The results of the inquest into England’s shocking performance in Australia this Winter will be published tomorrow. Anticipation is high surrounding the thoughts of 6 men, including Nasser Hussein and Angus Fraser, on where England went wrong (well, we already know that) but importantly what should be done in going forward in to the future. Expect another analysis of the county system and how there are too may professional players with not enough fighting for places.
Also expect the report to do near enough bugger all.

I hope Steve has screwed his head back on. If he has, then watch out West Indies.

After Marcus Trecothick’s epic departure from the Ashes, which was the catalyst for the England top order’s abject failure to score anything like a decent total ever since, he’s put the cat amongst the pigeons once again by showing us exactly what we’re missing in the side at the moment. After surgery for a double-hernia and presumably a recovery from the mystery stress-related illness that kept him out of the Champions Trophy as well as the Ashes, Tresco’s first outing for Somerset wasn’t a gentle run about in the park – it was a brutal annihilation who was foolhardy enough …read more

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Being an England cricket fan can be very hard work sometimes. Armies of faithful English fans mortgaged their kidneys and their grannies to get out to Australia for the Ashes. Others changed their sleep patterns and abandoned their kids and jobs so that they could be awake at all hours to follow the cricket on the TV or the radio. We sat, we watched, we listened, we gasped, we (occasionally) cheered and we cried. A lot. Thousands of people rearranged their lives to show their support and how were we rewarded? …read more

David Graveney somewhat ridiculously called for an apology from anyone who doubted Duncan Fletcher’s ability, following England’s success in the CB Trophy. Evidently Graveney was on the bog when England lost the Ashes. It is often said that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but sometimes it is the only medium to portray your true feelings. So make yourself a cup of tea and enjoy Simon Barnes’ delightfully sarcastic “apology” to Duncan Fletcher.

England’s physio was robbed at knifepoint by a gang of masked thieves, whilst “sharing drinks” with Andrew Strauss and a few other team peeps in their Sydney hotel. It sounds like an isolated incident, and that the robbers weren’t cricket fans who were annoyed Dean Conway for sorting out all England’s injured players. If anything, Dean did the Aussies a favour in getting Ashley Giles back in to shape.
* I do like the idea of the chaps “sharing drinks”. It was 4am and what that really means is that they were having a proper session. Fortunately, The Sun isn’t afraid …read more

Who would have thought it? Less than 2 weeks ago, the England cricket team was a dismantled wreck, a bunch of men who had been beaten and flogged repeatedly until they were little more than a shell of team. On the back of a catastrophic 5-0 drubbing in the Ashes, England did as everyone might have expected in getting properly thrashed in the opening games of the one day series by both Australia and New Zealand. The outcome looked deadset and it was going to take a miracle for England to reach the finals.
Well, a revival in fortunes has seen …read more

“I was surprised Panesar didn’t start and I couldn’t really work out why Read didn’t start, either. He certainly looks the part with the gloves and he did OK in the Pakistan series with the bat. At the end of the day, you have to pick your best players and in the last couple of Tests it became pretty apparent that Read is a better keeper than Jones. When those sort of things happen in a team, it unsettles a few players.”
I don’t actually need to say anything else, do I? I just hope someone calls Ponting as an expert …read more

As the Commonwealth Bank trophy continued to trundle on through the never-ending “group stages” and after reading Tim DeLisles’s We Want Less, I got to thinking about the state of the travelling throughout this Ashes tour. And I even knocked up a little graphic to illustrate (using the first test in Brisbane as a starting point.)

I know that Australia is a big country, but my extremely rough calculations, our boys will have done 26,000km travelling by the end of this tour (not including the 17,000km or so each way in just getting there). It’s no wonder they’ve been a little …read more

If, like me, you’re an England fan, who will always be an England fan, who, despite the malaise and farce that surrounds this Ashes tour, still manages to maintain some respect and faith in our boys, certain that despite their thorough whooping, they still tried their hardest, did their best and gave it everything, then I implore you, for all that is good and pure on this earth, do not read this.
Words actually fail me.