Pampered and under-prepared.
That is what the critics said about England's Ashes performance on Friday after Australia won by 10 wickets in the final Test in Sydney to complete its first 5-0 series sweep for 86 years.
"It's one hell of a beating. They have just been murdered," former England opener Geoffrey Boycott said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Whenever the questions have been asked of England, they have faltered and they have not been mentally strong enough, or technically good enough, to hold the Australians at bay," he said.
England lost every game easily and the outspoken Yorkshireman said the players did not deserve the royal awards they received from Queen Elizabeth II after beating Australia in 2005 to regain the little urn for the first time in 19 years.
"People like me played 100 Test matches to get one," Boycott said of his OBE.
"I didn't play five Test matches and get one. I feel so bad about mine, I'm going to tie it round my cat," he said.
Two more former England captains, Ian Botham and Nasser Hussain, said the current players under coach Duncan Fletcher had it too easy compared to Australia.
"I've traveled here with the Australians a little bit in the same hotel," Hussain said.
"They get on a little minibus every morning, Shane Warne with a [cigarette] out of the window. You see England with big buses, security guards, 45 back-room staff, all pampered. `Everything OK? Your bags OK?' Warney is carrying his bag on his back with his shirt hanging out -- they do it themselves," he said.
Hussain said he was amazed by an interview with paceman Steve Harmison, who is flying home after the Ashes series.
"The interview for me summed up everything that's been wrong on this tour," Hussain said.
"Do you think Shane Warne runs to the coach and says: `What am I going to do, coach?' Do it yourself. When you do things yourself and you're not pampered and you're not looked after all your life, when you get in pressure situations you'll get out of them yourself," Hussain said.
England players are contracted to the team, which means they don't have to play for their counties.
Botham, who scored a series-turning 149 against Australia in 1981, said that may have taken away their competitive edge.
"We've gone a little bit too much towards what the players want rather than what we know is good for the players," Botham said.
"England were undercooked and under prepared. We must get that right and maybe it's just a bit too easy for them at the moment," he said.
England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive David Collier said that a comprehensive review of the tour will soon take place.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier