This is the second instalment of my account of the 2006 test, The Story Of A Disaster – How Did We Lose In Adelaide.
This is a little more self-indulgent than the first part and charts the origins of my attendance at that Test Match. It is a bit long, a bit personal and probably a bit boring. I reserve the right to edit it as well as I see fit. I hope people don’t find it too tedious and a bit too maudlin as well, but it is me and some of my life and friends may well see why things mean what they do to me.
On that note, it is THE CONTEXT – PART 1 – 2002-2005
On to part 2 of the prequel to The Story of a Disaster – How Did We Lose In Adelaide? This part of the story charts the build up to the visit, the quest for tickets, the Ashes series of 2002/3 and 2005 and our early days in Australia before the 2nd Test Match.
Part 1 of the context allows me to set out the reasons for my 2002 trip and how important it was for me; the 2005 Ashes series and the reasons for the hype that rose up for the 2006/7 series.
Included in the second portion are e-mails the main protagonists, Sir Peter, Reg and Dmitri Old sent to each other regarding the quest for tickets, and how they were secured by hook or by crook. There are some comments on our planning of the trip, and the options we were thinking of using. We recommend certain places to stay, and tell you of certain places to ignore. I’ll probably get my snaps out of the Great Ocean Road, but that’s for a post on Seven and Seven Eighths. Call it The Context – 2006!
How did the Ashes itch start?
It started way back in the early days of 2002. Sir Peter and I were having a drink somewhere or other when the discussion moved on to whether we’d like to go to Australia to watch England in the Ashes. England’s team was a bit of a curate’s egg at that time. We could win some pretty decent tussles (as they did in Pakistan and Sri Lanka) but also hit some hefty bumps in the road, as they did with the 2001 demolition by Australia in our own back yard.
At the time Sir Peter and I were actively scoping the trip, England were completing a nondescript winter in India and New Zealand, and our hopes weren’t for a particularly successful Ashes campaign. My hopes were more for a bloody good holiday with cricket thrown in. Sir Peter was in agreement that it was something we should do, and we set about arranging an itinerary.
When the original Ashes schedule was announced it looked awkward – Brisbane, followed by Perth, followed by Adelaide, and then the two holiday tests. Given I wanted Sydney on any agenda for a sightseeing trip, this looked a tough prospect. As it happened Adelaide and Perth got swapped and the pieces fell into place – fly into Brisbane the weekend before the 1st test to acclimatise, watch the cricket, fly up the coast to Cairns for four days, fly back to Sydney for four more, then onto Adelaide for the first three days of the test before flying home Saturday night.
We booked the flights using Trailfinders, booked accommodation in Brisbaneusing the interweb – http://www.centralwestend.com.au/ – and then trusted ourselves to find stuff out there when we got out to Australia. Singapore Airlines proved the cheapest flights, and we planned our full itinerary in Trailfinders, booking all flights there and then. Then the build up began.
This, though, is not a report of that trip which I may come back to at a later date. This is more an expression of how different this was for me on a personal level. Although I’d been on loads of package holidays with mum, dad and Dmitri Jr, I had never really ventured outside Europe – Ankara being the furthest I had been from home on a work trip – so this long haul flight and adventure was the stuff of dreams and aspirations rather than fact. A good friend had been urging me to take up the chance to go, and had constantly sung the praises of Australia to me, so she had me thinking….
I had a bit more money than I was used to, and mum anddad bank extended attractive loan facilities for the cash that I didn’t. So one April day Sir Peter and I went to that TrailFinders in Threadneedle Street and booked the flights. That was it.
I made lists of things to get for the trip like an over-excited schoolboy, but the nearer the day came, the more nervous I got. The apartment in Brisbanewas the main source of stress (but the firm I mentioned above were excellent), probably to them, as I kept e-mailing them to make sure everything was ok and payment had been received. When the time came to leave home for three and a bit weeks, I kissed my mum on the cheeks goodbye to which she said to me later “it was only then I realised how nervous you were.”
