Here’s an unusual piece from The Sunday Telegraph, but one which is well worth a read. Michael Atherton unveils the process behind ghosted columns (where a journalist talks to a player whose opinions then form a column) and suggests that there are probably more risks than rewards for the players. He looks at Sajid Mahmood, among others, who got into hot water with the ECB for his comments about not being bowled enough.
Privately, Mahmood has complained that he was 'turned over' by his ghost. Unsurprisingly, the paper disagree and since the ghost in question is an excellent young journalist, who would have known the sensitivity of the issue, it is unlikely. The thoughts on Flintoff's captaincy may well have been paraphrased but they would have reflected the gist of the conversation. Being 'turned over' is as easy a get-out clause for a player, as for the journalist who, when confronted by an irate player, blames his editor for manipulating his copy.
The next time that Mahmood was scheduled to do a column, his phone was switched off for six hours. When the ghost finally got hold of him (from Kuala Lumpur, of all places, which sums up the whole business) Mahmood complained that he was tired and had nothing to say. When pushed, he asked that his exact words be used for the column.
Ross Taylor, the promising young New Zealand batsman who scored his maiden one-day hundred in just his third match, ended up in hospital attached to a saline drip and unable to celebrate his milestone. Taylor, 22, learnt a valuable lesson in his third one-day innings - eat lots, drink plenty and try not to be so nervous. Speaking to The New Zealand Herald, a slightly embarassed Taylor admits the realisation he was in trouble struck at the worst possible time - as he was setting off for his hundredth run.
Australia are once again moving away from the pack in international cricket and John Buchanan, the coach, has said it is down to the rest to catch up. However, in The New Zealand Herald, Greg Barns argues that if the ICC is to really push forward with its idea of expanding the game it is time for a divisional structure in Test cricket, so that teams have promotion and relegation to focus on.
So how about taking a leaf out of soccer's book and adopting a tier system in which teams are relegated and promoted. One of the reasons why soccer is so popular across the globe is because it operates on this basis. Small countries like Ecuador and Croatia have an opportunity to win World Cup qualifiers and then be "promoted" into the World Cup finals every four years. One way to do this would be to create divisions of countries. Australia, England, India, South Africa and Pakistan and perhaps Sri Lanka would be a natural premier division.
The Australian press is revelling in the team's Ashes dominance and plenty of space is being devoted to Shane Warne, who signed off his final MCG Test with a man-of-the-match award for his seven wickets. In The Age Greg Baum writes about how he exploited a demoralised England team allowing himself and Glenn McGrath and fine send-off.
On what became his final day at the MCG, Warne made more runs than any of England's XI, which was bowled out for 161. It is doubtful that it would have fared better even if Australia had published its bowling plans in advance, with diagrams and explanatory notes. Few teams in history can have raised expectations and disappointed them on the scale of England this summer.
Meanwhile, Peter Roebuck says the reasons behind England's thumping can be traced back to the huge celebrations that followed the 2005 victory while Australia quickly went back to the drawing board.
In truth, the seeds of England's defeat were planted amid the celebrations that followed victory. Gongs were dished out to every player, a gesture resented by their opponents, books were written, players were wrapped in paeans of praise and an entire nation went into a state of rapture.
And he also saved a few words for Warne…
In 1992-93, Richie Richardson had fallen foul of the delivery. Now a lesser soul, Sajid Mahmood, was equally baffled. Warne had struck again with his flipper. It was not a bad way to say goodbye.
Over in the Indian paper, Mid Day, Terry Jenner gets a lump in his throat as he talks about the retirement of his star pupil and witnessing his 700th Test wicket.
“It (quitting) is sad because we’ve been together for 16 years. Everyday when you wake up, the guy is in your mind for one reason or the other. Today for example, I woke up thinking how he is going to bat.” Wicket No 700 was witnessed by Jenner behind the bowler’s arm at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
After a fourth consecutive hammering, the English press are gearing up for an Ashes whitewash and talk as one about how the tour continues to lurch from one disaster to another. In The Guardian Mike Selvey dissects the innings and 99-run defeat and struggles to find anything that England can be proud of.
Now Sydney looms, and if there is an echo of the situation from four years ago, when England went on to win the final Test in grand style, then at least they had given Australia a scare in the penultimate match. They would have rattled them more this time if they had hidden round the corner from the dressing room and gone "Boo!" as Ricky Ponting took his side on to the field.
In The Times Christopher Martin-Jenkins says that although Andrew Flintoff is likely to pay for England's failures with his captaincy role, the other players also need to share the blame and, after Melbourne, especially Kevin Pietersen.
The home team have made a point, in print and in press conferences, of praising Pietersen’s skill whenever possible. Perhaps they believe that it will go to his head. It would certainly not be beyond the plans of John Buchanan, the Australia coach, to see him as a means of dividing the England dressing-room and thereby of ruling them.
