Category: Australia Cricket

Will the captain return? Will Nathan Lyon play? Who will open? Ashes hostilities are renewed and the hosts don’t need to ask too many questions

At last, at long last, an Ashes series is about to start. It feels that way, anyway, after so many months of lead-up, such an eternal blur of preview and prediction and preamble, were supposed to reach their end – only to find that the end was instead a momentary interruption, a hiccup, an indigestion-dream of a Test from Perth, a contest done in the span of 31 hours, leaving everyone to return to punditry and prognostication for a further 11 blasted and benighted days.

We are, for pity’s sake, in a discussion cycle about Ben Stokes correctly applying a bike helmet while not on a bike, or Steve Smith correctly applying eye-black stickers in his Tim Tebow tribute act, or the archaeologically uncovered fact that Australian teams have a good record at the Gabba. Like farmers waiting for the rains, we are praying for play to start to let us talk about something that has happened, rather than something that might. Even the day-night format means another wait, four more hours than would usually be the case before the balm of the first ball.

Continue reading...

After years of selectors arguing that his presence brings stability to Australia, the injured opener is now the team’s main source of uncertainty

As far as surprises go, a 38.95-year-old with a back problem continuing to have a back problem is not up there with the end of The Sixth Sense. The only twists in this story are the ones that Usman Khawaja can’t currently do. With the second Ashes Test in Brisbane coming up on 4 December, the capricious nature of such injuries made it odd that the batter was included in the first place in Australia’s squad on 30 November, and less odd that he was ruled out again on 2 December. But here we are, still engaged in the dance that Australia’s selectors have been doing through a reluctance to part with Khawaja at the top of the order.

From here, other results will decide whether we have reached the end of what has been, like so many others, a very good Test career that declined irreversibly toward its end. For two years Khawaja has struggled with the level of fast bowling that Test openers must combat, looking increasingly out of sorts in the process. Throughout that period, thanks to the faith shown in him by selectors, the solution has remained in his own two hands. One big score, one vigil of the sort he once made routine, and he could lock in the confidence that his later-stage version could bring the benefit of experience with no trade-off in reflexes.

Continue reading...

Mixed messages over captain Pat Cummins’s potential return to bowling in the Ashes are a curiously dismissive attitude towards the paying public

You could speculate about whether Cricket Australia deliberately prefers to be opaque regarding player availability and team plans, or whether it just has a deficiency in communications, but once again the fitness of players and the makeup of the XI is left to be inferred from the selection in the larger squad of 14 players for the second Ashes Test in Brisbane.

Normally, a board naming an unchanged squad would not be much news. This time it is, thanks to the possible movement in either direction of Pat Cummins and Usman Khawaja, neither of which has now eventuated.

Continue reading...

The parallels are imperfect but, as with Michael Vaughan’s Ashes winners, hyper-aggressive cricket with a tweaked approach in the second Test is the 2025 cohort’s only chance of winning

Twenty years on, a montage of the 2005 Ashes still tingles the spine. Close your eyes and you can probably make your own, with an Embrace soundtrack if you want to be right on the nose. Chances are you’ll see Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff belting sixes with lusty abandon; Geraint Jones wheeling away after winning the epic Edgbaston Test; Ashley Giles calmly patting the winning runs at Trent Bridge; Flintoff’s messianic dismissal of Ricky Ponting at Edgbaston; Simon Jones detonating Michael Clarke’s off stump at Old Trafford.

All those moments came in England victories or winning draws. But no 2005 montage is complete without images of Ponting being cut below the eye or Justin Langer’s right elbow ballooning in real time. Both wounds were inflicted by Steve Harmison on the first morning at Lord’s, a game that Australia won emphatically by 239 runs. When the story of the series was written, those blows – and the way England duffed Australia up in the first innings – were an essential chapter.

Continue reading...

• Optus Stadium donates fresh produce after England’s capitulation

• OZHarvest redistributes ‘hundreds of kilos’ of food to charities

The shortened Ashes Test in Perth might have left administrators scrambling to recover a multimillion-dollar shortfall, broadcasters scrambling to fill three days of airtime and fans wondering what to do with newfound time on their hands, but for others, England’s early capitulation in the series opener was a blessing.

A huge surplus of food, which was intended for a bumper Optus Stadium crowd with a third day of cricket anticipated but never used as the game wrapped up inside two days, has been donated to charitable causes across Western Australia.

Continue reading...

• Opener dealt with back spasms in Perth as Travis Head excelled

• Josh Hazlewood’s injury not bad enough to sideline him for series

Australia coach Andrew McDonald has failed to guarantee Usman Khawaja will be selected for the second Ashes Test, even if the under-pressure veteran opener is fit, while Josh Hazlewood is expected to take “some part” in the series despite speculation hovering over the severity of the star quick’s hamstring injury.

Khawaja dealt with back spasms during the series opener in Perth, batting at No 4 in the first innings, then wasn’t required in the stunning day two run chase.

Continue reading...

From pyrotechnics in Perth to the denouement in Sydney, our team of writers outline their hopes and fears for the five Tests

Ali Martin A full-blooded Ashes tour – both sets of supporters in the stands watching a hard-fought contest – after the pandemic proved something of a buzzkill four years ago.

