Australia’s Cricketers Whitewash English Tourists in Ashes Triumph

The last time the English national cricket team lost all five test matches in the Ashes competition against Australia was during the 1920-21 tour. Cricket historians say that the trouncing the Aussies handed the Poms was worse then than the one they suffered this time around. Still, for a side that got handed MBEs by the Queen of England for their service to sport, this was an unbridled disaster. At the same time, Australia’s cricketers proved their own greatness.

Precisely how England imploded is going to be the subject of intense debate and inquiry for months, if not years. Some of it was injury (Captain Michael Vaughan and bowler Simon Jones were out with knee trouble and Marcus Trescothick was unable to play due to a “stress-related” condition), coaching changes contributed to the mess, and dubious selection by the English cricket establishment rounded out the prime causes. The question, though, is whether England’s team was a decent side that played well-beyond its potential in winning the Ashes the last time around or whether it is a good side that played poorly in Australia. One suspects the truth lies in the middle, a side not as good as many believed going into this and not as bad as most think coming out of it.

And then, there is Australia’s team. Simon Barnes wrote, quite accurately, in The Times, “The Australia Test team that completed an Ashes whitewash over England this morning are a rare and vivid example of a Superteam. They have acted as a unit. They set out to destroy their opponents and in doing so have reached an almost absurd degree of superiority over a damn good cricket team. They have demonstrated beyond all refutation that a damn good team is one thing, a Superteam quite another.” Later in his commentary, he noted, “A Superteam isn’t just a bunch of very good players. A Superteam is what happens when the curious magic of shared resolve forces from every player something beyond himself, when exceptional players force brilliance from less gifted colleagues and when these colleagues push exceptional players into greatness. In such circumstances, all forms of personal ability come from something shared: a sense of identity as one inevitable victor among many inevitable victors. Team spirit is one thing; Superteam spirit quite another.”

Test Cricket says good-bye now to three of Australia’s stars. Justin Langer, a fine batsman, retires with 23 Test centuries and an average of over 45 runs. And then, there are Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, of whom, Scott Heinrich of BBC Sport wrote, “Warne and McGrath were two once-in-a-lifetime players who implausibly happened upon cricket at the same time.” Almost never does the storybook ending happen in sports. For these three Aussies, it has. They whitewashed England for the Ashes in their home country, and then, they walked off the pitch and into the antipodean sunset. Perhaps, the Queen of Australia can find an MBE for this lot.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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