While Shane Warne has been showered with accolades after taking his 700th Test wicket, the respected statistician Bill Frindall has bucked the trend and suggested that Warne is not quite there yet.
When the electronic scoreboard flashed up "Congratulations Shane Warne: 700 Wickets" yesterday, the coughing and spluttering emanating from the commentary booth were the sounds of an indignant man choking on chocolate sponge. You could strap Bill Frindall into a barber's chair and threaten him with a fate worse than death, which would be a stick of shaving foam, a razor and a bottle of aftershave.
Shane Warne’s 700th wicket really was memorable stuff – he did it on his home ground, on Boxing Day, with a typical legbreak and went on to take four more. And Australia’s newspapers – rightly – lavished praise on one of the greatest bowlers in history. One of his home-town dailies, The Age, led its front page with the headline “89,155 salute the ’G Wiz”. Greg Baum writes that once England decided to bat first, Warne was always going to be the Boxing Day star.
Throughout Warne's incomparable career, it usually has been a matter of when, not if. This was even more so on the big stage and occasion, which he has always relished. This was Boxing Day, his last - an all-star crowd, including Brian Lara, an Ashes Test and an obdurate opponent; Warne could no more resist this moment than he could be resisted.
Ron Reed writes in the other Melbourne daily, the Herald Sun, that it was not just the achievement but the way Warne did it that made yesterday special.
Shane Warne's 700th Test wicket belongs not only at the very front of the cricket history books but should be placed prominently in a textbook too. Fittingly, it was a classic example of the exquisite and difficult art of legbreak bowling, the revival of which is the priceless legacy he will leave the game when he bows out next week. The master craftsman pitched his stock delivery on a full length just outside left-hander Andrew Strauss's off stump and watched in glee and satisfaction as it spun challengingly but not extravagantly past the bat to strike middle stump.
The imminent departure of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath from the Australia side might be giving parochial fans conniptions but as Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald, the pair should be celebrated, not mourned.
Ten more days of Test cricket remain before Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath put aside their baggy green caps. Not since Laurel and Hardy has the breaking of a partnership between a burly man and a skinny fellow caused such a rumpus. Together they have taken more than 1600 wickets for their country. Whenever the game was afoot, the captain could throw them the ball confident that the tide was about to turn. Neither man ever retreated. Neither was a champion by decree. They pursued greatness, recognised it, embraced it, used it.
Warne is not the only Melbourne icon being lauded today. In The Age, Greg Baum reflects on the great history of the MCG, which is hosting its 100th Test match (if the washed out 1970-71 Test is included).
The MCG hosted the first three Test matches, and seven of the first 11, all Australia versus England. The history of the ground is synonymous with the history of the game. Today, the MCG will stage its 100th Test, by blissful coincidence also Australia versus England. Necessarily in cricket, a century is an occasion for pause, roars, plaudits and applause. Now the MCG is a citadel, walled, turreted and bejewelled, filling the city's eastern horizon. Then, it was little more than an enclosure in the Police Paddocks, with a grandstand, but no scoreboard, telephone or electric lighting.
In The Observer, former England offspinner Vic Marks takes a look at the one-day squad … Harmison out, Panesar in - and all captained by... well, we don't know yet … and he comes to the conclusion that England's one-day preparations are as shambolic as ever.
Everywhere we see the signs of a creaking vessel, shipping water, not knowing where it is going. Although Steve Harmison knows where he is going soon: back to England. The announcement of his retirement from one-day cricket - three months before the World Cup - confirms our misgivings about the pace bowler. For him cricket seems to be a job rather than a passion and he has decided to go part-time.
It was view shared by Michael Atherton in The Sunday Telegraph, who said that it was lucky the team was announced on the same day Shane Warne retired:
It was a splendid day to bury bad news. By announcing such an undistinguished one-day squad on the day the greatest cricketer of the modern game retired, the selectors clearly hoped it would slip under the radar. By and large it did.
The English press continue to keep their eyes and pens trained on the two Australian giants who announced their retirements in succession.
While saluting the combined efforts of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath - 963 wickets in 102 Tests - Vic Marks, in The Guardian, surmises that Australia's cricket team are about to undergo the greatest upheaval they have ever experienced without the intervention of a world war or Kerry Packer. He concludes that come 2009, Australia will be weak in the spin department, and wonders just what Australia's line-up will be next November.
In the Telegraph, Mike Atherton says that Warne has a great voice, even if it betrays his dual existence.
Over the past few days, in Melbourne, children have been more interested in Warne's departure than Santa Claus's arrival – even if, as in the case of my five-year-old, they have no idea who he, Warne, is. He has been everywhere – front page, back page, editorial, leading news item and closing – his exit from the stage calculated to echo as closely as possible his domination of it, that is in the fullest glare of publicity with a dash of theatre thrown in.
