Aggers’ Ashes. Jonathan Agnew

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СКАЧАТЬ technically troubled. Stuart Clark, the leading wicket-taker in the 2006/07 Ashes, believes the Australian bowlers would target a perceived weakness on the hook and a tendency to put the front foot straight down the pitch rather than following the line of the ball. While his record against the old enemy at home is good – in 2005, Strauss was the only batsman on either side to score two centuries in the series – it is less impressive Down Under. In 2006/07, he scored only 247 runs at an average of 24.7 and a highest score of 50. Should he struggle this time, Australia’s task in wrestling back the little urn will be made a lot easier.

      What will help him, believes Gatting, is the bond formed with coach Andy Flower. “You’ve got two people now in charge who are both hard and fair but also passionate about the team doing well. Andrew is a very good communicator. He’s very honest with his players and can be hard on them but he’ll be fair. But the coach has to remember that when things are going well the captain needs to be patted on the back, too, and told he does well. The skipper will go round and tell his players they’ve done well but he needs the same from someone above him.”

      What then are the particular pressures Strauss can expect as an England skipper in Australia? And what is key to successful captaincy Down Under? “The media there will side with the home team and try to make as much of things that happen to the tourists as possible,” says Gatting. “Andrew will need to keep the side close-knit and then must make sure they don’t take too much notice of what is written or said. He will also know that if you do get on top, the Aussie press will get on top of their own team. You can see it in the reaction to Australia’s decision to pick a squad of 17 for the First Test. The Aussie media can turn very quickly.”

      Gatting points out that England have already made a good start Down Under and thus silenced a lot of the Australian critics. “If England hadn’t done so well in the state games, you would have seen a lot more about them in the sports pages. The charge hasn’t begun because the guys have started well. The focus has been on what the Aussie selectors are doing.” And Gatting has these words of wisdom for Strauss and his men: “When you get even a small chance of getting on top, hit them hard. Capitalise on your chances and never, ever take your foot off their throats.”

      DAY 21: 23 November 2010

      Today is somewhat over shadowed by a row in the papers. Ian Healy, former Australian wicketkeeper and now cricket commentator, is left ‘fuming’ by the Poms’ apparent snub of a lunchtime event he was hosting along with Sky’s Nasser Hussein, producing headlines joshing for position as the most ridiculous seen on the tour so far. The England side are criticised for their single-minded arrogance when they fail to turn up for an ‘official’ Ashes lunch. “This England side didn’t think it was important enough to attend. To me that’s bullsh**,” blasts Healy. Two things wrong with this as far as I can see: firstly, only half the Australians turn out for the lunch and it is not an ‘official Ashes lunch’ in any case. England were always scheduled to practise at the Gabba from lunchtime onwards and to the best of my knowledge no one in the England camp actually knew about the lunch.

      PONTING UNDER FIRE

      Ben Dirs | 23 November 2010

      Over the past 15 years Australia has had a great many would-be captains, probably thousands of them – and an awful lot of them have been English. They popped up in pubs and bars and on sofas, throwing their hats into the ring every time an Aussie batsman passed 100 in an Ashes Test, every time an English partnership had seen off the seamers and the ball was then tossed to Shane Warne. You could imagine them muttering under their breath: “Seriously, I could captain this side.”

      It is, of course, a vacuous statement – but not without a smidgeon of truth.

      It can quite easily be argued that Australia had in the team that humiliated England 5-0 in the last Ashes series Down Under more bona fide greats than England has produced in the last 30 or 40 years. When the actual captain Ricky Ponting called it ‘arguably the best team in any sport in the world; he was not guilty of hyperbole.

      Warne and Adam Gilchrist would be automatic choices for any all-time side, while Ponting and Glenn McGrath would certainly be in the reckoning. Add a legendary opening partnership in Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, Mike Hussey and Michael Clarke in the middle order and quicks Brett Lee and Stuart Clark, and you have a juggernaut of an outfit. With such weapons at his disposal in his first few years as skipper, Ponting, who replaced Steve Waugh in 2004, was given something of an armchair ride, winning 27 of his first 35 matches in charge. After that, however, Ponting’s armchair started losing some of its springs.

      In the space of a couple of years Warne, McGrath, Langer, Gilchrist, Hayden and Lee all called it a day, as did lesser lights such as Stuart MacGill and Damien Martyn. And just like that, Ponting went from a skipper in charge of a great team with the best winning percentage in Test history to, well, a skipper with a pretty good record in charge of a pretty good team. “Let’s be honest, Ricky’s had some wonderful players at his fingertips,” says Mike Gatting, the last man to lead England to Ashes glory in Australia, in 1986-87.”A captain can only be as good as his players. If you’ve got a Warne and a McGrath in your side, you don’t have to tell them what to do because they are very good professionals who love winning for their country. You shouldn’t have to do too much to get them motivated. The same with Gilchrist, Langerand Hayden.”

      There are many in Australia – former fast bowlers Geoff Lawson and Jeff Thomson have been merciless in their criticism – who believe Ponting has been unmasked as a poor captain and that he should have been replaced by Clarke following the 2-0 series defeat in India which made it three Test defeats on the spin, something that hadn’t happened to Australia since 1988. But former skipper Ian Chappell, who won 50% of his Tests to Ponting’s current record of 64%, is not one of them, believing the punchy Tasmanian remains the best man for the job.

      “Ricky Ponting is a good captain,” says Chappell. “It shouldn’t come as any surprise that when you lose Warne and McGrath, Ponting isn’t winning as often as he was. But Ponting can point to the fact that he wins 64% of his Tests overall and say it works. I’ve not seen a day’s play with Australia where I’ve looked out there and felt the team hasn’t been pulling as one. I’ve never seen that happen under Ricky Ponting’s captaincy. The day that happens is the day you know you’ve got a problem and that’s when you’ve got to go.”

      However, there are many who disagree with Chappell and argue that statistics are not the best way to measure a captain. The same people would argue that former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming and former England skipper Michael Vaughan were vastly superior to Ponting, not because of their winning percentages, but because of the manner in which they marshalled inferior sides and got them punching above their weight.

      Ponting’s frailties were there for all to see during the 2005 Ashes series, when he was knocked out of his groove by an injury to McGrath, the lack of form of some of his key players and the in-your-face aggression of Vaughan’s England outfit. One of the biggest mysteries of that series was Ponting’s decision not to pick MacGill, a man who finished his career with 208 Test wickets at an average of 29, for the final two Tests when his fellow leg-spinner Warne was scalping England batsmen for fun. Fast bowler Shaun Tait, preferred to MacGill at Trent Bridge and The Oval, was then mysteriously underused.

      Roll forward to 2009 in Cardiff, with England nine wickets down in their second innings and Monty Panesar and James Anderson in the middle. Ponting made the truly baffling decision to bring part-timer Marcus North to bowl two of the last four overs, with fellow spinner Nathan Hauritz operating from the other end. Panesar and Anderson held firm, Ponting appeared haunted at not being able to force the win and England went on to reclaim the Ashes.

      During the recent Test series in India, Ponting took a lot of flak in Australia’s media for negative fields, a lack of faith in his players and a tendency СКАЧАТЬ