The Ashes Disaster

[Mack]

As the England cricket team lurch from disaster to disaster in one of the most dissapointing tours in recent history I am left astounded at the cartalogue of errors that have been made by selectors and coach.

1st Mistake.. Flintoff as Captain

I think most privately felt at the time of announcement the bloke has so much on his plate as a leading figure as a bowler and better that to add the overall pressure of the game was just too much.

Strauss had also just had a successful spell as Captain whilst Flintoff was injured.

2nd mistake.. Picking a whole bunch of unfit players

To take a gamble on a couple of key players you could understand but to pick a team awash with players just declared fit and woefullt short of any cricket was a huge mistake.

Anderson, Flintoff, Giles, Harmison etc all together.

3rd mistake.. Picking Jones as wicket keeper

After Read showed he could fill that role well and produce better batting performances and more runs at number 7 for some unknown reason they drop the bloke and recall Jones.

4th mistake.. Ommiting Panesar from the team

After the coach Fletcher hailed Panesar the "best left arm spinner in the World" he promptly drops him for a player that has been out injured for a year and has played no cricket.

To make matter worse it takes them a further game to realise their mistake, by which time the series is all but lost.

5th mistake.. Being negative

From the first morning of the first test team England made negative defensive decsions both in selection of the team and match tactics.

By the time they began to look more attacking in mode they were already 2-0 down and mentally weakened by the first two tests.

6th Not playing enough cricket before the first test

Fletcher said after the Ashes were lost that the press had critisized England for playing too much cricket previously so it was ironic now England were accused of being 'undercooked' and badly prepared.

This is utter tripe as the team his organisation selected had a high percentage of players that had hardly played in the past 6 months, and were indeed crying out for matchtime to find some form.

As displayed in 2005 the only way to beat those arrogant Aussie bastards is to get at them hard and aggresive from the off and make a fight of it all the way through.

I concede we are missing keys players from that series along with other important individuals being low on form but through all those problems and worse prior to this Ashes series team England had found shining lights such as Panesar that had filled the breach and had continued to make us a force in World cricket.

The long and short of it is the selectors, Fletcher the coach and Flintoff the Captain bottled this series early on and are now paying for it very dearly indeed.

We were very very good in the test arena and positively awfull when it came to the one day game prior to the Ashes. By the time we have been flattened in the test series 5-0 and hammered as usual in the one dayers we will return to these shores at one of the lowest points in English cricket history.

For me the only way forward from here is to remove the selectors, coach and Captain and sweep a broom right through the organisation to erradicate the negative element amongst the camp.