My mate Dan, who continues to claim he works for The Wisden Cricketer magazine when we all know he’s much too small to hold such a prestigious position, needs your help. Don’t worry, nothing like that. Cast your mind (or minds), Britons, back to 2005 when the country was gripped in Ashes fever. He’s kindly asked for your assistance. From his high-chair in a posh part of London, he reached forward with all his Norfolk might to the keyboard and thus wrote:
“The world’s leading cricket magazine (yes, really) wants to hear from you or your friends for four very good reasons:
- Those who got into cricket (or back into cricket) through the 2005 Ashes.
- They’d want to hear your stories and reasons and be available for a phone interview throughout March.
- Those who got into the Ashes 2005 but have paid no interest to cricket since (everyone has a friend like this). (Dan, this is you. WL)
- Those who skived off work to watch the series or spent far too much time following it online at work.
- Those who were at the parade.
Always the skinflints, TWC do not pay for interviews but they are very nice to you”.
I can confirm the last sentence is emphatically correct on nearly both instances. So, leave a comment with a brief memory or five about how you felt during the series, how you followed it, and Dan’ll be in touch
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I take it they’re looking for fans such as Daffyd Jones who’ve conveniently forgotten the 2006 series
In no particular :
- Day five at Old Trafford, Ponting and McGrath hanging on for the draw for the last half hour, to prevent England going 2-1 up. I escaped work claiming a meeting, and crammed into a boozer near Charing Cross station, surrounded by men in suits squeezing their pint glasses tighter and tighter. It was mostly silent, except for when the ball beat the bat, leading to a collective groan. We’d outplayed them so convincingly, that it was difficult to know whether to feel excited for the remaining two tests or that sense of dread that we’d blown our best chance of the previous 17 years…
- Day four at Trent Bridge, Warne coming on to bowl, only a few overs into the innings. I was there, and immediately the target of 120-odd looked twice as big. Wickets tumbled, and a few dozen umbrellas got munched. The only source of comfort, as the 7th wicket fell was some Australian chap next to me who kept telling me England were still odds-on.
I guess the big difference between new-comers and those who’ve been watching Ashes series since 1989 is that the former may have suffered suspense, but they didn’t also have to battle the mystical law that Australians NEVER lose. Thank god we had a South African in our batting line-up, or the law would have been proved right again…
Oh, and I forgot one of the biggest workplace excitements of the summer:
Edgbaston, day 1, 10.30am, BBC online – “Glenn McGrath has stepped on a ball during warm-up and is OUT of the test match”
Surely some mistake? The best cricket magazine in the world is Yes.. No.. Sorry (www.yesnosorry.com)
Followed the series from home in Canada as I was in between jobs at the time. No television coverage, so I was glued to the ball-by-ball reports, and for most of the last four tests that meant being glued to the computer from sunrise until early afternoon. The internet is an exhausting way to follow a Test match… every pause in coverage makes you think a wicket has fallen. My infant son got very used to Daddy behaving strangely in front of the computer…
One of the best things to happen to me in 2005 was that I was made redundant a fortnight before the Test series began.
I started my new job the week after the Oval test finished. Job interviews miraculously seemed to fall into non test days.
The only time I missed a ball was when I was playing cricket myself on a Sunday (when I wasn’t watching it on TV I was listening to it on the radio, whilst following it on Cricinfo and posting the odd comment here). One particular Sunday corresponded with the hairy run chase at Trent Bridge and the scores were shouted out from the boundary at the end of each over.
My most abiding memory was the number of times my wife rushed in from another room every time I shouted when an Aussie wicket went down; she was convinced I’d done myself some mortal injury.
On reflection it was probably the best two month career break of my life.
1. The first morning at The Oval – the most electrically charged atmosphere I’ve ever experienced at a cricket match.
2. The last afternoon, which beat the above!
3. Oval fourth day – Freddie just bowling and bowling and bowling.
4. Freddie’s ton at Nottingham – and his partnership with Geraint Jones (remember him?)
5. Matty getting a whole series of LBWs at Trent Bridge – all of us going gradually berserk
6. Post Oval drinks at the White Bear in Kennington Park Road.
7. Getting chatted up on the train home from London Bridge…
Edgbaston test, remember thinkin that the Poms would wrap it up quickly on the fourth mornin’ then Lee, Warne and Kaspa nearly got us home. Flintoffs show of sportsmanship at the conclusion consoling Binga.
What a match that was, actually the best cricket series i’ve ever watched, wasn’t a dull moment.
My highlights include,
The ball McGrath bowled Vaughan with at lords in Englands first innings,
Vaughans’ 166 at Old Trafford,
Warnes 40 wickets when everyone was saying he was a fading force,
Freddy Flintoff– He was the difference for me in that amazing series his bowling was relentless and constantly dangerous and made good runs with the bat.
I’m a Kiwi, and it was the 2005 Ashes which got me interested in English cricket (as opposed to my own team who I have followed for many years). Actually it all started with that 20/20 match where England thrashed Australia — I came upon it by accident, and stayed for the excitement, watching KP (in his striped badger phase) taking catch after catch, and thought to myself: this doesn’t look like England. I’d always thought of the England cricket team as this round-shouldered bunch of losers being ground into the dirt year after year by Australia. Suddenly they looked different. I got hooked through the one-day series, and fell in love during the Tests. Became dangerously obsessed, and couldn’t watch the close finishes. Lost so much sleep watching it during the night hours here that it ruined my sleep for years after.
