Yes, well done to Australia. You wanted it more than we did, prepared better, and played better.

 

There's a lot of anger in the UK about the way our team have played and management decisions in choosing the wrong players, not allowing enough practice time etc. Just thinking about England's second innings of the second test when we threw it away makes me furious. Hopefully some heads will roll.

 

See you again in 2009.

Agreed.  I think the english selectors & coach need to pull their heads out of their combined @rses and pick a team that works.  They need to take a leaf out of the Oz playbook and be a bit more brutal in cutting underperforming players.  This is professional sport - not a boys club.  I also think that there is inherent differences in the first class cricket systems in each country.  Oz has just 6 first grade sides (Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia) while i couldn't even count the english county sides.  My point is you can be a second rate player and get a run in a county side.  IN Oz, there is no room for passengers as there are 100 young guns waiting to take your spot in each state team.  It's a very competitive systems and really forces the cream to the top.  Look forward to the next Ashes. A for effort, England.

So good.  So many beers have been drunk in the past few weeks.  Was fitting that we took over 16 years to lose the Ashes (longest spell ever), and the shortest time ever to recover them (15 months) because our boys are just so much better than everybody else it's a joke that anybody else should hold any trophy.  Btw, we now have every single trophy/championship that we are eligable for, have some young blood coming through and show no signs of slowing down.

 

Gillie making a 100 off 57 balls and Clarke making 130odd off 160odd balls was amazing.  Looking foward to smashing some beers at the 'G with 100,000 people and seeing the master get his 700th and completing a 5-0 whitewash!!

 

Wonder if Ad is going to comment...he had plenty to say last year... ;)

 

Bad luck poms, there is always 2009! ;)

crowing is so very very unattractive.  yes we won.  lets move on and realise that what motivated us to win it back in record time will also motivate them to reciprocate.

in 2009  they will have 4-5 world class players with long memories - and they won't make the same selection committee mistakes that they did this time around.

 

bring it on - as it will be a tougher match all up, and thats a good thing.

Fall Out's post made me laugh - I don't blame him at all for crowing a little.

 

It's clear we have a lot of work to do, but hopefully we will have it sorted again by 2009.

GF, no offence but I couldn't care less.  We all have our own passions, and so forth and one of mine is cricket and the biggest part of that are the Ashes and being only 22 id never actually experienced Australia regaining the Ashes before (that I can remember) so excuse me if im a bit excited over that and if ive hopped off my high-horse and enjoying a bit of harmless digging at the old enemy! 

 

Btw, it didnt matter what selection's they changed this time around, we were never going to lose (but we may not have won the series by now). 

 

The king has retired (after Sydney) and pigeon (McGrath) is rumoured to be also and we will have a lot of work to maintain our number one status over the next few years...

 

Crowing maybe ugly to you, but having a bit of harmless fun and having a dig at the poms is fine IMV.

I didn't realise we were "the old enemy".  Did Australia win a war of independence or something that nobody told me about?

Cricket is just some friendly competition.... it's just a shame the English team are so uncompetitive.  Winning all the time must get boring, it must be like supporting Chelsea.

Well, given that 50% of Australians (and thus a much higher percentage of cricket's key fanbase - anglo/celtic Australians) have some Irish ancestry, the answer to your first point is 'yes'. We prefer to keep the rivallry to the sporting arena.

 

I actually think England is on the right track in many respects. Talented young players like Cook, Bell, Pietersen, Panesar & Mahmood are being produced. They lack experience, but they have a lot of potential. I think Flintoff can be a great leader for England, but not as captain. Like Botham before him, he leads best when he is allowed to just play. There are still some gaps. A couple more batsmen are needed, as are more consistent strike bowlers. Still, I think that the presence of so much young talent suggests that the English system is on the improve.

 

This doesn't mean you folks will be knocking us off anythime soon. Even I am amazed at our ability to find talented replacements for our ageing players. The 2009 side will be based around Jacques, Ponting, Hussey, Clarke, Clark & probably MacGill. The big question is how the remaining players shape up. There are a group of young players with 5-6 years of domestic first class cricket behind them who are raring to go, and behind them literally dozens of guys in their early 20s with boatloads of potential. The next series might be closer, but it will still be a tough fight.

 

The one player we cannot cover is Warne. Such players come along only once in a very long lifetime. I have been fortunate to attend every Boxing Day Test he has played in. I saw the demolition of the West Indies in 1992 & the hat trick against England a few years later. I saw him torment the greatest batsmen of the age. In short, I saw some of the most remarkable cricket I will ever see. Sadly I probably won't get to this year's test, but I suspect my fellow Melburnians will bid the fatboy a fond farewell.