The whole trip was brilliant. The best holiday I will ever have because it was the first I’d actually paid for and planned for myself and the first long-haul adventure I’d ever been on. So many memorable moments, from the Barrier Reef to the Opera House, to Port Douglas drinking and eating establishments to Saturday night in Glenelg. We got to see three of Australia’s five main grounds; the Gabba in Brisbane, the SCG in Sydney and Adelaide Oval. The itch had been implanted into my body, and I would need to scratch it again. When we departed three days later than we planned thanks to Singapore Airlines and their flexibility, I vowed to return to Australia for a subsequent series with a better Englandteam than the shower that had capitulated in four days at both Brisbaneand Adelaide.
Attending an Australian test in 2002 was different to England, and certainly different to what I found in 2006. Test cricket in Australia in 2002 was not a sell-out draw. England’s team were seen as a joke rather than serious opposition, and the prices (and crowds in Brisbane) reflected that. Sir Peter booked tickets in advance for £35 for all five days in Brisbane and about double that for Adelaide. While there were large crowds for the early stages of both tests, there was not the ticket frenzy we experienced in 2006. The Adelaide tickets were a bit of a farce as we flew into the city just the night before the game, and couldn’t pick them up from the City office in which they were located but we weren’t told so missing the first half hour of the test. But at least we might have been able to pay on the day. 2006 afforded no such luxury.
Once inside the ground, especially Brisbane, the atmosphere was not very “Oval” like. Certain locals spent all day effing and blinding at England players, the out-of-towners up for one day of cricket snorted derisively at England’s lamentable efforts, and snotty-nosed “Kuoni Sport Abroad” tourists sneered at us mere freelancers who had managed to create their own tour without being shepherded from pillar to post like US convicts on work duties. Inverted snob me.
It was a curious atmosphere indeed, but I will never forget my feelings walking from our apartment up to Vulture Street, the name of which I’d seen and heard on the TV many times, but may well have been the Sea of Tranquillity for all the likelihood I had of going there. I walked up to the stadium and thought “this is me, a boy from South East London, walking up Vulture Street for the first day of an Ashes series in Australia, doing something none in my family had ever done”. It was overwhelming, to be honest. I can’t think of a word that adequately summed up my excitement. It is the sense of excitement you get with achievement, although all I’d done was get on an aeroplane. But it was also humility, in that a massive sporting event, being watched at stupid o’clock in England, had little (well large) old me there. I was thrilled. And then Nasser Hussain made THAT decision…..
Four years later on and I was a more seasoned traveller. I’d been to nice places in long-haul destinations in the intervening years. I’d been to Kazakhstan, USA, South Africa (to see Englandlose there) and Barbados, and the mystique of long haul travel had evaporated. The flight now was a slog rather than a part of the adventure. 2006 would not be the total step into the unknown for me.
Even though I thought knew what to expect, to a degree, when we got there, and while still excited, it was with the hope that I might see Englandtake it to the Aussies rather than be submissivelike we were in 2002 that drove me. The hype around the series was immense after 2005 (more of which a little bit later) and England had themselves in all of a frenzy since then, awaiting the chance to stick it to Australia in their own backyard. The thing was, the Australians were mad as hell at losing in 2005, and on all fronts they were going to make this tough for the English. Part 2 of the Context will explain how. At times we thought there were real prospects of going out there and not seeing any cricket other than in a bar. We were lucky.
The 2005 Context
It all came down to this series – this was England’s time. We’d had a two year spell of winning – South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand. Winning wherever we went – except when I went abroad (we did lose in Sri Lanka, nitpickers, but you get my drift). No-one looked forward to the upcoming series more than me. But out of nowhere, the storm clouds came, and the Ashes became an irrelevance.
