Paul Hopkins

3-1, who would have predicted that before the tour…. Well me actually but as I’m not a betting man there’s no point going into that! Australia were thoroughly out played throughout the series, how England manged to lose the one test is beyond me as they were so much better than the Australians. Well done England!

So I suppose a few questions need to be asked. How did England win? Were Australian that bad? remember they lost the three matches by over an innings, that’s a huge margin! When looking for inspiration on how to write this post I was direct to this article, written before the Ashes started, it’s comedy genius now we know what we know but it is kind of the exact opposite to the article which is why England won! So I’m going to use the authors titles but change the content to what he should have actually said.

1. Overrated: The author claimed that England thought they were better than they were. I think England, under Flower and Strauss’ leadership have always kept their feet firmly planted on the ground, they have worked hard in all areas of the game and never said ‘we are good enough we don’t need to get any better’, they are constantly looking at ways to improve. In contrast, Australia have had their heads firmly planted in the sand about how good they are. They have some talent in their team but no where near the class they have had for the last few years.

2. Kevin Pietersen: See below, 5. no superstars

3 No top speedster: Is speed all that is required from a bowler? England have proved consistent bowling is the key, great use of swing and reverse swing have undone the Australian top order.

4 Passive captain: Strauss has lead by example, he has kept a cool head, he has made good decisions and helped get England back on track after the slightly dodgy performance at the WACA. Ricky lost his cool on several occasions, made bad decisions and performed very badly with the bat. Enough said on that one!

5 No superstars: Perhaps this is yet another of Australia’s problems. England are not a team of individual superstars, they are a team. Something that England football team should also listen to. The bowler’s have performed as a unit brilliantly, complementing each other. All the batsman have at one point stuck their hand up and got a big score. Finally, England have performed brilliantly in the field, catching very well, putting pressure on the batsman and supported the bowlers.

6 Over-analysis: Their research on how to get people out seemed to work with only really Hussey putting up much resistance with the bat. In contrast Australia seemed completely out of ideas!

7 No depth: England showed that they have depth in their bowling unit, with those having to come in for tactical reasons or injury standing up and contributing incredibly well. I would argue that perhaps Tremlett actually bowled better than Broad did! I would agree that Australia don’t have a big gap between their ‘top-tier’ players and those on the standby list, they lack quality across the board!!!

8 Chokers: Not anymore, well at least not the cricket team!

9 Warm-ups: Perfect preparation.

10 Scars: have now healed!

In summary; Emgland were very good, Australia weren’t!!! I hope England can build on this performance and make it to World number 1, I don’t think they have anything to fear from any other team but they have to prove they are better than everyone else. Australian on the other hand need to go back to the drawing board otherwise they could start dropping further in the rankings!