My favourite moments:
1) Giles and Hoggard’s little batting partnership that stood up to the speed of Lee and the guile of Warne to get them over the line at Trent Bridge, and the joy on the England balcony afterwards.
2) Flintoff and Hoggard’s bowling on the second last day at the Oval, taking what looked like it would be a massive Aussie lead into a six-run deficit. Boycott’s commentating glee as he watched said bowling.
Richo wrote – “Flintoffs show of sportsmanship at the conclusion consoling Binga.”
So ‘That’s one-all you Aussie b******…’ counts as sportsmanship does it?!!
The summer of 2005 turned me from a casual cricket observer – one of the ‘like the one day stuff’ brigade – to an absolute cricket obssessive (in my defence I am Scottish, so I’m not supposed to like it!).
The series coincided with my month’s study leave for my chartered accountancy exams which was an absolute recipe for disaster… Thankfully I bluffed my way through them (only just, I blame Freddie Flintoff that I didn’t win a prize!) and England took back the urn. I did discover that there really only is so much study you can fit in through lunch, tea, and between the close and the Channel 4 highlights show (RIP).
It was just a magical time though, and for me life changing as I never realised just how empty my life was without test cricket, and the England cricket team have become only 2nd in my sporting affections to my football team (Celtic).
My top memories were:
Harmison’s slower ball (“one of the great balls”) to remove Clarke, last ball on the Saturday night, which ‘won’ the test…
…then waking up in a drunken haze the next morning on a friend’s couch, nearly throwing up when I saw the 20 to win, 1 wicket remaining! Then that Harmi full toss driven by Lee to the covers, had to be the boudry to win, just couldn’t look…60 seconds later Jones had taken that tumbling catch. It was so intense it was surreal, one of the most dramatic sporting moments of all time.
On a long drive going on holiday, listening to TMS describe Freddie and Hoggy tear through the Aussie batting line up on the 4th day at the oval. It was pure theatre, and incredible England got a lead after the start the Aussies had…
But the best of all was on the 5th day, as I’d arrived in Bruges with my dad about 1pm on the last day with absolutely no idea of the score. We raced about Bruges trying to find somewhere showing it. Eventually the best we got was a pub with Ceefax!!! If you think cricinfo’s live text is tense, try watching an England batting collapse, followed by one of the great innings on bloody Ceefax (the strong local beer helped a bit)! Two drunk Scottish guys dancing around an empty bar when KP’s ton was confirmed. Eventually we went back to our hotel room and managed to pick up 5live and listened to those magical closing moments… What an end to an amazing summer.
Were you out on the field ‘Reverse swing”?… to of heard him say that (over the ovation) you must of been.
Actually – I heard a rumour that suggests reverse has it right. However it did come from the after dinner speaking circuit so should be taken with a pinch of salt.
I am now an airline pilot for a well known international carrier, but in 2005 flew corporate aircraft from a base in the Midlands. Returning to a UK airfield late during the final day of the Trent Bridge Test (Sunday as I recall), and illicitly listening to 198LW on one of the navigation radios, I noticed with horror that I was probably going to land, at or around the time that Hoggard and Giles were finishing it off the final runs, and so miss the moment when we went 2-1 up. Solution: declare a ‘minor’ emergency with ATC and enter the holding pattern overhead a beacon until victory was complete. With tears in my eyes we finally landed 25 minutes late. The passengers, of course, never knew !
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the notorious ODI in Adelaide where Emerson no-balled Murali, Ranatunga walked off the field and then Jayawardene made his first ODI century after Emerson gave him not out without calling for the video replay when he was run out!
Emerson was a rubbish umpire but I think he inadvertently gave Jayawardene’s career a jump-start
At least his umpiring career achieved something then
A look back http://monkeyatthecricket.blogspot.com/2009/01/rewind-1999-birth-of-jayawardene.html
My Ashes ’05 moments:
The Gladiatoral Moment
Nine men on the fence at Edgbaston, like schoolboys making room for the big boys to fight. And Fred keeps launching Lee out of the ground.
The Mental Illness Moment
Geraint Jones holes out in the deep at Trent Bridge and we’re seven men down. My wife is on the point of calling NHS Direct as I stalk from room to room with my head in my hands, grey with nausea, muttering “that’s it, we’ve lost, we’re f***ed”.
The Apocalypse Now Moment
At Trafalgar Square a police helicopter flies in front of the sun, its shadow swooping across the face of the National Gallery. The percussion in Bittersweet Symphony crashes in, and on the big screen, Harmison scones Ponting with a short one.
The Actually Slightly Crap Moment
Generic winners’ confetti, generic sponsors’ podium, redundant crystal trophy, no pitch invasion… After a summer of dreaming of Vaughany on the balcony with the ashes, this was … piss-poor. Boo to the ICC, or whoever’s fault it was
richo – pinch of salt mate, pinch of salt!!