Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 45

Ashes show will continue because there’s too much money at stake | Geoff Lemon

Constant effects of Covid would have meant any other series being called off by now

As the Sydney Ashes Test rolls to the start line, the conversations about selections and form and conditions do not really matter. What matters is that it is miraculous this match is going ahead.

England have almost an entire coaching staff wiped out by Covid. Australia have lost their Brisbane century-maker Travis Head, with three players named as cover. The Cricket Australia chief executive, Nick Hockley, is out and Glenn McGrath will miss at least part of his foundation’s fundraising efforts. In Australian domestic cricket, Big Bash teams are losing quorum to the virus. Yet the show will go on.

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Justin Langer can go out on a high or risk return to Flatmate Syndrome | Geoff Lemon

The Australia coach has won the T20 World Cup and the Ashes in quick succession but, as ever, familiarity breeds contempt

Before England’s Test visit in 2017, the Australian spinner Nathan Lyon offered a line much repeated since about hoping to end some England careers. It was taken as it was intended, as a piece of pre-series bluff and bluster. The thing is, Lyon was close to the truth. In the Ashes-obsessed Test calendars for the English and Australian men’s teams, results in that series do make or break careers, on the field and off. Cricket cycles and career cycles have their ends and beginnings marked by these contests.

Plenty of players have their last appearance in an Ashes defeat, tending to be pensioned off thereafter in an effort to make whatever comes next seem like a fresh start. Captains too tend to call it quits – see Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and, if not for an early newspaper story, Tim Paine. An Australian coach can survive a loss in England if it isn’t dire, but would never survive one in Australia. England’s current coach, Chris Silverwood, is hotly tipped to hit the exit even with two matches of the ongoing series still to play.

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Magical hour with Starc and Cummins deserves to be defining Ashes memory | Geoff Lemon

This one-sided series will not be remembered as a classic but Australia’s threatening bowling in Melbourne stands out

It is safe to say that the current Ashes series will not be remembered as a classic of the genre. We follow sport for the contest, and the total lack of one is the reason there is so much consternation from wider English cricket quarters, even as the team tries to apply blinkers to get through two more Tests. There have been plenty of one-sided Ashes series, and most teams struggle away from home, but this has been another level.

When the tiny trophy has been played for in England in modern times, the contests have been closer. There is 2005, of course, the gold standard, but 2009 was also a 2-1 result that came down to the fifth match. The 3-0 scoreline in 2013 looks skewed, but Australia had two wins rained off on the last day, and came close to winning two other matches. The third and fourth Tests in 2015 were wipeouts for the visitors but they did still make the scoreline 3-2. And the 2019 series was a delightfully absurd carnival ride, with Steve Smith at Edgbaston, Ben Stokes at Headingley and Jofra Archer at Lord’s.

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Scott Boland’s perfect day sums up Australia’s seamless Ashes series

Fast bowler tore through meek England to win Ashes in rapid fashion but tougher tests await the hosts in Asia next year

At the end of 2002, Australia retained the Ashes inside 10 days. In 2021, the official figure will be 12 days. But that includes a surrender just after lunch on the fourth day in Brisbane, and well before lunch on the third day in Melbourne, scarcely enough in each case to be included as a day’s play.

On Monday, in these pages, we wrote about the extraordinary emergence of Scott Boland. On the second evening, his two wickets before stumps set the match on a path towards an inevitable conclusion. On the third day, Boland realised that conclusion himself, taking four more wickets to round out an astonishing second innings on debut, finishing with six wickets for seven runs. The second Indigenous man to play Test cricket for Australia won the Johnny Mullagh medal named for his long-ago predecessor, Unaarrimin, in an extraordinary moment of symbolic and practical significance.

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Australia embarrass England to retain the Ashes – The Final Word podcast

Emma John reflects on the terrible display from the tourists while Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon celebrate Scott Boland’s six for seven

Emma laments England’s disastrous, quickfire collapse at the MCG as Australia retained the urn in little over two days.

Then Adam and Geoff discuss an “extraordinary … embarrassing” finale to the third Test as they unpick how Australia won by an innings when they only had 267 runs on the board.

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Boland’s starring role for Australia adds extra layer of significance | Geoff Lemon

The debutant offers hope of progress for Indigenous Australians with a moving reaction from the stands

There were four moments across the first two days of the third Ashes match when the Melbourne Cricket Ground rose, in movement and in voice, to the hometown bowler Scott Boland on his Test debut. The second time was when he took his first wicket, as Mark Wood’s dismissal was upheld by the video umpire. The third time was when Boland, batting at No 11, scored his first runs with an edge through the slip cordon.

Those either side were more important. The first, before the match began, when Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin spoke during the welcome to country, noting the rarity of an Indigenous Australian cricketer representing this team. The guttural vocal affirmation from the stands was spontaneous and moving.

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Victory in sight for Australia as England crumble again – The Final Word podcast

Emma John offers her thoughts on day two of the third Test before Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon share their views from Melbourne

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

Emma recalls an up and down day for England, whose bowlers gave the tourists some hope before the top order crumbled again in the face of fierce bowling and a raucous crowd at the MCG.

Then Adam and Geoff discuss the performance of Australia, who are within touching distance of sealing the series.

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England’s batters fail once again in Australia – The Final Word podcast

Emma John offers her thoughts on day one of the third Test before Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon share their views from Melbourne

Emma discusses the fragile England batting lineup after another tough day for the visitors in Australia as they were skittled for 185.

Then Adam and Geoff ponder another satisfactory day for Australia, as they close on clinching the series.

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Return of heaven-sent Cummins is perfect late gift for Australia’s attack | Geoff Lemon

The host captain’s early incision undid England before lunch at the MCG not the tourists’ mid-session muddle

You could easily arrive at the conclusion that Patrick Cummins had been blessed by some benevolent god. The best-on-ground performance in the teenage Test debut, the personal qualities that made people speak of him as a future captain, the rise to that position despite a century and more of entrenched Australian opposition to bowlers taking the job.

That interpretation, though, would be overlooking the long, long wait after that teenage beginning, when Cummins had played one Test but spent six years being denied the next, the cycle of injuries whirring as endlessly as the exercise bikes on which he did another stint of rehabilitation. Your early 20s are supposed to be a time of impulsiveness and expression, not of quiet dedication to a long-term goal.

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Revived MCG pitch promises stage fit for a compelling Ashes contest | Geoff Lemon

If curators produce something approaching 2020’s lively pitch, the expected 70,000 crowd could be in a for a Boxing Day treat

Those England supporters who only pay attention to cricket in Australia every four years might be expecting the third Ashes Test to be a certain kind of game. That would be based on England’s last visit to the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2017, for a match played on a pitch so dead that the biggest sporting event in Victoria’s calendar was more a state funeral.

What we saw that year was a horticultural marvel, in that nobody could get anyone out, but equally nobody could score. The batting oozed along in a slurry of mistimed shots, and the chief mode of occasional dismissal seemed to be deliveries chopped onto the stumps. After days of that, the large sign above the Percy Beames bar bearing the ground’s highest score by a visiting player saw Alastair Cook’s 244 regrettably replace the masterpiece 208 by Vivian Richards. At least they both got knighthoods.

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