Story The Ashes 2009 - 3rd Test Result

[Ollie_H]

The Ashes, a series contended by the Poms and the Convitcs, more commonly known as the English and the Aussies respectively. The two nations love to hate each other but are combined by more than just an urn with a few ashes in. The English actually sent their prisoners back in the day down to Australia to live there, which technically means all Aussies are English. Or so the English like to think! The Ashes is one of crickets most celebrated rivalries, even better than the matches between the Indians and the Aussies and also the Indians vs the Pakistanis. Which many Indian fans try and claim, there claims are shored up by the best nations in the world when they all say that the Ashes is the best series.

After one of the best, if not the best test series ever in 2005 the English won the ashes for the 28th time, scenes of jubilation erupted around the Oval, when Michael Vaughan lifted possibly the smallest trophy in International sport. The first test saw Australia show their dominance beating England by 239 runs. Harmison skittled the Aussies out in the first innings when he took 5 for 43 to dismiss them for 190. The Aussies came back strongly and ended up winning the match, McGrath and Warne taking 15 wickets between them. The series went on and the English won the next match by just 2 runs, one of the closest victories of all time which saw a now famous picture of sportsmanship between Brett Lee and Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintstone, The 3rd test was drawn between the two sides when Lee and McGrath battled their way through to secure the draw. The English went on to win the 4th test by only 3 wickets with Ashley ‘King of Spain’ Giles and Matthew Hoggard hitting the winning runs. The 5th test was down to one man, after changing his hair colour because he couldn’t get to 100, he managed to spank 158 affectively winning the series after Warne managed to drop the Ashes.
Australia came back strongly in 2007 at home in Australia, when they absolutely dominated the English 5 – 0. They showed how they were still the strongest team in the world. The English who had appointed one Freddie Flintoff their captain buckled under the pressure put on by Australia. 277 runs, 6 wickets, 206 runs, an innings and 99 runs and then a 10 wicket victory is how the 2006/07 ashes were won by Australia.5 – 0 Something that in only rugby does it not show a complete hammering of the opposition!

However the 2009 Ashes are here and the fiercest rivalry in world cricket is back with a bang.

The Squads for the two teams are as follows:

Australia 20 man Squad for 2009 Ashes Series:
Ricky Ponting (c), Brad Haddin (wk), Graham Manou (wk), Simon Katich, Philip Hughes, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, David Hussey, Shaun Marsh, James Hopes, Marcus North, Andrew McDonald, Shane Watson Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus, Brett Lee, Nathan Hauritz, Nathan Bracken, Stuart Clark, Peter Siddle.


England 20 Man Squad for 2009 Ashes Series:
Andrew Strauss (c), Matt Prior (wk), James Foster (wk), Ravinder Bopara, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell, Eoin Morgan, Owais Shah, Alastair Cook, Andrew Flintoff, Paul Collingwood, Samit Patel, Dimitri Mascharenhas, Adil Rashid, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Ryan Sidebottom, James Anderson, Graham Onions, Graeme Swann,



Who will win the 2009 Ashes? Find out here!

 

[Pakistani Army]

A beautifuly compelled opening post there Ollie. I personally feel that this series will not have the same intensity as the 2005 series but it will be up there.

My prediction is a 2-1 win to the Aussies.

 

[Roofrom50]

Australia will dominate this series. Good luck to the Poms though, their going to need it
Good start to the story mate, looking forward to the rest.

 

[Biggy]

Nice start, interesting squads. Where'd you get your roster?

 

[shantanu_rooney]

Brilliant start mate, superb first post and cant wait for the Ashes to begin..

 

[hedger_14]

you get the roster from Cricket 07 and Ollie, you spelt alistair wrong, its alastair

 

[Ollie_H]

Nice start, interesting squads. Where'd you get your roster?

I made it for myself, I hate the C07 Downloads forum as it is all so packed and it's like being a little fish in a big sea!

you get the roster from Cricket 07 and Ollie, you spelt alistair wrong, its alastair

Thanks for pointing that out mate!

Thanks for all your kind comments so far

 

[Biggy]

I made it for myself, I hate the C07 Downloads forum as it is all so packed and it's like being a little fish in a big sea!

Oh OK, I thought you might be using the default one. I have made an Australian Domestic, T20 World Cup and Ashes roster with all those players updated except Samit (with bats assigned) so I could have helped you out with those players, but you have everything under control.

 

[hedger_14]

i've made my own IPL rosters with updates stats and attributes, well all teams except 1.

 

[Ollie_H]

Oh OK, I thought you might be using the default one. I have made an Australian Domestic, T20 World Cup and Ashes roster with all those players updated accept Samit (with bats assigned) so I could've helped you out with those players, but you have everything under control.

ahaha, I have assigned most of the bats aswell, I mean there a few bats I don't have because I dont want to trall through all of the download threads and I don't know who are the better patch makers so I have just given them a close one to it!, one thing that annoys me when looking is if they haven't indexed well I just leave straight away, for example I have bookmarked send2yarri's kit thread as it has such an aestheticly pleasing download index and his kits are stunning!

