Could do better: C-

England didn’t have a great day on the opening day of the first Ashes Test, but neither is it as bad as some would have you believe.

Yes 260 is below par, but its perhaps 50-70 below par rather than 100-150. Runs on the board and all that…

My thought at the time was that it was a good toss to lose, and I think that’s proved to be the case. Both captains were dead set on batting first – largely due to well-documented errors of judgement in the past – but I suspect both wouldn’t have been too disappointed to have had first bowl on an unfamilair Gabba wicket. As it was, Ponting was the
man who’s mind was made up for him.

260 might be below par on a typical Gabba track, but we’ve been reminded time and again that this isn’t one of those.

Siddle bowled superbly, and a hat-trick is always going to rip the guts out of what was, at 197-4, a promising looking innings.

If he can perform well in conditions that bear more than a passing resemblance to something you might find on English shores (green-ish pitch with a bit in, cloud cover and, of course, several days of rain interrupting its preparation), there’s every reason to believe our bowlers will as well.

Our bowling is our strongest suit and our bowlers have a history of digging our batsmen out of trouble – which is as much a testament to the skills and guts of the bowlers as it is to the inconsistency of the batsmen.

England will have a chance to analyse where Australia had their successes (as if analysis were needed – bowl full to tempt the drive, bit of movement in the air and let it nibble about off the pitch) and I fully anticipate an England fightback.

We’ve got some – not as many as we’d have liked, granted – runs on the board and a decent track to have a bowl on, so this one is a long, long way from over.

When I was a lad…

It’s the final Countdown.

In about 34 hours I’ll be settled on the sofa, beer in one hand, remote control in the other, praying that it’s not raining in Brisbane so I can watch the morning session of the first Test. I almost wish my little girl was still struggling to sleep through the night.

The prospect of such a simple evening’s entertainment made me think back to some of my favourite personal Ashes memories (that I remember myself, sadly excluding Botham’s Ashes of 1981 (I was only one!) and Mike Gatting’s triumphant tourists five years later) , so I thought I’d share some with you.

As a reflection of my nature they tend to be of the positive variety, so – in no particular order – here goes:

Michael Vaughan lifting the Ashes in 2005. This was my first experience of an Ashes triumph. The celebrations showed what a close group the team were and how they’d pulled together over the course of a gruelling summer to beat, at the time, the best side in the world.

Brett Lee smearing a Steve Harmison full-bunger towards the point boundary with Australia requiring just 4 to win and take 2-0 lead at Edgbaston in the 2005 series. My heart jumped in to my throat as soon as the ball rocketed off the middle of the bat, but Matthew Hoggard was sweeping the boundary (inspired field placement by Vaughany!), and two balls later Kasprowicz gloved one to Geraint Jones and the Test was won.

I was lucky enough to be at The Oval for the fourth morning of the final Test, and watched Andrew Flintoff cement his slot as an English icon by claiming 4-29 in a devasting unbroken 14 over spell in the morning session, reducing Australia from a 277/2 to 367 all out. Flintoff’s heroics gave England the chance to build a lead that had looked increasingly unlikely at the start of play, and with the amount of time lost to rain and bad light on day 3, Australia were up against it. Which leads nicely on to…

Kevin Pietersen’s 158 the very next day. I had been staying with my mum and dad after seeing the fourth day’s play, and as I was leaving to begin the journey back to Uni in Cheltenham, KP had just come to the crease with England – typically – struggling, have done so well the previous day. At 67/3, the only way Australia were going to be able to force the win was by bowling England out both cheaply and quickly. Which is among England’s favourite ways to be bowled out. Of course the situation required a calm, mature mind to steady the ship and see England – hopefully – to a dull, uninsipring draw. The young lad with the strange accent and the even stranger haircut had other ideas, of course. The 8 balls he faced to get off the mark was the calm before the storm, and he quickly made his way to his 50 off 72 balls, including two sixes – one lucky, one magnificent – off of a fired up Brett Lee. His next 50 came off even fewer balls, and by the time he departed for 158 with England 308/8, the game was as good as over.

England winning the first Test in the 1997 series. Not only did we skittle an Aussie batting line-up featuring Mark Taylor and both Waughs for just 118 (Australia having won the toss), we then proceeded to dispatch McGrath, Warne et al. to all parts of Edgbaston, Hussain notching his only Test double hundred, and a typical Graham Thorpe innings of 138 giving England a first innings lead of 360. Despite an Australian fightback, England were left to chase a modest 118 for victory, Alec Stewart hitting the winning runs with a beautiful cover driver to the boundary off Warne. My abiding memory of that shot is that Stewart began celebrating with a clenched fist in his follow through before the ball had even clattered into the boundary boards. Spine-tingling.

As I mentioned these are all the positives, but of course there are some negatives as well – although it speaks wonders of the human mind that I struggle to recall where I was and what I was doing for most of them. On the other hand I could tell you exactly where I was for all those I’ve mentioned above – standing on the balcony at 6 Christchurch Court, Cheletenham; same again (I was a smoker in those days, and boy did I smoke during that Australian second innings!); The Oval, of course; a combination of my mum and dad’s kitchen (watching the KP ‘hook’ of Lee sail over deep fine leg off a huge top edge on their old TV), a slightly banged up Renault Clio on the M25, M40, A40 and – you guessed it, the balcony of 6 Christchurch Court; and finally in one of the first floor rooms of my old sixth form block in Tunbridge Wells, probably watching when I shouldn’t have been.