No wonder Glenn McGrath wasn't keen on announcing his impending retirement simultaneously: the fast bowler wouldn't have been given a second look.
Rounding it up in The Independent is Stephen Brenkley, who terms Warne a "shrewd cookie" who saw that if cricket was a business, it was a business called show.
In his News Ltd column Glenn McGrath looks back at his wonderful career and the 13 months in the caravan. He plans to be a fast-bowling mentor when he has settled into retirement.
I had played only a handful of Sheffield Shield matches for NSW before getting the call-up to play for Australia against New Zealand at the WACA in 1993. I met half of the team for the first time when I turned up in Perth. I played against Allan Border the match before against Queensland, now he was my captain.
At the toss of the coin, Craig McDermott asked if I was nervous. I said I wasn't. He said: "Don't worry it will get worse the more you play."
McGrath said he first thought about walking away after the Brisbane Test. “That thought become stronger in Adelaide, and that's when I spoke to Jane and my manager and friend, Warren Craig. By the end of the Perth Test I had made up my mind – it was time to go.”
Rachael Heyhoe-Flint’s name will be forever synonymous with women’s cricket. She’s in Australia at the moment to follow the Ashes, but although England have lost the series she is
still her cheerful self, and full of her usual anecdotes. Mike Coward caught up with her and profiled her for The Australian newspaper.
"Can I have a chat before you leave?" I asked as the party in Perth died down. He replied: "Yeah, what about?" Sensing what I was about to say, he hastily added: "No, no, I am not talking to you, I am not talking to you, I am not talking to you." He didn't want to hear the news.
I just said: "Look mate, it's time to retire." He couldn't believe it and was in shock. "What are you talking about?"
The English press is predictably full of Shane Warne's retirement and most seem to have the tone spot on, focusing on the fact that the game is losing a legend rather than the fact that England might have a better chance against a Warne-free Australia....
CMJ gets the ball rolling in The Times paying tribute to Warne's influence on friend and foe and pointing out that he is the one member of their retiring old-guard that they will find impossible to replace.
It had to happen one day, but the news that Shane Warne will announce in his home city today that he is to retire from Test cricket at the end of the Ashes series will be as much a matter for regret as for rejoicing among the batsmen he has tormented for 14 years.
The seam position as Sreesanth releases the ball is one of the best I have seen, writes Barry Richards while analysing India's performance in the Wanderers Test.
The positives from this victory are many, but one that stands out is the brilliance of S Sreesanth writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.
History will point to Sourav Ganguly as India's most successful Test captain — at this point in time. History will also acknowledge that Dravid, often ill-advisedly referred to as 'too soft,' has stacked up milestones that will make many an Indian skipper turn green with envy.
Mukul Kesavan, writing in the Kolkata-based Telegraph, feels India's won partly because of the team they selected.
News of Shane Warne’s likely retirement puts the Australian media in a frenzy. Peter Roebuck writes in The Age that Warne will be remembered as a genius.
Warne has been the most extraordinary, exotic and entertaining cricketer the game has known. In his hands, a cricket ball could perform previously unconsidered gyrations, spinning at right angles, skidding like a puck upon ice, changing directions after an initial curl or else dropping sharply to leave the batsman groping at thin air.
Peter Lalor, in The Australian, looks at Warne’s attitude.
Warne's total and absolute self-belief is his greatest friend on the field and his worst enemy off it. A legspinner is a gambler and a charlatan by trade. He tosses the ball up and invites the batsman to go after him. He uses three-card tricks, thimbles, smoke, mirrors and good old fashioned bullshit to pull off the confidence trick that is his every wicket. On the street it is arrogance, on the field it is art.
McGrath, 36, hopes to continue playing one-day cricket to the end of the World Cup in the Caribbean next March and April. However, he is no certainty to be part of Australia's World Cup defence, with one member of Australia's hierarchy yesterday saying: "If he makes it."
However, Trevor Marshallsea writes in the Sydney Morning Herald McGrath has given up on his dream to play at the World Cup.
While his lanky, and remarkably resilient, body have allowed him to become Australia's most durable paceman - and the third-most experienced of all time with 122 Tests behind him - other forces have finally led McGrath to call time on his career. He at least has the deserved honour of leaving on his own terms.
Cracking story courtesy of This is Nottingham of how eco-friendly Ben Foster got more than he bargained for when testing his newly-invented biodegrabale box against Notts speedster Charlie Shreck. The box worked fine, but Foster hadn't reckoned on covering his eye-balls, fnarr fnarr, and took a painful above the eye after Shreck dug one in short. "I am pretty sure it was an accident":said a sheepish Foster afterwards, before adding: "The box stood up well".
