Warmest congratulations to you, the England team and all in the squad for the magnificent achievement of regaining the Ashes. This has been a truly memorable series and both sides can take credit for giving us all such a wonderfully exciting and entertaining summer of cricket at its best.
ELIZABETH R
- The Queen of Australia, among other countries, displays her partisanship in a congratulatory message to Michael Vaughan
I have just witnessed what can only be described as Test cricket's equivalent of the lowering of the Olympic flag, folding it up and carrying it away. After players left the field for bad light with Australia requiring 337 to win from 18.2 overs, umpires Rudi Koertzen and Billy Bowden returned to the field, marched down the pitch, turned around, looked at the sky, looked at each other, marched down to each wicket and lifted the bails.
I'll be building up a list here of Australian blogs covering the Ashes tonight.
I was born during the Adelaide Test match when Australia, under Richie Benaud, regained the Ashes. From four days old until my first week of high school, shortly after my twelfth birthday, Australia held the Ashes (and John Snow still hasn't been forgiven). We got them back for a couple of brief periods: January 1975 to August 1977, and January 1983 to August 1985.
Australia picked up the Ashes once more on August 1, 1989. It's sixteen years and eleven days later, and barring an English choke of Greg Normanesque proportions, they're on their way back to England.
Will Kevin Pietersen go down in history as the first person to score a Test century with a dead raccoon under his helmet?
Question du moment: Which Australian will play out the final ball of the Test for the draw?
I'm picking Matthew Hayden.
And you thought World Domination was limited to Google these days:
Going into the final day of The Oval Test, the four main contenders for the 2005 Midwinter-Midwinter are as follows:
1st: Shane Warne (16)
2nd: Andrew Flintoff (13)
3rd: Daylight (not appearing in this Test)
4th: Marcus Trescothick (7)
Two observations from the pre-lunch session on the last day of Les Ashes de 2005:
(a) England is close to having a match-winning lead, and the fact that they lost four wickets in the session enhances their position;
(b) Ian Bell will be a valuable participant in Warwickshire's county championship campaign for many years to come.
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!1
Relax, I'm a qualified cricket umpire.2
Unless I am sadly mistaken (or perhaps just mistakenly sad), this will be the first Test series decided by non-precipitative cloud cover since Zimbabwe beat Pakistan in 1998 when the final Test was fogged out.