The negatives – Harmison’s first ball direct into the hands of second slip in 2006/07; Michael Slater crashing a Phil Defreitas long hop to the cover boundary off the first ball of the series 12 years earlier; Shane Warne dancing with a stump above his head like an aged, bleached blonde aunty who’s seen better days – just don’t hold as many memories.

So what are your favourite/least favourite Ashes moments, and where were you when they took place?

Bonus points for funny/slightly inappropriate comments…

England have Midas touch – so far

They say you can’t win a Test match in the first session but you can sure as hell lose it, and I think the same is true of the current Ashes tour if you take a longer term view of the trip as a whole – we might not win the Ashes in the warm-up games, but in the past we’ve gone a long way to losing them.

The way the team have gone about everything so far has been spot on. Practice matches have been excellent in preparing the players both mentally and physically, and the attitude of the whole touring party seems focused and hyper-professional – just look at Gooch’s comments about treating the warm-ups as a mini-series and being out there for one reason only – to win the Ashes.

Sending the bowlers to Brisbane ahead of the rest of the side is a great idea, not only because it allows them to acclimatise, but it’s also given our second string bowling attack the chance to get some overs under their belts AND smash the Aussie second string batting. Perfect!

Everything England have touched so far has turned to gold, and that’s magnified Australia’s problems, particularly in the eyes of the Aussie press. But don’t be fooled – they’ll come out fighting hard like they always do.

And while Tremlett and Bresnan have grabbed the headlines with the ball, having seen the highlights of the first morning Ajmal Shahzad looked absolutely sensational. He’s got bags of energy, bowls in dangerous areas and seems to enjoy his cricket; witness his ‘That’s my boy!’ send off to Khawaja in the first innings, having beaten the outside edge time and time again!

My one concern is over the form of KP, but I’m with the England management in crossing my fingers and hoping he steps up to the plate (or ‘comes to the party’ to use annoying popular parlance) when the real deal starts in Brisbane in 5 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes and 51 seconds. Not that I’m counting.

Burton: About time

The English FA are spectacularly good at spending money – £5m a year contract for Fabio Capello, £750m+ for the new Wembley, £125,000 to have the pitch relaid every few months - but less so at investing it.

Hopefully the announcement that the Burton centre of footbal excellence – a facility dedicated to the education of young English players and coaches – has finally been given the go ahead will change all that.

It’s due to open in 2012 so we could see the first set of Burton Babes (sorry, Sir Matt…) coming through the ranks in time for the 2018/22 World Cups – competitions England are bidding to host. It might seem a long way off, but we’re English football fans – waiting’s what we do.

But the key thing here is the opportunity it will give our young coaches. Compared to other European nations, England has shockingly low number of qualified coaches. According to The Guardian, 2,769 English coaches hold Uefa’s top qualification. 23,995 Spaniards, 29,420 Italians, 34,970 Germans and 17,588 Frenchmen hold the same qualification. By training up more young coaches the FA is – finally – taking the future of English football seriously.

Of course Burton is no guarantee of a successful national side, but at least we’ll be in with a fighting chance for a change.

Why do people expect us to be good at football?

Those of us with more than two brain cells to rub together (I have three myself, four on a good day) came to the conclusion that we’re a second rate national side some time ago – even before the World Cup.

This conclusion is based – shock horror! – on the evidence of past and present performances rather than the propaganda spouted by the media, deluded fans, players and management.

I really enjoyed Euro 2008 because we didn’t qualify.

There were no empty assertions from players and management that ‘we’re here to bring the trophy home’ to match the expectations of fans who themselves have been driven to slavering surety by the press; no Rent-a-Quote former players wheeled out in front of the cameras to say that England are among half a dozen teams who, given a good run and a large slice of luck, could win it (prompting the inevitable ‘So-and-so says England can win it’ headlines – I’m looking at you, Sky). Just football. Remember what that is?

The sooner the whole country wakes up to the realisation that we are neither good enough, nor entitled, to sit at the top table of world football, the better.

Last night at Wembley France demonstrated everything that modern football is and everything that England were/are not: pace, movement, instinct, flair. England were slow (surely they can’t be tired already!), laboured, static, lacking invention.

When France attacked they got men round the ball and played intricate 5-10 yard passes, ticky-tocka, ticky-tocka as the Spanish might say – death by a thousand passes. Our attacks seemed to consist largely of half a dozen passes across the back four then a Hail Mary towards Andy Carroll – death by a thousand-yard passes.

We need realism. We’re not a bad side, but to actually win anything we’d have to be at the top of our game, get a large slice of luck and hope Brazil, Spain, Germany, Holland, Argentina et al have off days.

If someone within the England set up had the guts to say what’s staring most people right in the face, perhaps we’d get some of that realism I mentioned. I won’t be holding my breath though.

Welcome to my world!

I’m brand spanking new to this but from what I can gather a blog is basically an outspoken opinion column,  and I’ve got plenty of those so I think we’re going to be just fine.

My intention is to stick mainly to sport related posts, but I’m not about to tell you that I won’t write about anything and everything else – why pigeon hole yourself?

There’s plenty on the sporting horizon for the next few months – highlights for me will include England’s bid to retain the Ashes in Australia for the first time since I was a wee nipper intent on breaking all the windows in my mum and dad’s house, the announcement from FIFA about who will host the football World Cups in 2018 and 2022 (answers to that one are already available if you know the right people and can cross their palms with silver – allegedly) and, of course, the behemoth of the back pages – Premier League football and all its rights, wrongs and Nigel De Jongs.

So if you have a spare few minutes to have a read through some of my thoughts, I’d really appreciate your company. And of course if you have any input, whether it be a glowing endorsement or telling me what a muppet I am, please get involved – we’re in this together after all.