Steve Waugh says Shane Warne is Australia’s second-greatest player of all time in his Daily Telegraph blog.
It's very hard to judge across eras but Shane Warne would sit pretty comfortably as Australia's second best player ever. The great Sir Don Bradman was the best but after that I believe Shane Warne would slot in pretty nicely at number two.
What made Warne so great was his love of the game. He always enjoyed the challenge of competing against the best in the toughest circumstances - that's when he produced his best.
Sreesanth's dance would go on, if not already, to become the motif of this series and his career. R Mohan, writing in The Deccan Chronicle, believes the jig showed the spirit behind the historic win.
Sreesanth’s riposte to the chest-thumping, batsman-baiting antics of Andre Nel was pure drama. It was as if the fast bowler had decided to put into dance form the Indian team’s angst and their desperation to leave the dark past behind and move on into the sunshine
The third day of the Ranji Trophy match between Delhi and Karnataka was one which saw an 18-year old set a fine example of mental strength. Virat Kohli lost his father the night before, but put the tragedy behind him and scored a courageous 90 and his 152-run stand with Puneet Bisht lifted Delhi out of dire straits.
The team saluted his gesture and gave him a standing ovation when he returned, in tears, but composed enough to hide his pain from the eyes of the public
The Ashes series was all but decided after the Adelaide Test, so the British press had plenty of time to come up with their back-page headlines when the urn was finally lost. In typically tabloid fashion, The Sun called it a “Perthetic” effort.
Sorry England surrendered The Ashes in record time yesterday. Freddie Flintoff’s Perth flops handed back the urn to Australia after just 15 days of Test cricket Down Under - the shortest defence in history.
While most Australians celebrate the return of the Ashes, Chloe Saltau in the Age sounds a warning that Australia’s renewed dominance is a bad thing for the long-term future of Test cricket. And the paper is clear that the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the ICC and the incompetent way it continues to handle world cricket.
Hold the champagne, if only for a moment. As the frail Ashes urn is escorted across the country to Melbourne, and Australia's cricketers wake rather dustily from their richly deserved series victory celebrations, it is worth considering what it means for world cricket if the second-best team in the world can be so comprehensively slaughtered by the best, as England have been by Australia in 15 days of cricket.
Australia’s newspapers have no doubt why the Ashes series has been such a one-sided affair. As Robert Craddock explains in the Herald Sun, the perception is that Australia were more desperate to win.
Justice has been done ... the Ashes have gone to the team that wanted them the most. Winning the Ashes means everything to this Australian team. They've been saying it for a while but it's not until you see Matthew Hayden shedding a tear or other players simply delirious in celebration that you realise it had become their life's obsession.
Greg Baum, writing in The Age, said Australia was simply harder and tougher than England.
Australia's harder edge was apparent yesterday when Ponting ran out Geraint Jones who, while waiting the outcome of an (unsuccessful) lbw appeal, forgot to put his foot back in his crease. Australia has been alert to every half-chance. Jones was not alert even to the danger. It was daft cricket.
And in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck lauded the man he saw as the driving force in Australia’s win.
Ponting deserved the acclaim that came upon him. He has been the campaign's outstanding figure. Sooner or later his achievements as captain will be acknowledged. A superb cricketer, he presided over an incisive performance from a hungry team. He has stood glint-eyed at the crease, alert at slip or poised at silly point, unblinking and composed. He began with a masterful hundred in Brisbane and ended with a sharp run-out in Perth.
Following one of Andre Nel's spectacular bursts of sledging against Sreesanth, on the third day at Johannesburg, he replied in similarly emphatic fashion...and just check out that celebration.
Rod Marsh has come out with some interesting comments about English cricket over the last few weeks, but his ability to spot a talented player has never been in doubt. This piece in The Observer was written the day before Alastair Cook made 116 at Perth.
Cook will probably captain England before he is 30 and will probably average over 50 in Test cricket. I'm not concerned that he is not yet in the England one-day set-up. As he matures he will find his way into that team and he will work hard enough on his athleticism and general fielding to do a more than adequate job in the field.
The attendance for the Perth Test has broken WACA records, but the crowd is missing one man who'd hope to make it via a slightly different mode of transport. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston set sail from Bilbao in late October and aimed to reach Fremantle in time to collect tickets to the third Test. Alas, a lack of wind in the has left him stranded in the ocean. Read an interview he did with The Observer.
Tragedy it is, then. While the first two boats in the race have been in Australia for several days - their Swiss and Japanese skippers oblivious to the fact that there is a cricket match going on - Sir Robin is in the middle of nowhere and does not expect to reach Australia until 27 December. Alone, alone, all all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea, as someone once wrote.