This was a really great sporting occasion at a terrible time in my life. When the ticket application came through, just before Christmas 2004, little did I suspect that when the 5thTest came round in September 2005 that I would have lost my mum to cancer andI would be faced withthe difficulties of coping with that grief andkeeping an eye on my ageing father. The diagnosis of mum’s illness in mid-May was the single most depressing moment of my life. Our family had cruised along with barely a care in the world andsuddenly it was ripped apart. Her death on 1 July was beyond description. I coped with it by talking to mates, writing some bloody depressing e-mails and trying to rationalise things with my dad. The day before mum’s funeral I attended the one-dayer at The Oval, which Australia won comfortably, and my attendance at which probably upset some of my family despite the fact the two key individuals who could have stopped me going if they had said no both told me to get out of the house and to have a day at the cricket. Judgement of one’s actions should be left to those that care the most.
Emotions were raw at the time, and events I won’t go into rendered me shot to pieces for the days after the funeral. It was then that two colleagues from past cricket encounters from work pepped me up and gave me something to look forward to. I went to a function, organised by a well-known bank, and met some of the Aussies who attended; Simon Katich was a perfect gentleman and good to talk to, Kasprowicz a little more aloof, but still decent enough. However, I did hit it off with the Aussie coach, John Buchanan, who despite his reputation for being a stickler for detail, did not recall how the last test series in England went.
And importantly, on my birthday, which fell between mum’s death and the funeral, Sir Peter gave me tickets to Days 1 and 3 at Lord’s. I cannot adequately explain what this meant to me, as to give me hope and something to look forward to in the days after such a low meant an immense amount. Without friends, your life is so much poorer.
In total, in 2005, I got to see five days play in the series in the flesh. Days 1 and 3 at Lord’s were exciting times to be a cricket fan, with the 1st day in particular one of the greatest day’s action I will ever be lucky enough to see. I saw the first three days of the 5th test at The Oval, but missed KP’s knock on the 5th day that secured the Ashes for England. In between those two tests England had dominated Australia but still only scraped home by 2 runs at Edgbaston in the greatest test I’ve ever seen, and by 3 wickets at Trent Bridge when English nerves nearly cost them their most cherished prize. The much unheralded 3rd test, when Australia held out for a draw, was a game England should have won, but we took great heart from Aussie celebrations at only drawing against the old enemy. The dynamic had changed.
Australia lost that series because their batting failed, and their pace attack faltered. The latter cost them our nemesis, Glenn McGrath for the two tests they lost, and he wasn’t really 100% for either of the other two games after he stepped on a ball in the warm-up at Edgbaston. Jason Gillespie looked shot, Michael Kasprowiczwas a game replacement but never going to cause England to quake, and Shaun Tait looked threatening but never likely to run through the opposition. Only Brett Lee looked a scary proposition and he held his part of the bargain, without ever getting the figures he probably deserved. Shane Warnehad a major series with bat and ball, andlooked threatening every time he bowled. Without him, England would have been home and dry long before Kennington. The batting never fired, with just three tons in the whole of the series and key players not contributing. Ponting had one ton, which saved the Old Trafford test; Hayden and Langer had one each in vastly contrasting styles at The Oval and that was it. Damien Martyn had a poor series. Australia, who’s modus operandi had been big runs, pressure, wickets and annihilation, could not impose that pressure after Lord’s.
On England’s side of the fence the batting did enough, when it was needed and the bowling did the rest. Flintoff, Harmison, Jones, Hoggard and Giles were more than enough for an Australian side not quite prepared for the onslaught.
However, after KP’s knock had sent the country into paroxysms of joy, the party started (and I was so happy and proud that my dad, ageing as he was, but still with an independent streak, went up to Trafalgar Square and saw some of the celebrations – I know how happy he was with the win when he was hurting so much). As with these things, England did what they do worse than any other country, and over-reacted to victory, giving off the impression that they had fulfilled their ambitions. We had parades, we had awards, we had gongs, and we had declarations that we were as good as Australia.