Continue reading...

Australians dominate at the very top of our list but the overall numbers are split evenly and England lead the way for all-rounders

• The 100 greatest men’s Ashes cricketers of all time

• Barney Ronay on the No 1 | Video: review the top 10

More than 800 men have played in an Ashes Test. England picked most of them in the summer of 1989. But the process of selecting the Guardian’s Ashes Top 100 required something more scientific than that infamous shemozzle.

Let’s start with the small print. We asked 51 judges to select their top 50 men’s Ashes cricketers, from which we calculated a top 100: 50 points for No 1, 49 for No 2 and so on. The voting rules were simple. Players were assessed solely on their performances in Ashes cricket, though judges could interpret that any way they liked. (Yep, someone did vote for Gary Pratt.) The judges had to pick at least 15 players from each country and a minimum of five from each of five different eras: players who made their debut before the first world war; in the interwar years; from the second world war to 1974; from 1975 till 1999; and from 2000 onwards.

Continue reading...

He coaxed greatness from teammates, bent occasions to his will and mastered the most complex of arts, but best of all he connected like few others in sport

• The 100 greatest men’s Ashes cricketers of all time

Raise the Playboy pants like a pirate flag. Twirl the big brimmer in celebration. It was always going to be Shane, really, wasn’t it.

We did of course have a countdown first, because people love countdowns, because cricket is basically one unceasing countdown, an endless pencil stub ticking off names and numbers. There were 99 members of the supporting cast to be ushered to their spots, the non-Shanes of history, meat in the Ashes room.

Continue reading...

• Fast bowlers were both assessed for hamstring injuries

• Green does not bowl on day two of Sheffield Shield game

Josh Hazlewood has indicated his hamstring scare is not serious and he will join the squad as planned after Australia suffered a double injury concern just nine days out from the first Ashes Test.

It is not such good news for fellow quick Sean Abbott, who along with Hazlewood left NSW’s Sheffield Shield game with Victoria on Wednesday for a hamstring scan after bowling in the first session.

Continue reading...

Sport’s famous rivalry began in 1877 and since then 853 men have featured in Australia v England Tests. But who are the very best of the best?

• Barney Ronay on the No 1 | Video: review the top 10

• Check how all the judges voted | Our methodology

• Every ball of the Ashes, no spin. Support us today

Continue reading...

• Australia captain is on track to feature at Gabba next month

• But paceman may need to rest during final three Tests

Australia captain Pat Cummins is back bowling multiple overs on a reduced run-up and has targeted returning to the team for the second Ashes Test against England, a day-nighter in Brisbane starting on 4 December.

The fast bowler has been sidelined by a lower-back issue since July and has already been ruled out of the series opener in Perth, where he will be replaced as skipper by Steve Smith.

Continue reading...

The line-up for the Perth Test appears to be locked in after a question at the top of the order was answered and the dominoes tumbled further down

In the end, there were few surprises. Even the most forgone conclusion of an Ashes squad will still create weeks of speculation one way or another, but answering one question at the top of the order has knocked over the other unresolved ones, tipping like dominoes as we make our way down the list.

Barring injury, the only new player in the eventual XI will be Jake Weatherald, the 31-year-old Northern Territorian who in cricketing terms became a South Australian and then a Tasmanian, earning his place over severals seasons of unflashy consistency and a willingness to counterattack. Weatherald would not have made the squad if he were not going to open the batting, which means that Marnus Labuschagne, who was always going to make the team one way or another after getting his run-scoring groove back, will bat three rather than moonlighting at the top.

Continue reading...

England need to turn volume up and lean into tone of exceptionalism that continues to annoy their rivals

A few weeks ago there was a wave of newspaper interviews with the stepson of the king, Tom Parker-Bowles. These seemed at first glance to be about absolutely nothing at all, froth and chatter, a wincing man in a tweed hat talking about how he makes Sunday lunch. Why was this happening? Scanning the text for meaning, the clouds finally cleared. He was launching a cordial.

You might say, do we need … a cordial? What is a cordial? A way of ruining water. A drink that isn’t actually a drink. But this is to miss the point, and in way that is frankly embarrassing and I feel sorry for you. Because this is not any old cordial. It’s not the kind of really crappy cordial you might launch. As Parker-Bowles puts it, devastatingly: “Look, we have Belvoir and Bottlegreen. But they use concentrates. Why can’t we make a really high-end British cordial?”

Continue reading...

Lord Beefy has ruffled feathers with his comments on England’s schedule and he has a point – just not the one he thinks he’s making

It was a shock to hear, this week, that Ian Botham had launched a new podcast. But only because I had assumed he already had one. It seemed impossible that the life peer was the last purveyor of strong opinions to have no permanent platform on Acast. Perhaps he has simply been too content to vent: after all, Brexit is a triumph and cricket is racism-free.

But perhaps he was cannily waiting for the dadcasting trend to peak and usher in the age of the granddadcast. This new venture with his old Question of Sport buddy Bill Beaumont will, undoubtedly, appeal to a certain demographic (myself included) who grew up watching the pair josh with each other across a perennially indulgent David Coleman.

Continue reading...