South Africa had a horrid second day at Johannesburg. Their batsmen collapsed for 84 and their bowlers allowed India to stretch their lead to 311 with five wickets in hand. One of the reasons for "South Africa's dismal batting performance and considerably below par bowling effort, Shaun Pollock excepted" is the lack of first-class cricket played by the national squad, writes Neil Manthorp on supercricket.co.za.
"If India win, it will be a fascinating human drama that Rahul Dravid’s team will owe so much to that inspirational knock from Ganguly, a man who had been given up for lost by them," writes Kadambari Murali in The Hindustan Times.
Greg Chappll said that India needed just one innings to turn their fortunes around, Bobilli Vijay Kumar says that "it's just so ironical that it had to come from Ganguly's blade".
Duncan Fletcher faced the media yesterday evening after England had been flayed around Perth by Adam Gilchrist. Selections issues were high on the agenda for the press and he continued to defend his treatment of Monty Panesar. But that isn't the only decision that has left people scratching their heads, with Michael Atherton in The Daily Telegraph asking why Sajid Mahmood was used so little by Andrew Flintoff.
Not that Mahmood was the only one who was puzzled. Rumours in the press box abounded. Maybe Flintoff was making a point of his very own. Maybe familiarity breeds contempt, and Flintoff, a fellow Lancastrian, was not particularly enamoured with Mahmood's selection in the first place. Lots of maybes and lots of rumours, which has been the case with England's selections ever since Duncan Fletcher let it be known that he and the captain did not necessarily agree on the team who took the field for the second Test.
In The Guardian, Vic Marks says that Flintoff's problems on this tour have been increased by his lack of cricket leading into the series and the England selectors have some tough decisions to make.
Inevitably, Flintoff's lack of form is now being highlighted. Last night Duncan Fletcher was asked whether he thought the captaincy was affecting Flintoff. 'I don't think so,' he said, 'at this stage'. Which prompted many to focus more on the second element of his answer: 'at this stage'. Fletcher stayed loyal on his captain's batting as well, though his observation that 'he has played some good shots' is faint praise indeed. Great batsmen play great innings. They are not interested in great shots.
Selection has also been a hot issue for the Australians and Mark Waugh says the decision to name Adam Voges in the Perth squad was the right move, while Peter Roebuck discusses Mike Hussey, who had to wait an eternity for his Test chance and is now making the most if it.
Indeed, versatility counts amongst the left-hander's attributes. He seems equally happy against pace or spin, up or down the order, defending or attacking, on hard or soft pitches, in five-day or 50-over matches. He adjusts his game without fuss, puts his head down and goes about the business of putting runs on the board. Long apprenticeships need not be harmful. Provided hope does not die, they can be instructive. In his years of relative obscurity, Hussey learnt a lot about cricket, most especially about batting.
As Australia move closer to regaining the Ashes the knives are being sharpened against Duncan Fletcher, the man many in the media feel is to blame for England's problems. The earlier omission of Monty Panesar is still fuelling the criticism and James Lawton, in The Independent says Fletcher has out-thought and out-planned.
Panesar didn't only represent the possibility of a striking new weapon in England's attack. He also promised a fresh state of mind, optimistic, attacking, filled with a belief in his own ability to make a difference.
In the Guardian, Richard Williams writes pessimistically about Flintoff's chances of playing the next Ashes. The bowler, Williams feels, has been hurried into service with an ankle yet to heal fully.
For a fast bowler, particularly one of Flintoff's heft, to feel pain in his landing foot is to be condemned to a very distinctive kind of agony. In order to deliver the ball properly, that foot must mash down hard on the compressed earth, acting as the load-bearing pivot for the entire effort. Any mental reservation created by the hurt will tend to remove the desire to add the final ounce of weight that creates the edge of hostility
The papers, both in England and Australia, are paying tribute to the efforts of Monty Panesar for breathing life back into the Ashes series with his five-wicket haul on the opening day at the WACA.
In The Age Peter Roebuck talks about the efforts Panesar has put in to make the most of his talents.
Perhaps the sight of a familiar figure standing at the opposite end had helped to settle such butterflies as must have been fluttering in the slowie's stomach. Panesar and Michael Hussey had spent a season together in Northampton and spent every spare moment wrapped in mutually advantageous duels in the nets, thereby impressing comrades prepared to consider a wider range of activities.
In the same paper, Alex Brown takes the popular line that Panesar's success has fuelled the debate about where he'd been hiding for the first two matches.
The "team balance" defence used to justify the selection of Giles in Brisbane and Adelaide now seems more preposterous than ever after Panesar yesterday became the first Test spinner to claim five wickets on a first-day Perth wicket. A cricket team must pick its best bowlers, irrespective of their skills in other facets of the game.
Richard Williams, in The Guardian, suggests if the BBC Sports Personality had been announced a week later, Monty would have been a shoe-in.
