The Ashes

[Karthik]

Australia won by 150 runs and regain the ashes 3-0.

 

[nskaran]

I think Aussies have won Ashes series now after 2006 - 2007.

 

[meetdilip]

I hope India does well tomorrow. My hopes linger around Pujara.

 

[rrkiran18]

Australia regain the ashes after 4years
Which they lost in 2009 aug.

 

[meetdilip]

Tour of India might have helped them

 

[Vadirocks]

It's Bad To See England Surrendering Themselves

 

[Basil]

Panesar favoured for Swann role​

It says much for England's reliance upon Graeme Swann for so long that they have reacted to news of his retirement by calling up two men to replace him.

The decision to add Scott Borthwick, a leg-spinning all-rounder from Durham, and James Tredwell, the off-spinner from Kent, to the squad also suggests a certain lack of confidence in Monty Panesar.

Panesar's left-arm spin may well come into the side for the Melbourne Test starting on Boxing Day, but there are no guarantees about a longer term position in the team.

It is not hard to see the differing attractions of Borthwick, Tredwell or Panesar. Borthwick is a talented batsman - he scored 1,000 Championship runs for Durham in the 2013 season having won a promotion to No. 3 in the order - and, as a legspinner, can find turn on pitches on which finger spinners gain little. He might, in due course, develop into a valuable second spinner and could probably bat at No. 7 or No. 8 at present.

Whether he could be selected as a lone spinner at present is debatable. He claimed 28 Championship wickets last season at an average of 38. He also went for four an over. After the experience of Simon Kerrigan, still the best young spin prospect in England, at The Oval, it seems highly unlikely the selectors will take a similar risk.

Tredwell is at the other end of the spectrum. With his loopy control and modest spin, he might be seen as a safe bet - although he is not in contention for Melbourne as he does not arrive until midway through the Test. He might replace Swann in the slips; he might even replace his runs in the lower-order. But after a season in which he claimed 17 Championship wickets at an average of 56.76, his call-up only goes to serves the chasm that existed between Swann and the rest in English cricket.

All of which means that Panesar will certainly play in Melbourne and probably play in Sydney. He might not be the bowler he was 12 months ago - his action is more slingy and he does not look as fit - and his fielding remains as close to a liability as anyone in Test cricket at present, but his best is some way better than anyone else's and he at least bowls at a pace that should help England retain some control in the field. Besides, they really aren't holding a handful of aces at present.

England also hope that Stuart Broad will play. Broad was struck on the foot by a full delivery from Mitchell Johnson while batting in the first innings at Perth but subsequent scans showed no serious injury. He will therefore bowl in the nets on Tuesday before a decision is made about his involvement in the Test. If he does not play, it seems Boyd Rankin may be the best placed - or maybe the least badly placed would be a more accurate description - of the three tall seamers to replace him.

There could be other changes in the side in Melbourne. Matt Prior, for so long a beacon of excellence, is clearly below his best with bat and gloves at present and is in real danger of losing his place to Jonny Bairstow while there is an outside chance that Gary Ballance could be brought in instead of Kevin Pietersen.

The retirement of Swann probably makes that scenario less likely - the team are already without several of their most experienced players of recent years - but England are keen to freshen up a batting line-up that has underperformed for some time.

With Alastair Cook an automatic selection and strong cases made for the retention of Ian Bell, Michael Carberry, Ben Stokes and Joe Root, England's options are limited. Pietersen might also be considered England's most likely match-winner, but an England set-up wanting to reassert its authority and keen to make a statement over its refusal to accept mediocrity might be in the mood for more drastic decisions. It would almost certainly be a mistake, but it would be the sort of mistake made by management that is under pressure and looking for quick solutions.

Either way, it seems Panesar will play in Melbourne. While much of his press conference on Monday was consumed by talk of Swann's press conference the previous day - the dozen negative words that Swann may or may not have meant about a teammate seem to have outweighed the several hundred positive ones he certainly did - Panesar did admit he needed to improve if he was to take Swann's place in the long-term. As a result, he played Grade cricket last weekend and hopes to play more once the Ashes series is over.

"I probably didn't bowl at my best in Adelaide," he said. "Hopefully I can bowl quite well in this Test and try to get back to my old ways, the way I bowl with good rhythm.

"I definitely feel ready coming into this Test. I'm really excited. The Boxing Day Test in Australia is a huge occasion and excites all of us. I'm definitely looking forward to it. There are improvements need to be made in my game. Part of that I've made a decision to play Grade cricket after the Ashes. I want to improve my game and see if I can take it forward."