While it is good to celebrate, you can go too far. The Australians looked on and saw what they wanted to see – they had worked long and hard to make it to the summit and one defeat away from home did not see them knocked off, and they bristled. They resented the gongs (as evidenced by Warne’s sledging of Collingwood in 2006/7), they took the parade as a slight (see Langer’s comments) and they went back to Australia and proceeded to plan their revenge. If England thought that was only going to be on the field of play they were wrong. On so many levels, Australia weren’t having it. Their schedule going into the 2006/7 series was not a heavy one once they’d desposed of South Africa home andaway. England, meanwhile had a tough winter in Pakistan and India, and then two home series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan before the Champions Trophy and then The Ashes.
One of the resentments that bristled was the atmosphere in the grounds. The sight of thousands locked out on the 5thday at Old Trafford and the way the country got behind the team on all levels shocked the Australians. Justin Langer said as much when he wrote in his column..
“There haven’t been any ticker tape parades or fanfare for years for our team. It has almost been taken for granted that we will keep winning. In some series it has been this expectation that has caused the most angst.”
There were comments about how passionate the crowds were, how the England players were buoyed by the fans while Australia sit back and expected them to win. The Australians were also piqued about how many English travel to their grounds and tickets were easy to acquire for them, while in England, that opportunity isn’t afforded to the Aussies. That, above all, was going to change. And how…
Sir Leonard Hutton once said that to win in Australia, the opposition needed to be 25% better than the hosts. Our reaction to winning the 2005 implied that England had made it and were that much better. After all, weren’t Australia on the wrong end of the Old Trafford test, and should we not havewon much more easily? With your author being a “half empty” sort of bloke, you could rationalise the series thus:
Test 1 – England had Australia on the rack early. They bounced back big time, put the one big partnership in the game together and hammered us.
Test 2 – England should have won comfortably but Australia never knew when they were beaten. England held a decent lead but threw the advantage away. If Jones had been given out LBW when he was plumb, the target would have been nearer 230 than 280. Then how would England have bowled?
Test 3 – England were worried about Australia’s ability to chase and perhaps declared too late. In any case, Australia’s tail wagged and got them a lot closer to the England total, and took time out of the game. England missed opportunities early rather than late.
Test 4 – England aided by bad decisions in their favour made Australia follow on but still made an almighty mess of chasing a meagre total. That paralysis and fear would be repeated…
Test 5 – If Hayden or Warne had held those catches then where would we be now? KP would have failed, England would have lost the test match, and the whole shenanigans surrounding the 2006/7 tour would never have taken place.
You can lookat things the other way all too easily. Everything that went right in Englandwould assuredly not take place on the other side of the world. Englandwent through a series with just one injury costing the team one test match. Australia lost their talismanic bowler for two tests – and wasn’t really firing in two others. The one test he was fully fit for, he destroyed us. Australia may have lived to regret sending home Mike Hussey and Andrew Symonds. At home, they could do as they pleased.
But England allowed themselves to be carried away and the party went on and on. Even a 2-0 loss that December to a revitalised Pakistan, after a first test in Multan England gave away, didn’t seem to dampen the mood. Flintoff was Sports Personality of the Year; England cricket won the Team of the Year; all the team, including Collingwood were given MBEs; and more books and DVDs than you could shake a stick at were released.
All the while the Aussies looked on. On the outside they said the right things, the respectful things. But you knew that losing the Ashes was not something that McGrath, Warne, Hayden, Langer and Gilchrist would allow on their resumes as the last Ashes series they played in. Australia destroyed a World XI so conclusively that the ICC ended the experiment. They hammered the West Indies 3-0, and South Africa 2-0 at home while England were faltering and showing the gulf in class between the two. England were on the brink of losing Trescothick; Simon Jones was also badly injured and Michael Vaughan was crocked. Ashley Giles started to creak too. The Aussies grew out of the loss by ditching Damien Martyn and bringing in Michael Hussey, who had waited a ton of time to come into the fold.
2006 beckoned, the Ashes hype was cranking up, and the boys from OJCC wanted to be there to see some of it. The 11 months leading up to the first test in Brisbane were memorable, and I’ll continue the story in the next instalment.