Meanwhile, Simon Barnes raises a glass to Panesar and says he should always have been the first choice.
Two iron rules of selection. The first is that you never pick a player for his secondary accomplishment, unless there is nothing to choose between two players for their primary skill. You don’t pick a bowler because he can bat. The second rule is that defensive selections almost always go wrong.
The Australian media has been obsessed with Monty Panesar in the lead-up to the third Test and after the way he bowled when finally given an opportunity, that is unlikely to change. But what grabbed reporters’ attention the day before the Test was the size of Panesar’s hands, as Robert Craddock explains in The Courier Mail.
Panesar's hands are so big he can comfortably fit three cricket balls into the palms and fingers of each. The middle finger of his left hand, which controls his deliveries and imparts some turn, is an extraordinary 11cm from base to tip.
Chloe Saltau wrote in The Age that Monty’s big hands give him a natural advantage.
John Emburey, the former England off spinner who was coach of Northamptonshire when a 16-year-old Panesar arrived for a trial with the county in 1998, said the young Sikh's fingers were the longest he had seen on a finger spinner, and provide a prodigious natural advantage.
The supposed lack of character in Australia's Test pitches has kept all sorts of "experts" talking during the Ashes series. A common theme is players harking back to the good old days of raging turners at Sydney and hard, fast Perth strips. Peter Roebuck, writing in The Age, made his opinion clear.
As a matter of the highest urgency, Australian pitches need to recover their pip. Curators around the world are under pressure to prepare featherbeds so that matches go the distance and television revenues are paid in full. Australian surfaces used to be lively on the first morning, and winning the toss could be a mixed blessing. Now most of them are duds. Presumably, some clown will presently blame the ICC.
Steve Harmison is a rhythm bowler. And, although Ponting was polite enough not to say so, when the rhythm disappears, the melody and the harmony tend to go with it. Harmison began this Test series with a ball so disastrous that it has already gone down in Ashes history; last week the sheer ordinariness of his final spell in Adelaide, at a time when England needed an all-out effort, appeared to exhaust the patience of Andrew Flintoff, his captain and friend.
InThe Guardian, Richard Williams looks back to Harmison's last Test outing at Perth when he again lost it.
Harmison himself is unlikely to need reminding that it was here in Perth, in his first Ashes series four years ago, that he lost his rhythm in the biggest possible way. There were nine runs off his first over, four byes in his second, Matthew Hayden pulled the last ball of the third into the hands of Alex Tudor, Ponting hooked him for six in the fourth and at the close of the opening day Harmison had bowled eight overs and taken one for 27. It had been an eventful spell but gave no hint of what would follow the next morning ...
Will Sachin Tendulkar get out of his lean run and score valuable runs in South Africa? Yes, feels South Africa batting great Graeme Pollock, in an interview to Mumbai-based tabloid Mid-Day:
He hasn’t been playing enough. He has not looked confident and convincing as he was years ago. But once the talent is there — you see it with Lara all the time — disappointing in a few innings and suddenly he puts it together — I think you will see that Tendulkar will be a contributor in this series.
Rod Marsh, the former Australia wicketkeeper who headed the ECB’s Academy from 2001 to 2005, has slammed the England board, accusing it of virtually losing the Ashes when it decided to allow Troy Cooley to return to Australia. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Marsh pulled no punches.
I've been really saddened by what's happened to England since then … I've just thought, 'What's going on here?' How can you beat Australia last summer and then perform so dismally in the winter against Pakistan and India - and even more abysmally in one-day cricket?
England, instead, have gone in only one direction - and that's backwards. So that's why it doesn't surprise me in the least that they're already 2-0 down. The only thing that will surprise me about England is if they don't lose 5-0. If we get rain and a flat pitch they might escape with one draw - but otherwise it's 5-0.
Martyn, who shocked the cricket world by retiring last Friday and fleeing to the United States, had around five months left to run on a contract believed to be worth around $460,000 per year.
The Australian Cricketers’ Association was hopeful the remaining $200,000 for the unfulfilled months of his contract would be paid to Martyn and several prominent CA board members saw merit in this. Its logic was that it wanted to send a message to the side's ageing generation of senior players not to let money keep them in the game longer than they wanted to.
Chloe Saltau writes in the Sydney Morning Herald about the England team’s trip to see Elton John in Perth. Andrew Ramsey reports in The Australian about Alastair Cook’s claim pitches are bouncier in England than in Australia.
Paul Daffey, a Melbourne freelance writer, talks to Andy Gemmell, a blind England cricket fan who is enjoying his third Ashes tour to Australia, for the online publication Eureka Street.
He learned to play cricket on the beach - his talent took him around the world. But for the legendary batsman Viv Richards there's still no place like home. Click here for the interview by Kieran Falconer in The Independent.
