Left field

Ponting’s success blighted by Ashes defeats

Respected but seldom loved at home, admired but also reviled abroad, Ricky Ponting led Australia to great success but his captaincy will ultimately be defined by three lost Ashes series. The tough, single-minded Tasmanian always put the team first and that, he said, had prompted him to stand down after nine years in charge of the Australia one-day team and seven as test skipper on Tuesday.

The most test (48) and one-day international (164) wins by any captain as well as successive World Cup triumphs in 2003 and 2007 is an impressive record by any standards, and there has never been any doubt about his quality as a batsman.

And yet, ever since he took over a world-beating side from Steve Waugh, there has always been a question mark hovering over his captaincy.

His honeymoon period as test captain lasted little over a year until he blotted his copy book with the ultimate sin for an Australian captain, the loss of an Ashes series to England.

Ponting silenced the critics the following year, however, leading from the front with a Player of the Series performance to help Australia regain the urn 5-0, the first Ashes whitewash in 86 years.

The retirement of greats like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden would have weakened any side, however, and so it was for Australia.

A rare home defeat to South Africa was followed by a second Ashes defeat in England in 2009 and the pressure was now weighing heavily on him again.

Watson the man to lead Australia rebuilding

The cornerstone of Australia’s past and many successes was often their stubbornness and competitiveness but with the nation at an all time low the new way forward is honesty and the equation is a basic one.

Elementary, Shane Watson.

The man can bat, bowl and field, as he showed during the 3-1 Ashes defeat to England and the two Twenty20 internationals, but what was most notable about the all-rounder was his honesty in front of cameras.

Asked in Melbourne if he thought his team could prevent another drubbing, he paused and let out a little laugh.

Contrast this with the captain in Sydney, Michael Clarke, who after day three with his side already 208 runs behind said he thought Australia could still win the match.

Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Allan Border, the captains to have guided Australia through the past two decades of unheralded success, would have said the same no doubt, so it is no surprise Clarke responded defiantly in the face of the media.

But the remedy for Australia’s woes is not the old school, it’s the likes of Watson, who performed well in the Ashes despite the constant pressure his side were under.

Momentum the key to World Cup success for England’s cricketers

Look away now Australian cricket fans, this one’s going to hurt like a cricket bat to the groin. Their team has carried their abject 2010 form into 2011 by slumping to another defeat to a rampant England side but this time in Twenty20 rather than tests.

While England notched up their eighth straight victory in the shortest version of cricket – a new world record –  the last ball defeat in Adelaide means Australia have now lost 17 of their last 24 completed matches in all forms of the game.

The prospect of an Australian victory at the moment appears as likely as Inzamam-ul-Haq calling for a quick single.

Australia’s major victory in that run was in the Ashes test in Perth against England to level the series at 1-1, before the Australians were destroyed like a quarter-pounder at a burger eating contest by a particularly ravenous contestant.

Three of the matches Australia have won in that time – two in the one-day series in England and one against Sri Lanka in an ODI prior to the Ashes – have come with the series already gone for the once mighty baggy greens.

But if England are to bring home their first 50-over World Cup form the sub-continent in the coming months the team must keep winning in Australia and carry the momentum through to the tournament, meanwhile trampling all over the current holders’ remaining spirit like an errant infant over its parents’ freshly planted tulips.

Australia have bagged the World Cup winners trophy on the last three occasions, and while they remain ranked as the best one-day side in the world, another home one-day series defeat to England, following its pre-Ashes subsidence to Sri Lanka, will surely spell the end of their dominance in the shorter form of the game.

England break 24-year duck with Ashes triumph

11.53am local time on December 29, 2010 at Melbourne Cricket Ground.  It’s the moment England cricket fans have waited nearly a quarter of a century for.  The Ashes are won/retained in Australia.

Minus the Perth aberration, even the hardest Australian heart would have to concede it was deserved. Surely?

Mick Tsikas caught the celebrations.

England on the brink of famous triumph

Ricky Ponting made the long, lonely walk back to the dressing room after another Ashes failure on Tuesday as England moved to the brink of a famous triumph at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)

The sight of Ponting’s wickets shattered after he had scrapped to 20 runs in 73 balls summed up his own personal decline and that of his once-dominant team.

England, still leading by 246 runs after their first innings 513,  just need to take four more Australian wickets on Wednesday to ensure they become the first England team to return home from Australia with the Ashes in 24 years.

Mick Tsikas took the picture.

England coast while Ponting rows with Dar

England should now win the Melbourne test and retain the Ashes after taking a commanding first innings lead of 346 runs after batting through day two of the fourth test.   

Australia captain Ricky Ponting’s frustration over a TV referral decision boiled over into a row with umpire Aleem Dar. 