Is there anything wrong with the squads?

 

[Aditya]

Nice presentation ollie great squad hope your story goes well best of luck

 

[Ollie_H]

England announce fixtures for Ashes Series 2009
​

Today at the media centre at Lords in London, David Graveney held a press conference to announce the fixtures of the 2009 Ashes series. David Graveney came out with a few surprises when he announced the fixtures for the series. He has tried to make sure both the Aussies and the English are thoroughly warmed up in practice matches so the series can reach its maximum potential and if that is anything by the last two series they should be absolute corkers of a series. The first of Graveney’s few surprises was possibly the first sort seen in the history cricket. It will be England Probables facing the England Possibles in a 50 over match down at Taunton in Somerset. Admission to the game will be 10 for adults and 5 for OAP’s and Children, Under 6’s go free. This is the first of its sort seen in cricket, especially English Cricket, Graveney and other senior members of the English Cricket team and senior members of the Cricket Board discussed this idea and thought that it was a very good option to see where they were with the England team. It also gives them a match practice in the middle to see if anyone deserves a call up from the Possibles and see how they far against the Probables. Preceding this match will be a 4 day game between the England Lions and the Australians at New Road, starting on Wednesday 1st July and the final day being Saturday 4th. 2 of the England Possibles will be in this team to face the Australians and this will give these two players another chance to impress the selectors.
The pinnacle of the series will then commence the 5 test series between England and Australia. The First test will be held at Cardiff, the second at Lords, the third at Edgbaston, the penultimate test series will be held at Headingly and the Climax of the series will be held at the prestigious Oval where this test match could be the decided. In between the 3rd test and the 4th test will be a 50 over match between Northamptonshire and the Australians, then also between the 4th test and the 5th test the Australians will take on Kent in another 50 over match.
After the 5 Test Series there will be a few day gap and then the Aussies will take on Scotland will take on Australia in a single ODI. A few days later there will be just a single T20 match between Australia and England and then the Tri Series held between England, Australia and South Africa, a competitive tournament but all will see it as preparation for the Champions Trophy in October. With the Champions Trophy starting just days later it is set to be a very gruelling Schedule!

Press Conference:

David, Anthony Rogers of Sky Sports. For me the most interesting point you make is the decision of a Probables vs. Possibles Match, do you not think you can regard make your team selections based on county performances this season? It also means you have to add two players to your squad of 20 for the Ashes, can you enlighten us to whose those players may be?

The main emphasis based on the Probables vs. Possibles match was for the players to build a possible last chance case for themselves. Unfortunately we don’t have the time before the Ashes starts to have it as a 4 or even 5 day game so it’s not exactly the same, but we are of course hoping all the players will get a chance to make at least one case for themselves. Of course having this match open to the public and televised on TV you could say that it is giving the Aussies a chance to scout many of our players, but this wasn’t a major concern to us as with technology as it is in the modern day they probably know us better then we ourselves do!

Hi David, Philip Jones from the BBC, Originally everyone thought after the Ashes it would just be a straight One Day series between England and Australia, what was the reasoning behind the decision to add South Africa and make it a tri-series? Also will the same 20 man squad be used for this tri-series as it is in the Ashes or will a new one be announced.

Much like the Probables Vs. Possibles match we thought long and hard as to how we could make this Ashes series even better than it is already hyped up to be, it is true that originally we had thought about just having an Australia vs. England ODI series but we thought to make the standard of competition higher we would like to add a 3rd team, we sent out an email to a few of the other cricket boards and our first choice was South Africa they agreed, they said that they loved playing in England and also they will not have played any cricket since the World T20, so they thought it would be a perfect opportunity to play some cricket as a warm up and forget totally about their disappointment of the world Twenty20 and yes new squads will be announced for this series.

Richard Davies of The Times newspaper, a lot was made out of the Euphoria of winning the 2005 ashes and a lot of the English are still revelling in it, but then it was the sheer disappointment of the 2006-2007 ashes, how do you feel this series will turn out and do you have any regrets from the 06/07 Ashes?

Of course the 2005 ashes was an absolutely fantastic series and this was shown by pundits calling it possibly the greatest ever series, that is not easy to live up to in the next series and obviously 06/07 Ashes was a grave disappointment for English cricket, I think the main problem was a lot of people hadn’t moved on since that series where as the Australians and gone home and realised they weren’t immortal and worked very hard and it made them a much stronger team. I think my one regret we had was making Freddie skipper, In no way am I saying he did a terrible job, in fact we think he did a terrific job, but it was when you give the most important person in the team the captaincy you realise the sheer burden that being the skipper of your country carries and obviously everything took its toll on poor Freddie. Obviously we then re located the captaincy to take some of the weight off Freddie’s shoulders as he already carries the weight of the country on his shoulders. One Final Question please,

Tom Rust, Telegraph. The squad you have announced to take on the Aussies in the Ashes comes with a few surprises, Ian Bell regains his place in the squad, Dimitri Mascharenhas comes in too, Samit Patel is in the squad has he overcome his fitness issues and Steve Harmison is left out? Can you explain these selections?