I know a visitor like Beefy would appreciate the local bars too. I mean the real local bars, in St John's. Places like Points or Villa. There are lots of places where you can drink rum by the water. You don't have to be in the best environment, or in the greatest or most refined buildings, but you can just watch the life go by. These bars have character. There's always guys dancing, smashing down dominoes, watching telly, and the radio would be on as well, with high talk into the night. I take him to a place of locals, mostly my friends, and he is comfortable in that environment. Some would be drinkers and they would have heard about his feats of drinking and want to take him on.
Hopefully years from now, when sports tourism has really and finally taken off and bringing in millions of dollars into the national coffers, it will be remembered as the weekend, or one of the weekends, when it all started.
"I have never experienced such a sense of loss after a cricket match and I hope I never feel that bad ever again. I wasn't boo-hooing or anything like that but the tears were there. We've taken huge stick and I can't argue with that but don't accuse this England team of not caring ... I was in shock for hours after the game. It wasn't until I woke up the next morning that the real horror began to sink in.
Do India need a bowling coach? Urgently, writes K Shriniwas Rao in The Indian Express, adding that Ian Frazer, India's assistant coach who's bowled just four first-class balls, isn't the answer:
Batsmen doubling as bowling consultants, experienced bowlers playing mentors, the troubled pacer Irfan Pathan picking on the brains of any former pace bowler who strolls to the India nets and Munaf Patel’s desperation to chat with Glenn McGrath all point to one thing: the inadequacy of the coaching staff to provide a support system to the bowlers.
I would say that it is not precisely bad bowling but lack of direction that is getting them so unsettled. India have to accept that they don’t have an Akram or a McGrath and they have to make do with what they have. For that, precisely, they need somebody who can help them in retaining the focus time and again.
The Sunday newspapers are bursting with analysis of England’s capitulation at Adelaide last week, beginning with a roundtable at The Sunday Telegraph. The usual lot are there: Mike Atherton, Ian Chappell and Andrew Strauss are chaired by Scyld Berry – and the quartet discuss England’s negativity on the final morning
Chappell: I didn't understand the lack of urgency, like in the running between wickets. I'd have sent Pietersen in at two-down on the fifth morning to let Australia know we still wanted to win the game. To me, that was the difference on the last day – one team were thinking they could win it. A lot of Test cricket is about the message you are sending to the opposition. For instance, when Gilchrist started whacking a few he was sending the message 'we can still win this game'. I don't mean whacking them in the air but you've got to attack Warne. He got one for 167 in the first innings because you guys attacked him thoughtfully. Collingwood [who made 206] doesn't go belting balls in the air but he played attackingly the whole time.
And Atherton sounds a warning to those who believe, or hope, that Monty Panesar will turn England’s fortunes around
Atherton: Monty's not going to be the panacea that the public think he is – finger-spinners are rarely match-winners here – but he is a more attacking option than Giles and therefore should be in the team.
Chappell: What is your back-up plan if the ball's not swinging in Australia? Unless you can bowl really fast or wrist-spin, you've got to have somebody who can beat batsmen in the flight because it's bloody difficult to get wickets, especially if you're up against good players. Even though Giles is bowling slower there's just nothing on it. If you're reverse-sweeping him on the fifth day [as Mike Hussey did], that tells you something about what's going on.
Atherton: Giles hasn't played any cricket for the best part of a year.
Strauss: In Ashley's defence it became like a one-day game, when fields have to be different and you can't create that pressure with men around the bat. All credit to Mike Hussey who made it harder for Gilo to build up any pressure.
In the same paper Berry senses that Panesar knows his time is nigh
It was the first time England's left-arm spinners had gone head-to-head. Ashley Giles and Monty Panesar had bowled a couple of overs each in tandem during the tour-opener in Canberra against the Prime Minister's XI, but yesterday was the first time that they could be fairly compared and contrasted. The comparison ended up all in the younger man's favour, and is sure to lead to Panesar's reinstatement in England's team for the third Test starting on Thursday.
The difference in quality was as wide as the gap between their ages. Panesar, 24, bowled heavily over-spun balls which dipped and gripped and were yet so accurate that he usually had three men around the bat. Giles, 33, rolled his index finger and floated up balls which were as neat and respectable as a dowager on her way to Sunday church, and about as seductive.
Over at the Sunday Times, Brett Lee gives a behind-the-scenes view of Australia’s win – and celebrations
I had been charged with providing the entertainment for the evening and kept the party swinging with an iPod until 30 seconds to midnight, when I pressed the pause button and stood on a chair. At first everyone thought I was going to make a speech and I had to endure some pretty crude heckling before order was restored.
