October 2008 Archives

Boxing Day, 1986. The Melbourne Test.

58,203, including a paint salesman called Colin, inside the ground.

Graham Dilley fails a fitness test so Gladstone Small is called up.

Australia, put in, are skittled for 141 as Small rips out David Boon, Dean Jones, Steve Waugh, Greg Matthews and Peter Sleep to finish with 22.4-7-48-5.

Small harvests match figures of 7 for 88 as England win by an innings and 14 runs, thereby retaining the Ashes. Their jubilation is great, tarnished only slightly by news, transmitted via radio device from way back in snowy England, that Walsall lost 2-1 at Bristol City.

Chatted to Ashley Giles about a few things the other day and most of what he said made plenty of sense but on one issue we just can't agree - that of centrally-contracted players playing in county cricket.

Ashley has absolutely no problem with England players being kept out of county cricket to "rest". As an England selector, I suppose he would say that wouldn't he? But I, rather tenaciously, if I may say so, cited the example of Essex v Warwickshire in the champo at Chelmsford last month - a big, important four-day game, the sort that championship cricket is all about. Why couldn't Ian Bell and Alistair Cook have played in that game? Resting? They were just about to have two months off.

"But having a successful England team is most important," Ashley said. "That's what generates the money."
Yes, but surely a successful England team comes from producing good players which comes from having a strong county system which comes from having as many good players in it as possible.

"But they play a hell of a lot of international cricket these days," added Ashley.
True. They do, poor lambs. Who could forget Kevin Pietersen bleating about how tired he was earlier this year? At one stage, I understand, he could barely drag his poor, exhausted body along to the studio for his next advertising shoot.

Then Allen Stanford piped up and, strangely enough, all the fatigue seemed to melt away.

England players should, if fit, play every county championship game possible. Look what it did for Harmison.

In the 1902 Test at Edgbaston, the inaugural Test match there, Australia were 8 for 0 in their first innings when England captain Archie MacLaren gave spinner Len Braund an over so that Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst could swap ends.

Seventy minutes later, Australia were 36 all out.

When Ross Edwards, on 79, resumed his innings for Australia on the third day of the second Test against England at Perth in December 1974, he faced the bowling of Geoff Arnold - and began the day with five successive twos.

Will we ever see the like again?