Send ‘em home…

I don’t know how they manage it, but England’s pathetic cricket team even manage to embarass themselves in meaningless knockabouts.

On top of that we’ve still got the one day series against the Aussies and New Zealand to come, yippee.

Well, at least it’s all over

England’s shambolic Ashes campaign has, thankfully, come to an end after another embarassing collapse saw the Aussies wrap up the series 5-0.

It’s not the fact that we’ve lost the series that grates with me so much, it’s not even the fact we’ve lost 5-0, this Australia team is a superb one and there is no shame in that. It’s just the manner of the series that makes this whitewash particularly hard to swallow.

We’ve been thrashed in series’ before, and no doubt will be again, that doesn’t really matter. It was always going to be a tough task to retain the urn on their patch, with or without the injured stars of the 2005 win, but the lack of proper preparation, any discernible plan, suspect team selections, repeated batting collapses and the absolute failure to make use of the few good positions we did get ourselves into that make it all the more disappointing, that’s without mentioning comedy moments we provided – like Geraint Jones’ run-out (pictured).

The variances of the calendar mean that, although we only held the urn for 16 months, we won’t get a crack at regaining them for two and a half years, but given the fact that a lot of changes need to be made, and a lot of work needs to be done that might not be such a bad thing.