England remain strong favorites, but I honestly wouldn’t be shocked to see us lose the game from here.
Six down, two hundred-odd wanted… the fat lady is warming up backstage. But this is tenser that it ought to have been with Australia chasing five hundred and plenty on this wicket!
And it’s all over! Hussey the last man out after a brilliant century, and it’s England by 197 runs. Too bad Flintoff couldn’t take the last wicket, but he managed a superb run-out earlier and a catch (a routine one, alas) to dispose of Siddle, so he gets to help regain the Ashes in his final Test.
fat lady enters, singing her heart out
You were saying?
The heist is complete.
Question:
Is that Ashes urn that the England team held up the ‘real’ one or is it a copy?
It’s a copy, the real one doesn’t leave the museum. Great excitement today, I played my part by looking away at the screen showing the football and thus securing both the run-outs. I also made a decisive trip to the bar to get Harmison’s 1st wicket.
As I said in my OP I’m not really a cricket fan apart from The Ashes series.
That said I have to say that the ability of the bowlers to make the ball spin I find truly remarkable, I wouldn’t be able to do that if my life depended in it.
That’s easier than you think. If you can turn a doorknob you can spin a cricket ball the “natural” way (off-spin if you’re a right-hander). The hard part comes with being able to put it where you want it six times out of six, and work out from watching the batsman where the right place is. A quality spinner arranges things so that the ball is never quite where you would like it to be, and never quite where you thought it was going to be when it was half-way down the track. Also he can deliver at anything from forty mph to over sixty (which you and I would consider fast bowling, but the top-class players don’t consider anything “fast” until it’s consistently topping 90mph) and keep plugging away all day.
Even slow bowling is more tiring than it looks. Phil Edmonds (Middlesex and England in the 1970s and 80s) got an emergency call-up from his county a year or two after he’d retired. Out of practice and unfit, he did his best, took about four reasonably-priced wickets in the game… and then couldn’t walk for a week. 
Great. The Ex-Colonials Rejects XI has won the Ashes.
That’s the spirit, AK84!
It’s not often you expect your fielders to make a breakthrough, but the two run-outs in the afternoon really made the difference. For all the (proper) emphasis on bat vs ball, it’s worth noting that the deceptively simple skill of picking the ball off the ground and throwing it is still worth something and is a surprisingly big part of what it means to be a cricketer.
And how!!
I guess when you think it’s enough to turn up, and end up getting a good hiding, sore losing is the only way to go. 
Do you also move that the All Blacks’ results be stricken from the record owing to an over-reliance on imported Pacific Islanders?
When come back, bring humble-pie fork.
Australia deserved to lose probably more than England deserved to win.
Congratulations to England and we will look back to winning the Ashes back in a few years.
Cheers- and thanks for starting the thread Chowder.
It’s been a strange series, not a classic like 2005, but pretty compelling in its own way. Realistic summary by Strauss of the England performance.
Australia were clearly the more consistent team, but as England know only too well a collapse or two can easily cost you a series.
Where do people see the two teams going from here?
After 2005, England quickly went from being a top side to a mediocre one due to injuries and loss of form, which is where we’ve been stuck ever since. Hopefully this win will give us something to build on.
Strauss has overtaken Pietersen as our most valuable batsman. Cook has struggled for a while, but there is no obvious replacement. Trott could be the answer to our problems at no 3, he looked to be technically very sound and showed a great temperament at the Oval. That leaves Bell and Collingwood competing for no 5, with Prior at 6. Broad and Swann are very useful at 7 & 8, so overall it’s a decent batting line-up.
Prior had his best series behind the stumps and has finally made the wicketkeeping position his own.
The bowling is the biggest concern. We have world-class swing bowlers (Anderson, Onions, Sidebottom) and a decent off-spinner, but the attack is often toothless on flat decks. Harmison will doubtless go to South Africa, in the expectation of finding fast, bouncy pitches to play on. However, he’s been woefully inconsistent for the past 4 years. We really need someone to step forward and lead the attack. Broad is the most promising candidate, when he finds the right length his height gives him a dangerous stock delivery.
Australia have dropped from 1st to 4th in the latest rankings, behind South Africa, Sri Lanka and India. They still have a strong batting line-up, but replacing McGrath and Warne was always going to be a tall order. Johnson needs to be more consistent if he’s going to be part of a 4 man attack. Hauritz did OK in this series, but I think the England batters flattered him slightly, and the selectors or captain clearly don’t trust him.
Yes, thanks Chowder; meanwhile here’s the Daily Mash’s caustic review of the series.
And let it not be forgotten that I asked at the start, why was Harmison left out? I was right.
Talk about timing. My first real trip back to Blighty in 4 years (remember what happened then) and I get to spend Sunday in front of the telly watching the win.
Anyone wants to buy me an air fare back to the UK for 4 years time, I will take all donations.
Better humble pie then cheese, England had to eat that once already this summer.
And as an added bonus Villa beat Liverpool, at Anfield