one end valkyries and götterdämmerung at the other bell s come a long way from his days as shane warne s whipping boy we may have laughed along with the sherminator jibes at the time but it looks like the grit was there after all it s only now we are seeing the pearl it s become and admiring its lustre speaking of warne i enjoy his punditry enormously and his bowling masterclass on sky was a treat but his insistent niggling criticism of cook s captaincy on the last day and in a subsequent article for the telegraph was the only bum note in an otherwise enjoyable commentary stint a crafty attempt to undermine the opposition it may have been but it also had the slightly desperate tang of sour grapes i know that ontologically speaking true objectivity is impossible and even with warne on board the sky team are still head and shoulders above their channel nine counterparts in terms of even handedness but it was still a bit much it s true that cook may come off the poorer when compared to the more gung ho gut feel captaincy of clarke but the ready made riposte that it is england who have not only retained the urn but won the series seems hardly worth mentioning it d be remiss of me though not to mention two notable performances for australia it s a shame that ryan harris and chris rogers were on the losing side how is ryan harris even still upright after three consecutive tests but harris s career best 7 117 in the second innings and rogers redoubtable maiden test century on the second day were in the end all for nothing they were let down by their team and it will have hurt like hell the challenge at the oval on wednesday will be to distil that disappointment into renewed determination they will need to come out angry and come out swinging pride ain t much to play for but it s still something posted in ashes australia cricket durham england stuart broad test no comments add this post to del icio us digg old trafford fizzles out but the ashes are england s august 6th 2013 author legsidefilth the last time england won the ashes it was at the melbourne cricket ground in bright sunshine with an innings victory this time they retained the urn on a dour dank drizzly afternoon at old trafford during a terminal interruption in play before which they d been stodgily batting out time in order to avoid defeat while still managing to lose three wickets there s something appropriately british about this scenario and yet it feels odd it feels odd because of the wonky nature of the reality compared with the bullish predictions beforehand nothing feels resolved perhaps it s because of the brevity with which england have achieved their main objective this series has been wrapped up in only 14 days of play but it feels like we haven t even begun to unravel the readiness of each side for brisbane in november or even in relation to each other australia came close at trent bridge due to a freakish innings from their debutant number eleven they then dashed expectations that they d be a proper threat to england at lord s where they batted like the man in the story by borges who dreams he s been tasked with upholding the honour of his family at a historic chess tournament fought regularly between two rival dynasties only to realise as he takes his place at the board that he doesn t even know the rules unfortunately for australia however lord s was one nightmare from which they didn t wake up and now this test if old trafford had been the first test in the series with four more to come you d be forgiven for thinking that england were done for kevin pietersen finally answered the call of destiny that invariably rings out when greatness is needed and ian bell s form has been a pleasant surprise on the back of his recent travails but with a paucity of runs from such previous stalwarts as cook trott and prior there are worrying gaps in england s batting form dry patches on an otherwise lush lawn that suggests this english garden might need some tending in readiness for the harsher climes of an ashes series down under and what if australia buoyed by the fact they d likely have had this match won if not for the rain win the last two matches at durham and the oval and draw the series england will have retained the ashes but only by default and looking even further ahead australia s top order finally seems to be coalescing it s reasonable to assume that david warner promoted back up the order to open with chris rogers in the second innings will remain there come november while the disappointing shane watson who still offers something with the ball will be demoted to six the only questions surround captain clarke s position in the order his magnificent 187 came at number four where previously he has averaged only 21 51 and whether there is still a place in the side for phillip hughes who arguably did nothing wrong before being shunted aside to let prodigal son warner back in the warning to never underestimate australia hardly bears repeating but it would seem after their lord s defeat many had started to do just that england are still on paper the better side but they won the first test by a tiny margin largely due to the fact they were unable to bag agar s wicket until he d enhanced the scoreboard by 98 runs england were dominant at lord s and then against all expectation australia put 527 runs on the board at old trafford after winning the toss and would have won had the weather not intervened australia could easily go on and win the next test or they could collapse in a heap the way they did at lord s nothing is clear cut england similarly could take their foot off the gas now that the urn metaphorically isn t going anywhere and a series result of 2 2 sounds a damn sight less impressive than the 5 0 whitewash many were predicting this was also the match in which we were given a timely reminder that michael clarke and kevin pietersen are crucial to their sides clarke finally scored a captain s innings albeit two tests too late and pietersen helped set up what the weather finished with an innings of 113 when everyone else bar cook and bell failed to significantly add to england s total in both men the spirit is as willing as it ever was but the body in each case is looking increasingly rickety in the case of clarke it s hard not to envision a physio s folder bulging with x rays scans printouts rehab schedules and pain relief dosages the discs in clarke s spinal column have been degenerating since he was 17 probably even before that you may marvel now at his cavalry commander lead from the front batting the cultured aggression against spin the ability to fly the flag on and off the field for his team but at what price further on down the line when he s no longer playing the game pietersen too is by his admission an old man revealing that he had decided to forego