We feel the squad has a good balance of players we have a few spin options, multiples bowling options some key all-rounders and a good mix of batsmen to help us overcome the Aussies, Ian [Bell] comes back into the selectors he wants to be part of the national set up by going back to Warwickshire and averaging over 50 in the LV County Championship and getting some runs in the other formats, Belly obviously wants to makes amends for his so far satisfactory Test record as he wants to become one of the best English Batsmen of all time. We feel Dimitri is becoming a key player in the set up, when we were picking our captains back in January/February we were saying that if Dimitri was in the Test side we would have thought about giving him the job, unfortunately it wasn’t the case as the Test team is very hard to get into, he was also one of the top candidates for the ODI captaincy. When we sent Samit back from the tour over fitness issues he has worked incredibly hard putting in the hours after training sessions to do even more fitness, he is just coming up to the right standard and we plan on working the lad hard in his fitness to get him to the correct level in quick time. Of course Harmy must be getting very annoyed with us, He’s in and then he’s out, he must be very confused, he just missed out on the squad but we have called him for the Possibles vs. Probables match and he can certainly build a case for himself if there is an injury.
In fact the teams for the Probables vs. Possibles match are as follows.
Probables

Possibles​

1 Strauss (c)​

1.Key (c)​

2 Cook​

2.Bell​

3 Bopara​

3.Shah​

4 Pietersen​

4.Patel​

5 Collingwood​

5.Morgan​

6 Flintoff​

6.Mascharenhas​

7 Prior(wk)​

7.Foster(wk)​

8 Broad​

8.Rashid​

9 Swann​

9.Bresnan​

10 Anderson​

10.Onions​

11 Sidebottom​

11.Harmison
​

Fixture List

[B][URL="http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/1451779-post24.html"]Wed Jul 1 - Sat Jul 4
England Lions v Australians
County Ground, New Road, Worcester[/URL]

[URL="http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/1454363-post33.html"]Sunday 5th July 
England Probables(A) vs England Possibles(B) 50 Over Game 
Taunton, Somerset[/URL]

[URL="http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/1489691-post54.html"]Wed Jul 8 - Sun Jul 12
1st Test - England v Australia
Sophia Gardens, Cardiff 	[/URL]

[URL="http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/1652352-post81.html"]Thu Jul 16 - Mon Jul 20
2nd Test - England v Australia
Lord's, London 	[/URL]
[URL="http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/1661787-post93.html"]
Thu Jul 30 - Mon Aug 3
3rd Test - England v Australia
Edgbaston, Birmingham 	[/URL]

Fri Aug 7 - Tue Aug 11
4th Test - England v Australia
Headingley, Leeds 	

Thu Aug 20 - Mon Aug 24
5th Test - England v Australia
Kennington Oval, London 	

Fri Aug 28
Only ODI - Scotland v Australia
Grange Cricket Club Ground, Raeburn Place, Edinburgh 

Sun Aug 30
1st Twenty20 International - England v Australia
Old Trafford, Manchester 	


Fri Sep 4 Day and Night
1st ODI - England v Australia
Kennington Oval, London 	

Sun Sep 6
2nd ODI - England v South Africa
Lords, London

Wed Sep 9 Day and Night
3rd ODI - South Africa v Australia
The Rose Bowl, Southampton 	

Sat Sep 12
4th ODI - England v South Africa
Lord's, London 	

Tue Sep 15 Day and Night
5th ODI - England v Australia
Trent Bridge, Nottingham 	

Thu Sep 17 Day and Night
6th ODI - South Africa v Australia
Old Trafford, Manchester

Sun Sep 20th Day and Night
Final 
Lords, London[/B]

 

[Biggy]

Probables to SMASH Possibles.

Where is Monty? This is a crime!

 

[Pakistani Army]

Lengthy fixtures post there Ollie. I particularly liked the question and answer round with Graveney as this gave more of an insight into the selection and the fixtures.

Firstly, I feel with a Tri-Series there will be more anticipation as there will be a change instead of Australia vs England One-Day Internationals. However, I feel that instead of West Indies, there should have been the inclusion of Pakistan or Sri Lanka as England vs West Indies is getting repeatative.

Looking at the selection, I feel Graveney has made a fair decision by putting Swann ahead of Panesar and Rashid. Graveney still holds two spinners in his armour if Swann does not bowl too well.

Regarding the presentation, it is supreme. Keep up the fantastic works Ollie!

 

[surendar]

Good luck to this story, Holdy! Good to see you back in story forums with a story. With Ashes starting in few days, I hope this story also entertain our members.

Good luck once again!