The Ashes 2011
This supplement is a collection of 3 features around the England victory against Australia this year. Here's a taste of what you'll find in this exclusive supplement...
The Ashes Diary
1st Test - The blockbuster that became a record catalogue
IT BEGAN with a bang, ended with a whimper. Three balls into the series the stands at the Gabba were jam-packed, cacophonous and intimidating and a desolate England captain was heading back to the pavilion with his dreaded duck...
2nd Test - Can bat, can bowl, can field
IT NEVER rains but it pours. Four years ago it was England’s batsmen who unravelled humiliatingly on the final day at Adelaide, so they could be permitted some schadenfreude after watching Australia follow suit this time. With storms predicted for the afternoon, the final six Australian wickets fell for 66 runs before lunch to hand England victory by an innings and 71 runs to go 1-0 up. That the rain settled in two and a half hours later was the final insult and there was so much of it that it could have been a nation sobbing...
3rd Test - Johnson swings it for Australia
AND ON the second day he rose again. The man England thought they had banished from the series at Brisbane returned to pummel them at Perth. Myth no more, Magic Johnson was back. And more importantly so were Australia in an explosive and electric match in the Wild West. Their all-pace attack, argued for by Ricky Ponting against the wishes of the selectors who wanted another new spinner in Michael Beer, probed and pounded England into submission. Damned and dismissed by press and public alike before the Test, they revived the country’s wavering belief in their team and reignited the series...
4th Test - Back to the saggy green
THROUGHOUT England’s long and miserable years of Ashes subservience was there ever a day to match the depths to which Australia sank on Boxing Day 2010? There were other days that cut England as deeply to the soul – the first at Brisbane in 2002-03, the fifth at Adelaide four years later – but none in which it could be said, by dint of hard, statistical fact, that a match had been rendered unsalvageable within a mere three sessions of its beginning...
5th Test - The ruthless finish
CRICKET teams have relaxed and become a little demob happy in circumstances such as those England faced in the fifth Test at Sydney. Their mission had been essentially accomplished. The Ashes were retained. Two innings victories testified to their superiority. But superior is as superior does. The way Andrew Strauss’s side overran Australia here was as impressive as anything else they had achieved on the tour. Strauss himself said he had never played in an England team as confident as this one...
