Australia 302 for 6 (Ponting 126, Clarke 52) beat England 299 (Morgan 58) by four wickets

I was rather hoping for rain so we would all be spread yet another tedious, one sided affair but alas no. England won the toss for the 5th match in succession, and again chose to bat. Dimi Mascarenhas came into the side for Luke Wright who injured his foot facing a bowling machine a few days ago. Australia chose to give Brett Lee a breather after his devastating performance in the last game, so what was already likely to be an underwhelming game now had to contend with the absence of the most exciting bowler. Great. Peter Siddle replaced him in the line up.

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The Rosebowl

Australia 230 for 4 (White 105, Clark 52) beat England 228 for 9 (Strauss 63, Watson 3-36) by six wickets

It was so far so good for Australia going into today’s day nighter in Southampton with two wins from two, whereas England, in particular in their batting, have thus far shown themselves to be utterly inept in the one day format. That would need to be put right but the pre match soundbytes coming from each camp weren’t encouraging, James Anderson complaining that England were finding it difficult to match the intensity of the Ashes, while for the Australians Brett Lee in particular was full of life and pace and enjoying letting off steam after a frustrating time during the Test Matches.

Despite their problems England chose to go into the match with an unchanged line up with meant Adil Rashid missed out again. Less surprisingly Australia also named an unchanged side. England won the toss for the third time in succession, and chose to bat on this occasion, presumably hoping just to get it out of the way.

They started off okay, Strauss in particular unleashing a flurry boundaries as England reached 40 without loss after 7 overs. After 8 overs, however, the score was 41-1. Bopara, having already hit Nathan Bracken over long on for six, tried to repeat the shot but succeeded only in spooning a leading edge over the bowler’s head to be caught by James Hopes.

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23rd August 2009. The date probably won’t remain etched into the minds of English cricket lovers in the same way as 12th September 2005 is. There won’t be any open top bus tours and MBEs and trips to 10 Downing Street. But England’s victory today was perhaps even more remarkable than that of four years ago.

In 2005 England went into the final Test at the Oval 2-1 up in the series with an extra batsman in the side to replace Simon Jones and once the toss was won all they had to do was not lose 20 wickets and the Ashes were theirs. It wasn’t quite as simple as that of course, these things never were when Shane Warne (12 wickets in the match) was around but the stage had been set up for victory in advance. Not so in 2009.

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England 307 for 8 (Bell 72, Siddle 4-63)

After 4 Tests, 16 days play, 4542 runs and 116 wickets England and Australia arrived this morning at the Oval in south east London squared at one game all in the 2009 Ashes. Only a win would do for England in their quest to win back the Ashes, and while a draw would be enough for Ricky Ponting’s men there was no way that they would be playing for anything other than a victory.

Australia named an unchanged side meaning that they would have no frontline spinner, and for England Freddie Flintoff returned at the expense of Graeme Onions to make his 79th and final appearance in a test match, and Jonathan Trott makes his debut coming in for Ravi Bopara. Andrew Strauss won the toss and chose to bat.

England made it to lunch for the loss of just one wicket, Alastair Cook again chasing a wide ball outside of his off stump and edging to Ricky Ponting at second slip. It was 50/50 how the first wicket was going to go, Strauss was either going to be LBW to a Hilfenhaus inswinger or Cook was going to do that. Let’s hope with some prolonged net work after this series he can sort this issue out. Ian Bell came in back at number 3 with the score at 12-1, precisely the sort of situation England did not want him to be in. He made it through to drinks with his captain though pushing the score on to 56-1 at exactly four an over. The second hour of the morning created no real alarms for either batsman, Strauss reached his fifty ten minutes or so before the break and a four from Bell brought up the hundred in the very next over. Well played both of them and England would have been happy to have avoided losing anymore early wickets, while Australia will still have felt that 108-1 could easily become 150-5 with the batting England have to come.

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