England's method of 'taking it forward' is to revert to the spinner they had in the side before Swann. But as Australia found when they tried to replace Shane Warne, sometimes there is no perfect solution.

 

[Basil]

Swann's departure 'a knockout blow' - Warner​

David Warner knows all about teams losing people midway through a tour. His late-night shenanigans in a Birmingham pub this year got him sent to Africa before Australia's Ashes campaign had even begun, and led to the sacking of coach Mickey Arthur. But six months after Australia's shambolic beginning to the tour of England, it is Alastair Cook's men who are in disarray, having given up the urn within three Tests, lost Graeme Swann to retirement, and lost Jonathan Trott due to a stress-related illness.

"In a way it's different, it's like a little bit of a knockout blow," Warner said of England losing Swann with two Tests remaining. "It is weird, with Trotty going home and now Swanny retiring, it is a bit different for us. We look at that and we don't know what to think, in a way. But credit to us, we're playing good cricket, we're 3-0 up leading into a Boxing Day Test."

But far from getting stuck into Swann, as might be expected of a man with Warner's record of public comment, he said it had been "a privilege to play against him". Not that Warner had too much trouble against Swann in this series, taking him for 140 runs from 205 deliveries. Australia's right-handers also enjoyed attacking Swann, and Warner might now have the chance to do so against the ball spinning into him, if Monty Panesar is picked.

"It's probably a little bit easier to play, if I can say, but we've still got to treat Monty Panesar with the respect we do Graeme Swann because they are both world-class bowlers," Warner said. "You saw Monty in India, basically he and Swanny won the series over there."

However, Warner said respect or not, he would play his natural aggressive style against Panesar, as he has against all the England bowlers in the first three Tests of this series. Warner has trusted his instincts during this Ashes campaign, returning to the style of cricket that initially gained him international selection and avoiding the over-thinking that had infiltrated his game and his preparation.

"That's probably the thing that's been high on my list now, is not thinking too far ahead," Warner said. "I'm thinking about today's training session instead of day one, Boxing Day, because that's what's ahead of me. We live in the present, not the future, that's all I've been working on.

"I think it had a lot to do with Michael Lloyd, our sports psych. I probably did get too far ahead of myself and was playing each innings in my mind probably 10 or 15 times. I've worked out a way to keep thinking about the now instead of what's going to happen in a couple of days' time."

Warner hopes that natural approach will help him switch back from Twenty20 mode into a Test mindset after the unusual scenario of having played a BBL match in the middle of a Test series. With the series already won, Cricket Australia released some of the players for the opening BBL round between the Perth and Melbourne Tests and Warner kept his eye in with 50 off 31 balls for the Sydney Thunder on Saturday night.

"It was bizarre when I was out there and I was commentating, I was just playing my natural strokes and nothing really came into my mind with slogging," Warner said. "In Twenty20 we do slog a fair bit, but it all just seemed so natural when I was out there. It is sometimes tough to adjust from Test to Twenty20s, now I've come back to play a Boxing Day Test it is going to be a little bit different if I see the first one up there but I'll still play the way I play."

 

[Basil]

'I'm as good as gold' - Pietersen​

It was lost amid the din but, in 2012, with his career hanging by a thread, Kevin Pietersen made a point that has largely been vindicated.

Scrape away at the surface of the "text-gate" debacle and the "it's not easy being me" press conference and Pietersen had one prescient opinion: he was tired and needed a break. He felt he needed to cut down on his playing commitments.

Now, as the best England team for many years disintegrates, their minds and bodies prematurely aged by the erosive nature of the treadmill on which they live, it has become increasingly obvious that too much is asked of too few. Pietersen may have expressed himself clumsily but he had a point.

Certainly, there was a desultory air to England's training session at the MCG on Christmas Eve. While the bowlers, Ben Stokes in particular, were permitted to bowl no-ball after no-ball without intervention, Alastair Cook continued to cut a painfully out of form figure with the bat. Even Joe Root is beginning to look careworn.

Meanwhile the bowlers warmed up for the challenge of batting against Mitchell Johnson and co. by facing the part-time spin of Joe Root and Gary Ballance. It was like preparing to wrestle a tiger by playing with a kitten.

All of which led to the observation: if Graeme Swann or Jonathan Trott had been used a little more sparingly, might they still be fit and firing as part of this Ashes squad?