surgery on his knee because it would have put him out of action for nine months while there were still the predictable digs in the press at his perceived short comings as a man rather than appreciation for his greatness as a batsman there will never be another like him the introvert who loves the big stage the man whose simple attitude to life is made so needlessly complicated by others the man who in short lights up a cricket ground like no other when he is putting bowling attacks to the sword we should enjoy him while we can because his career too is approaching a crossroads in terms of balancing an impossible workload with a worn out body it may have been a damp sputtering denouement after all the red hot hype but if there s one scintillating memory that remains it was kevin pietersen s outrageous shot that brought up his hundred a shot errol flynn would have been proud of in his hollywood swashbuckling pomp a whirl of the bat above the head blade angled just so a flamboyant uppercut that sent the ball sailing over third man and the crowd surging to their feet roaring their approval it was pietersen s 113 that dug the defensive moat around england s castle at old trafford and it was the rain that filled it posted in ashes australia cricket england kevin pietersen michael clarke test 2 comments add this post to del icio us digg urn burial july 27th 2013 author legsidefilth on a sun drenched sunday evening at lord s on one of the hottest days of the year england bowled australia out for 235 chasing a total they could only have reached had don bradman been kept in cold storage and defrosted especially for the occasion they saved themselves a day secured themselves a 2 0 lead and in all likelihood the series as well and prompted a whole heap of hand wringing down under as to how it can possibly have come to this sports sections of australian papers have been brimming over with theories analysis finger pointing and hair tearing with a sideline in shirt rending and chest beating t20 that rampaging wrecker of domestic scheduling and the sheffield shield is to blame it s the pitches it s the lack of unity within the side it s a lack of forward planning and inadequate youth development it s the simple fact that the current australia side is shit and they are now reaping the whirlwind of all the afore listed sack cloth and ashes indeed and not the type that reside in a display case at lord s that small terracotta eye of the storm of hype that preceded this series shades then of shelley s ozymandias and thomas browne who in his hydriotaphia urn burial wrote that time hath an art to make dust of all things edward gibbon too might have been able to come to the party with a few words on the catastrophic crumbling of empires though conflating christianity with t20 might conceivably be pushing it and if you re more contemporaneously inclined now would be a good time to invoke your spenglers and your toynbees and mention how everything is cyclical cycles of what though on this no one seems to agree one aspect i ve particularly enjoyed when gathering the research for the blogs article in the wisden almanack is that the reactions to events are often more fascinating and instructive than the events themselves i m not big on interaction but i do like to observe quietly but closely with an obsessive eye for detail in the background think the wall scrawling notebook filling serial killer from se7en if he was a cricket fan alright perhaps that s too much information given the reaction in the australian media the last time england hammered australia the latest tsunami of antipodean excoriation ranging the gamut from reasoned analysis to near full on hysteria is no great surprise because if anything was guaranteed to bring affairs to a head it was this the series that while its relevance in a post colonial world might be up for debate for many still defines the sport for a while now it would seem that objects in australian cricket s rear view mirror may indeed have been shitter than they appeared it s only now that that reality is stark enough that they are being tailgated by a third ashes defeat in a row that it must be confronted during australia s last round of dominance it was the likes of hussey ponting warne and mcgrath who constituted the engine under the hood now they simply do not have the horsepower and at lord s they seemed to coast completely to a halt it was a crushing ignominious soul destroying defeat the difference between the team that tore england apart in 2006 7 and the team that collapsed so abjectly on day 2 at headquarters the other week a panicked procession of wickets that put one in mind of a herd of deer scattering over a hillside at the sound of a gunshot is now so stark by comparison that the elephant in the room is now all there is in a search to pinpoint the reason everything assumes significance and everything is fair game for criticism even down to the new team spirit darren lehmann has engendered and which was on display during warmup at trent bridge how dare they share a laugh and indulge in jolly japes when their team is being obliterated on the field this is war dammit conversely there s also been much made of the talk of a rift between michael clarke and his former vice captain shane watson who is admittedly not covering himself in glory at the moment due to a mystifying inability to understand the lbw rule michael clarke may be a fine batsman and a strategically imaginative captain but he is no man manager and so on it s understandable the desperate need to find the one underlying reason that if tweaked satisfactorily or banished entirely will fix everything there is no magic bullet though that can fix the troubles of this current australian team the side are not without talent they are however lacking in experience the only thing that can fix this is time the only way out is through if defeats along the lines of lord s and likely the loss of the series do not destroy the team s young talent they will at least thicken the scar tissue that will enable them to fend off future slings and arrows and speaking of outrageous fortune it d not be making excuses for michael clarke in acknowledging that his failure to win the toss on both occasions so far has not helped him ashton agar australia s very own version of cinderella at trent bridge complete with fairy tale you shall go to the ball call up before sweeping the england bowlers off their feet and their lengths ended up back in the kitchen at lord s in terms of comedown as a test bowler he s not yet ready in a few years he will be usman khawaja s batting equivalent of a panic attack in the first innings was mitigated by a cool headed partnership under pressure with his captain a confident carting of stuart broad to the boundary on three occasions and a wrist...