Press slam "Perthetic" England
The Ashes series was all but decided after the Adelaide Test, so the British press had plenty of time to come up with their back-page headlines when the urn was finally lost
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
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Sorry England surrendered The Ashes in record time yesterday. Freddie Flintoff’s Perth flops handed back the urn to Australia after just 15 days of Test cricket Down Under - the shortest defence in history.
Geoff Boycott, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said the lost series should spell the end for Duncan Fletcher.
My view is that after the Ashes series has finished, the men in suits should talk to Duncan Fletcher. They should recommend that he takes the team through the triangular and the World Cup, and then retires. And they should start looking for a new coach for the beginning of the English summer. There is no question of sacking him now – he's done some good things. But all good things come to an end.
Richard Williams, in The Guardian, agreed it was the team management who must take the blame. However, he also lambasted Kevin Pietersen for his batting tactics.
It was a small thing but it said a lot about the way England gave up the Ashes over the course of three Test matches. It was Kevin Pietersen's infuriating habit, when batting with the tail-enders, of taking a single off the first ball of an over. In Perth he did it five times in the first innings and four times in the second. For over after over the best batsman in the team was exposing the rabbits to the hunters' guns. It was the sort of behaviour that would not be countenanced in a village match and even at this exalted level it made no sense.
In The Times Simon Barnes says it's the manner of defeat that hurts the most.
England lost the first three Tests by margins of 277 runs, six wickets and 206 runs; in three matches, pulverised. Each match was marked by a hideous batting collapse. This was once an England tradition. They revived it for the biggest event in international cricket.
In The Independent Matthew Beard feels for those English fans who have paid to fly over to Australia for the fourth and fifth Tests and who will now watch a dead rubber.
They had hoped to spend Christmas soaking up some winter sun while watching the climax of a finely balanced Ashes series. Instead devotees of English cricket - the last of them departing for Australia this weekend - will have flown halfway round the world to witness one of the longer wakes in the history of the game.
Also in The Independent James Lawton bemoans the triumphalism that he believes cost England the Ashes this time round.
The Ashes were lost, so soon after their recovery from a near 20-year void, at the point they were grasped at the Oval 16 months ago. They were consumed by the English sporting disease - triumphalism and its incestuous companion, celebrity.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here