Ashes to ashes

My dream and desire, to watch a competitive Ashes has gone to ashes. Pieterson, Harmison, Vaughan were all the beams of hope for English revival.

After an excellent summer last year, after whitewashing everybody, there was lot of expectations from the English side.

The England and Wales Cricket Board [the, ECB - now, don’t ask where the ‘W’ is, he is sitting across the Atlantic ;)] pumped in new life to the side with a good team selection. Experience playersd like Thorpe had to make way for the young blood, which is a very good sign that the team is aggressive and is high in confidence.

Along with the team, all of us were expecting a nail-biting Ashes. After all, monopolies have been destroyed this year from Schumi to Arsenal/ManU, with the exception of Federer. We thot it is Australia’s turn. That too after their initial losses in the series, infact once to Bangladesh, it appeared obvious that the time has come for the wheel to rotate.

The match started on an overcast Thursday morning, which then turned out to be a very good one for Poms. Harmison taking a 5-for, by abt 2.30 pm, everyone in the office started hunting for tickets. Not long before, Mr.Consistent McGrath showed the if-u-can-do-that-i-can-do-this arrogance, completely gatecrashing into the poms' evening party plans. So much that they started to pray for the rain as early as 3rd day.

Surprisingly the Rain Gods responded, but they must have gone out of stock to continuously flood St. Johns woods for more than 2 days. They held the innings till the 4th day afternoon, and suddenly got All-Out, bowled by Sun. Then, the familiar procession started and it was all over in the fourth day.

Lot of rebuilding, retrospection and thinking needs to be done by both teams before they go into Edgbaston. Ozs thinking of how many records they can break, and Poms, abt where the RainGod prayer Mass should be conducted.