At least Pietersen has confirmed that he has no intention of following Swann into retirement in the near future. Pietersen, one of only five England players to have scored over 8,000 Test runs, insisted he was "as good as gold" in terms of his enthusiasm and commitment to international cricket and reiterated his desire to continue.

While he admitted he had, to date, endured a disappointing Ashes series, he claimed he was batting "as well as ever" and insisted he would continue to bat in the positive manner which has characterised his career.

So far in this series, Pietersen has registered just one half-century and has been accused of recklessness after playing shots that contributed to his dismissal in five of his six innings. Twice he has been caught attempting to hook or pull, twice he has been caught attempting to flick through midwicket and once he has been caught at long-on trying to clear the fielder positioned for the shot. Former England opener Geoffrey Boycott labelled him "a mug" in his column in the Daily Telegraph and called for his omission from the side.

"I'm 33 years of age," Pietersen said. "I'm batting as well as I've ever batted. I'll retire when I can't get up to play for England. I'm as good as gold at the moment.

"I felt like a clown in Adelaide - when I hit that ball to midwicket off Peter Siddle - I just didn't feel good at the crease at all. Some days you have them. Every other time I've batted on this trip, I've felt really, really good. I've got myself in every time I've batted and a couple of times I've got out, and a couple of other times fortune didn't favour the brave.

"It's just a case of making sure I keep doing what I do because it's proved successful. If the situation dictates a certain way that I play, I've proved over the last however many years that I'll play to the situation of the game. I haven't got 100. Who knows? I might get one on Thursday and we might be sitting here, all nice and happy.
"I have the greatest admiration for Geoffrey Boycott, what he achieved for England, but I think the way Geoffrey played and the way I play are totally different. I said after the first or second Test, that you have good days, you take all the plaudits, you have bad ones, you take all the criticism, and I've had a couple of bad days. I'm so cool with it."

While the England camp will be relieved to hear of Pietersen's commitment, they may be less than overwhelmed by the manner he dealt with questions about Swann.

Offered the opportunity to douse suggestions that Swann's "heads up their own backsides" comment was aimed at him, Pietersen instead fanned the flames. Instead of saying 'Swann made it clear those words were not aimed at anyone in the England dressing room' - a reply he could and should have given - Pietersen instead replied: "There's a lot worse things I've been called."

"You should come and field with me on Thursday or Friday and see what I get called on the boundary," Pietersen said. "Yesterday was a family day and I'm not giving any energy to what happened. The only energy I've got on this tour left in me is for Melbourne on the 26th, training today, training tomorrow, and Sydney."

It is no secret that Swann and Pietersen are unlikely to spend their retirements embarking on bivouacking trips together. It is usually suggested that they are two vastly different characters with little common ground, though it may be that, in reality, they actually were rather too alike to enjoy such close proximity.

It need not matter. It is a fallacy to presume that all the individuals within a team need to forge close relationships off the pitch. The fact is that Swann and Pietersen found a way to work together constructively for the benefit of their team. Any post-career sparring they engage in is likely to be of little benefit to either of them.

There was better news of Stuart Broad. He bowled nicely and came through a fielding session unscathed to increase his chances of playing on Thursday, while Ian Bell took Swann's position at second slip in the catching sessions. Quite who will field at short-leg remains unclear.

Such issues are relative details among the problems England have to face. The most pressing is how they are to score enough runs to put Australia under pressure. It is now 23 innings and nearly 10 months since England reached 400.

"We've been hurt," Pietersen said. "We've been hurt big time here. Deep down, we are hurting as international sportsmen, as proud sportsmen and sportsmen who have achieved a hell of a lot over the last four or five years.

"I do think this team acknowledges we need to play a lot better this week. We owe it to ourselves and to a lot of people who've paid a lot of money to come and watch us.

"We've proved we're world-class players. You don't play three Test matches and become horrendous cricketers; you don't turn up on an Australian tour and lose whatever we lost - 5-0 in 2006/07 - and never have a good day in your career again.

"I wake up every single day trying to improve. There's a bunch of blokes in that dressing room trying to make ourselves better people and better players every single day. The pride is there; the passion is there.

"When you lose, there's a lot of people taking pot shots at a dressing room. I've been in unsuccessful English dressing rooms, all around the world. I've also been in really good ones, and the way these guys are taking it now is really well."

 

[Basil]