More Oz than the Aussies?

One of Fletcher’s finest gameplans on the current Ashes tour has been to stop the Aussie run machine and he has been tremendously successful at it. Steeped in Ashes lore, his bowlers say he kept reminding them of how, in the past, the English quicks famously hunted in pairs.

‘‘I believed that it had to be my bowlers who would help me win back the Ashes,’’ he said after the fourth Test and Harmison, Hoggard, Flintoff and Jones have taken him the closest to winning it in the last 18 years.

Fletcher doesn’t want anything changed for the Oval. The same team will have to fight successfully for one final time to win the series and Fletcher agrees: ‘‘this time the pressure will be no different.’’

Legal Loopholes
Not so long ago, it was the Australians who were pushing rules to the limit. So it was a bit rich of Ricky Ponting to go ballistic over England’s substitution method. Vaughan, though, has responded with typical sang-froid: His players, he says, have been drinking so much water that frequent toilet breaks have become a necessity.

Fast And Furious
The Ashes began with a bang as Langer, Hayden and Ponting faced up to some pretty uncomfortable chin music. That set the trend and enabled Messrs Hoggard, Flintoff, Harmison and Jones to pick up 65 wickets between them in four Tests. It hasn’t been all bone-crunching pace, of course; more a mix of line, swing (normal and reverse), speed and bounce, all with pinpoint accuracy. Result: The Australian team’s batting average has fallen from 55 to 30-odd.

Are Oz the Old England?
Forget the Whining Poms, welcome the Cribbing Aussies. Shane Warne came into the Ashes at the cost of his marriage, Ponting cried over the substitution rule, McGrath joined him later, Gillespie called the crowd ‘‘disgraceful’’, Hayden lost his rag at a fan, Katich was fined for dissent… No wonder the English media — gloriously gloating, of course — have said that more than England becoming the new Australia, the Australians have become the old England.
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K. Shriniwas Rao