Ponting spent more than a minute remonstrating with Dar after demanding a review of a not out decision against England’s Kevin Pietersen and lost part of his match fee.

It’s easy to feel sorry for Ponting as his once-great side crumbles and his batting touch deserts him but this was not a pleasant sight.  

Mick Tsikas captured the moment.

England enjoy a perfect day at MCG

England gave the perfect response to those who had written them off  after the 267-run drubbing in Perth with a day of absolute dominance in front of 84,345 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Sunday.

The first day of the “Boxing Day” test at the MCG is one of the great fixtures on the Australian sporting calendar but Andrew Strauss and his team were superior in every area of play to skittle the hosts for 98 runs and reach 157 without loss at the close of play on day one of the fourth Ashes test.

Without a doubt, writing off either of these teams in this closest of  test series was a mistake and the momentum is now firmly back in the tourists’ camp. 

Mick  Tsikas’s picture shows the excellent James Anderson celebrating the cheap dismissal of Mike Hussey, Australia’s totemic batsman in this series so far, along with skipper Andrew Strauss.

Authoritative Australia fashionably late to Ashes party

Congratulations to Australia for finally coming to the Ashes party. As humiliating as the innings loss was in Adelaide, to level the series in such emphatic style with a 267-run win in Perth has re-asserted some authority over the old enemy.

Naturally, questions will now to turn to England’s frailties, and more pointedly to the dismantling of their so-called “world-class” batting line up, as well as their inability to deal with a bouncy pitch and fast short-pitched bowling.

Like Australia’s problems of the last two tests, the answers are never that far away, just as the next problem is only just around the corner.

Remember, these two teams were ranked numbers four and five in the world in test cricket before the series began. In football parlance they are fighting for mid-table obscurity and with that come all the inconsistencies of a team competing at that level.

The facts are that England have only ever won one test in Perth. As Mike Hussey, a Western Australian, attested, it takes time to learn to how to bat on that pitch at the WACA, which provides the steepest bounce of all pitches in Australia and forces more back-foot shots than any other.

England’s batsmen are just as susceptible as any others, including Australia’s, to back of a length bowling at ninety-plus miles an hour. The advantage that Australia have is they are the home side and happen to boast a trio of fast bowlers that can hit ninety miles an hour more often than any other side in world cricket.

Having said that, England’s batsmen were, by and large, architects of their own downfall, certainly in the second innings, where all the top order batsmen, with the possible exception of Alistair Cook, got the themselves out by playing away from their bodies and off the front-foot, when judicious leaves or a back-foot option would have provided them with a split-second longer to play the shot.

Aussies trounce England, Ashes series all square

Well there it is. Australia thrash England by 267 runs in Perth and the Ashes series is all square at 1-1 with two tests to go in Melbourne and Sydney.

Australia’s policy of playing four seamers on a bouncy track paid dividends and England’s batsmen proved they weren’t such world beaters when they were put under serious pressure.

Mitchell Johnson’s first innings of 62  was better than any of England’s players managed and, of course, he also snared nine wickets in a series-transforming performance with the ball.

It’s hard to believe that on Friday morning, the bell was tolling for Australia’s chances of regaining the Ashes and for a generation of their test cricketers. In the words of England skipper Andrew Strauss “Cricket’s a funny game.”

The hosts will clearly have the momentum going into the fourth test, which starts in Melbourne on Boxing Day (Dec. 26) but Australia’s selectors may still have cause to rue their use and misuse of the spinners at their disposal should the series go down to the final test in Sydney, where the pitch should turn.

It’s been another enthralling contest and there are bound to be more twists and turns before the fate of the fanous urn is decided.

Johnson gives Australia new belief

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Mitchell Johnson’s display on day two of the third Ashes test.  Australia had all but given up on the Ashes after England bowled them out for 268 on day one. The post mortem had started and the main topic of discussion was about who could or would replace Ricky Ponting as skipper.

On Friday morning, Johnson was reborn as a test bowler and skittled England’s  top order. The impact was immediate. Suddenly, the Australian voices in the crowd drowned out England’s “Barmy Army”, the Australian players were chirping aggressively and the English wickets kept tumbling until they were bowled out for 187. Johnson finished with 6-38.

Even the spirit of Johnson could not prevent another batting failure for the luckless Ponting, however, and he made a solitary run before departing as one of three Australian wickets to fall in the final session.

Still, Australia finished the day with a lead of 200 and seven wickets in hand as well as a renewed belief that they can beat this England team. Quite a feat for a bowler dropped as a liability after a terrible display in the Brisbane opener.

PHOTO: Tim Wimborne’s picture shows Johnson acknowledging the ovation of a packed house at the WACA as  he left the field.