At last, England can celebrate. Capping a seven-week contest that gripped the nation, the English team reclaimed the Ashes -- a 123-year-old cricket competition -- by beating world champion Australia 2-1 in the five-match series.
Watched live on Monday by 24,000 cheering supporters at The Oval cricket ground in south London and millions more on television, England held off Australia on the final day to force a draw and win cricket's prized urn for the first time since the 1986-'87 series.
As celebrations broke out across the country, Queen Elizabeth II sent her congratulations to the England players for their "magnificent achievement of regaining the Ashes."
PHOTOS: EPA
"This has been a truly memorable series and both sides can take credit for giving us all such a wonderfully exciting and entertaining summer of cricket at its best," she said.
A victory rally was to be held in Trafalgar Square yesterday. Tens of thousands of people were expected to celebrate the country's biggest sporting achievement since England won soccer's World Cup in 1966 and the Rugby World Cup in 2003.
In a country where soccer dominates, cricket has been in decline in the UK in recent years. But this summer's compelling matches and victory over the usually invincible Australians has given the sport an injection of new life.
"It has brought cricket alive in Britain and even around the world. And what's more the players have been great sporting role models for kids. The Ashes victory is great for the sport," said David Folb, chairman of the Lashings Cricket Club, a celebrity team.
The series has enthralled England and Australia all summer. British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have been watching the matches.
Florists have reported an upsurge in flower sales to husbands feeling guilty at watching cricket all day long.
At The Oval, fans clambered onto rooftops and hung off cherry pickers to catch a glimpse of the action. Pubs screening the match were packed as English fans roared their team home and some of the thousands of Australians living in London drowned their sorrows.
Even the celebrities could not stay away.
Movie star Hugh Grant bit his nails as the English battled to defeat their favorite enemies on the fifth and final day of the fifth and final match of the series. The final match has also been watched by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Mick Jagger had televisions installed during his world tour to catch the action.
The Ashes refers to a mock obituary placed in the Sporting Times newspaper in 1882 after Australia upset all the odds to beat England, reading, "In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket, which died at the Oval, deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. RIP. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia."
Every couple of years England and Australia do battle for a tiny urn said to contain some wooden ashes, and the Australians, who excel at most sports, had not lost an Ashes series in 19 years.
The Aussies, who held a combined 29-9 margin of Test victories over England during the past 16 years, arrived boasting they would win this series 5-0.
Australia won the first match, but since then the English eclipsed their old foes with aggressive, enterprising cricket and were 2-1 up going into the last match, which began on Thursday.
Australia needed a victory to tie the series 2-2 and retain the Ashes. England needed just a draw to take the series. In the end, England survived the tense final hours and the match ended in end-of-summer dusk. England's star was a South Africa-born batsman, Kevin Pietersen, who scored 158 runs.
"It's an amazing feeling," England captain Michael Vaughan said.
"It's been a rollercoaster of a summer. At the beginning of the tournament, it was a real distant dream. It's now become reality because the lads have put a hell of a lot of hard work in, they believed in their own ability and they've known how to express themselves," Vaughan said.
Kevin Johnson, a 45-year-old civil servant watching the final day's play in a London pub, said England was hungry for cricket success after the recent poor performances by the national soccer team, including a 1-0 World Cup qualifying loss to Northern Ireland.
"I think with the football team doing particularly badly it's nice to feel some success. It's a feel good factor. We've got a good young team. If they keep playing the way they've been playing, hopefully we'll be good for the long term," Johnson said.
Emma Wright, 28, agreed.
"I've been sitting in the office with the headphones on and listening on the Internet," she said.
"Every time a wicket has been taken or we've hit a six I've been roaring, and so has the rest of the office," she said.
"It's huge for the cricketers. A lot of the players were playing two to three years ago and they were being slated by the English press and people. They've held it together, pulled through and they've had a fantastic series," Wright said.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later