One of the charms of Test cricket is that a match scheduled to last five days allows for the possibility of a fightback, even if a team falls behind early on.
However, it was a charm completely lacking from the Ashes this year, which ended with England winning the five-match series 3-2 despite Australia’s innings and 46-run win in the concluding Test at The Oval on Sunday.
This Ashes equaled in length the shortest five-Test series of modern times of 18 days that took place when England played the West Indies in 2000.
The fifth day was not needed in any of the matches, with the nearest thing to a “close” contest being England’s 169-run win in the series opener in Cardiff.
Prior to the series, both sides spoke about their intention to play aggressive cricket.
It became such an ingrained mantra, it was almost as if the thought of playing out a maiden filled some batsmen with dread.
Australia rectified their approach at The Oval, where their opening boundary did not arrive until the 15th over of the match and they still piled up 481, but by then it was too late to save the Ashes.
“Full credit to England — they won the key moments in this series, they outplayed us,” Australia coach Darren Lehmann said.
“We had four of the five top wicket-takers and three of the four top run-scorers, but we didn’t win the key moments,” the former Australia batsman said.
The green-tinged pitch at Trent Bridge reopened the debate about just how much home advantage is acceptable.
While the English climate produces surfaces that are generally more conducive to swing and seam bowling than many places elsewhere in the world, there was a feeling following Australia’s 405-run win in the second Test on a docile pitch at Lord’s of groundsmen being instructed to prepare wickets that aided horizontal movement.
The irony was that it needed an Australian, in new England coach Trevor Bayliss, to point this out.
However, while the WACA pitch in Perth might be quicker than many around the world, at least visiting teams know what they are going to get, whereas the suspicion remains that wickets in England can too often be made to order.
“I think Test cricket is a five-day battle... The fans of the game deserve to see a really good contest for five days,” retiring Australia captain Michael Clarke said. “I think the past three Test matches have not been that case.”
Unsurprisingly, Bayliss disagreed, saying that playing the moving ball was a skill in itself.
“You look at the five games, if the second team had batted like the first we would have had five-day games,” Bayliss said. “The wicket didn’t change in 10 minutes from one innings to the next and it certainly didn’t change in an hour and a half at Trent Bridge. I think the wickets, with a bit in them, is different to what these guys are used to.”
“I think the batters have to learn to fight a little bit harder... Just to watch batsmen belting the ball everywhere, to me, is not what Test cricket is about,” he said.
For the limited-overs series, England have rested Joe Root, with the star batsman left out of the squads for both the upcoming lone Twenty20 international and five one-day internationals.
Root, the Ashes player of the series after his 460 runs played a central role in England’s win, has been a key player in all three formats in recent times. However, with England facing tough Test series away to Pakistan and South Africa later this year, England’s selectors have given the 24-year-old a break from international duty.Also omitted are senior bowlers James Anderson, out with a side strain, and Stuart Broad.
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