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The anguish of Adelaide
By Will last year, mid-January Leave a comment on this post
I often enjoy Simon Barnes’s pieces at The Times and he’s produced a really crisp and imaginative recollection of the nightmare of the 2nd Test at Adelaide.
It was cricket as it might have been written by Kafka: a hideous punishment, as unjust as it was incomprehensible, inflicted on people who had earned the right to expect better things from life. It was like playing cricket against the Gestapo: cricket as a form of atrocity in which resistance is useless. It was cricket as torture, in which pain and hatred become distorted into a loving and grateful submission to the torturer.
I shall never forget the streets of Adelaide afterwards, the numb shock of the England supporters. These things don’t happen. We couldn’t have seen that. Brains simply refused to process the information they had received. The England press corps, a more resilient bunch on the whole, were to be found the next day at the airport, each with the thousand-yard stare of the Vietnam vet.
That the torture only lasted an hour was something of a reprieve for us, for England. It was quick - still painful - and violent, and will never be forgotten. Like someone slitting a capillary on their wrist, England bled fatally. Barnes even goes as far to say that “it was the most extraordinary passage of cricket I have seen and one of the most shocking things I have witnessed in any sport”. I’m not sure I can quite agree, but nevertheless it was a period of play which must go down as one of the most captivating (or unwatchable, depending on which side of the fence you sit) in modern times.
Tags: adelaide, ashes, england-in-australia, gestapo, nightmare, simon-barnes, stuff, the-ashes |
9 Responses to “The anguish of Adelaide”
January 8th, 2007 at 12.26 am
January 8th, 2007 at 4.22 am
Yeah, if it hadn’t been such an amazing, unexpected victory, the Aussies wouldn’t have celebrated so hard. The series ended there and then to all intents and purposes. All that was left was to sit back and enjoy three more Tests of pain for England (whom KP has apparently anointed the best team in the world as of 2008! tinyurl.com/ylyewf)
January 8th, 2007 at 1.59 pm
a real bummer!. englad could not sleep after the defeats, nor did the australians given their celeberative hangovers. Its time to learn the lessons and look ahead to the world cup.
January 8th, 2007 at 2.23 pm
As I said at the time - The English were ambushed.
There were several pivotal points in this Ashes series. The first was Trescothick’s vanishing act. I reckon he was fully aware that you lot were going to get caned. The second was England’s strike bowler and his first over in Brisbane. It revealed a lot about the English attitude & preparation. We knew we had it made then! A lot of heads in Australian pubs looked down in embarrasment when Harmy bowled that over in a clown’s costume. The third was Freddy carrying injury in a pressure position. The fourth was Adelaide. By then it was all over. But the portents of doom were there well before that.
There’s a light year of difference between 5 - Nil and 2 runs.
And as Michael Vaughan would say,” Well that’s that minor inconvenience to my career out of the way, how about the One Dayers”
Bilbo
January 8th, 2007 at 8.21 pm
Years from now it will be like remembering where you were when Kennedy was shot or when Bob Willis took 8 for 43 at Headingley.
I was asleep for the morning session but remember awakening at 6am expecting to two of the top six batting England to a draw and instead seeing Hussey and Ponting galloping towards such a pathetic total. I was shellshocked and at that moment knew that a series I had hitherto thought Australia would win comfortably, 3-1, was only going to end in a 5-0 annihilation.
Elliott, at least at Edgbaston you got near to winning a game and not scraping a draw. 
This seems an opportune time to post three reasons why England gave away the fragments of the Ashes that Australia didn’t rip from their grasp.
1. Preparation. Australia had more time to prepare it is true but I do think England could have made more effective use of the preparation time they did have.
2. Selection. One of the greatest contributing factors to Australia’s demise in 2005 was their predeliction for sticking to out of form players (Gillespie, Katich). Instead of learning from their opponents mistakes England trumped even that by recalling two bowlers who had not played any cricket for the best part of a year.
3. Cooley. Fletcher’s going to cop a whole load of stick for a lot of things but the guy who really needs emasculating it the pillock at the ECB who let him go back to Australia. By the end of the series you could have put a postage stamp on the strip and all the Aussie bowler would have hit it, even Lee. In contrast Mahmood and Anderson couldn’t have hit a shithouse door.
Still I wouldn’t want my ranting (although it was a good rant and I have really enjoyed it) to detract from the fact that Australia deserved nothing less. It might have been a one-sided series but that didn’t stop it being one of the most absorbing exhibitions of quality cricket. I hope England learn from it.
January 8th, 2007 at 9.35 pm
Barnes is a good journalist, but isn’t there anyone else out there who thinks that shoehorning references to ‘Gestapo’, ’slitting wrists’ and ‘torture’ into an article about a sporting event is a little hyperbolic?
To my mind, the whole debacle was set up by the declaration at the end of Day 2. No one in the England camp has satisfactorily explained the thought process that led to a declaration on 550-6. Did they SERIOUSLY think that Australia were going to be bowled out twice on that pitch? If so, then they had totally lost touch with reality.
From the position at tea on Day 2, there was only one possible way we could lose that test - and we uncannily managed to find it.
”Avoid having to face Warne on a Day 5 pitch for any longer than necessary” should have been a pretty explicit belief based on 13 years previous evidence - yet the hubris and arrogance in the England camp meant that it was totally ignored.
McGrath had figures of 0-107, Warne had something like 1-140 (and we were all writing posts about how KP had the measure of him) We could have gone on to 650-9 (Freddie getting a ton) and the Aussies would have been on their knees by lunch on Day 3. Even at 300 runs a day, Australia wouldn’t have got to that total until midway through Day 5 - Result - Draw (Points to England) The Aussie press would have started raising concerns over Warne and McGrath.
That would have made Perth a totally different proposition.
January 9th, 2007 at 12.29 am
Reverse Swing,
That was a good summary of events mate. But, as you would well know, cricket is not a simple bat ‘n ball game. It’s a mind game that needs a strong analytical brain. Somewhere during that Adelaide Test, Fletcher lost his.
,,,,,,,,,,and here we are today.
Bilbo
January 9th, 2007 at 2.03 pm
Trust Mr Barnes to write something as brilliant.
January 12th, 2007 at 4.09 am
Its the same as an Indian fan goes through, with one exception - Wilde is blown away by the novelty of this, we have to deal with the familiarity. Go figure which is worse.
Elliott, Edgbaston would have been gutting for you because you came so close, but lost. Here, there was no proximity with losing whatsoever (theoretically).
Reverse Swing- its hyperbolic, but if one has ever (actually) shed a tear after, or during, a cricket game, that hyperbole is merely “well-put”
um, hi Will.
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