“Okay, boys,” I announced, “we’re going to have a toast. I want everyone to hold up their beers because . . . (I glanced at my watch for dramatic effect) . . . in exactly five seconds time Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff will be 29 years old!” The room erupted with a massive cheer, and after we had sung Happy Birthday and some hip-hoorays, the party resumed with a dedication that I thought he might appreciate: My Way by Frank Sinatra.
“Happy birthday, Freddie, you old bugger!” I said.
If the cricket isn't very entertaining at least the after-dinner speeches will keep you awake. Michael Fullilove, without punning on his name, writes a piece on best cricket speeches in The Age
As prime minister, Menzies became famous for timing his overseas travel to coincide with important cricket matches. That practice was obvious even in 1938. In his VCA speech, Menzies noted that by some extraordinary circumstance, prime minister Joseph Lyons had asked him to go to Britain that year to confer with ministers "about something or other", and that he had sent word to the conference organisers asking that they keep the full list of the Australian cricket fixtures next to their inkwells
In language that may inspire a few of the current Australian line-up, Denton urged Border not to retire prematurely. "You'll know the right time to get out. There'll be any number of telltale signs. One day, for instance, you'll call for a runner and they'll send out someone with a walking frame. Or maybe one day you'll find yourself prodding the pitch — not to smooth out any bumps, but to look for a nice, soft spot where you can have a nap. Or you may simply find yourself going for a quick two, turning for the second run, and then completely forgetting why it was you were running in the first place."
Ashley Giles is once again fighting for his England future after two poor Tests against Australia, which included dropping Ricky Ponting on 35 at Adelaide and then leaking runs as the home side marched to victory. In his tour diary for The Independent Giles reveals that missed chance will continue to haunt him, but all he can do is keeping trying.
You can't bring it back - it's gone. I will just spend the next 20 years worrying about it...I am two first-class games in to my comeback and I know there will be a push for Monty to play but if I am called to do a job I will, as always, do it the best I can.
Damien Martyn’s retirement came as a surprise to everyone but according to the Australian media, he never was one to follow the pack. Peter Roebuck wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that Martyn was a brilliant but flawed character.
Despite his many successes, though, a feeling lingers that Martyn might have given more to the game. He never lay naked before us, pain evident, joy unhidden. Instead he was skilful, and as dry as a creek. He did not engage, did not allow us to join him on his journey. His eyes lacked delight. Somewhere along the way Martyn was hurt. A brilliant youngster and a natural leader of the Australian under-19 team, he seemed destined for greatness. Even now it is possible to remember him all those years ago, representing his country in Chelmsford, swooping on a ball, throwing down the stumps, popular, relaxed, the gun of the side. But the flaw was also evident, the headstrong attitude that held him back for so many years.
Sourav Ganguly marked his return to the scheme of Indian Test cricket with a fine 83 against Rest of South Africa at Potchefstroom. Though the top order came a cropper against quick, seaming pace attack and Irfan Pathan hit his maiden first-class century, Ganguly was the focus across the dailies.
In the Hindustan Times, Kadambari Murali admits the pleasure of watching Ganguly show " a disbelieving world just what cussed self-belief can do". The glamourous shots were there, she notes , and the man exuded a calm, composed nature while batting - despite being clanged on the head by the impressive Morne Morkel.
The Hindu's S Dinakar analyses Ganguly's innings and notes an unmistakable solidity about his ways at the crease:
The left-hander played close to his body, revealed sound judgment in the corridor. He firmly got behind the line of the ball, was poised in, both, defence and offence.
He has changed his stance. Earlier he was leaning too heavily on his front leg. Now, he is more upright, more balanced. His body weight better distributed, his footwork against the pacemen has improved.
In Ganguly's backyard, The Telegraphpraised the manner in which he "overcame the adverse situation bravely after yet another top-order failure against the pace attack had left India tottering at the brink".
Click here for Cricinfo's coverage of Ganguly's comeback
Duncan Fletcher is privately fuming at being held accountable for omitting Panesar from the Adelaide Test, a match where England's No. 1 spinner Ashley Giles took just 2-149 to leave his career hanging by a thread.
The Courier-Mail has learned that at team selection meetings in Adelaide, Fletcher leaned toward Panesar to play in the Test but captain Andrew Flintoff went for his Lancashire team-mate, swing bowler Jimmy Anderson.
Brett Lee reveals in his News Ltd column how Ricky Ponting inspired the team to victory at Adelaide, which was the “greatest Test win of our careers”.
"Look, there are a lot of people who have written us off in this Test match," Ricky said during Australia’s first innings. "Not just winning but even getting a draw. Let's go out and prove to them we can win this Test match."
In the Sydney Morning Herald Trevor Marshallsea speaks to Terry Jenner about Shane Warne’s wickets at Adelaide while the paper also tells how Michael Hussey changed to bat left-handed after watching Allan Border.
