Australia thrashed England by 146 runs in the fifth Ashes test in Hobart tonight, to claim the series 4-0. It was another remarkable day with 17 wickets falling. Mark Wood’s 6/37 helped restrict the home side to 155, giving England 271 runs to win. They were 0/68 just before tea, then self destroyed yet again, losing all ten wickets for 56.
It was Australia’s 150th test win against England and the Poms’ worst 10 wicket collapse in an Ashes test since 1948.
This will be the last time we see the likes of Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad and Jonny Bairstow on Australian soil. Will Joe Root return later this year for the T20 World Cup though?
They were 0/69 and then all out for 124 in a single session. That was brutal. Feeling sad for a friend of mine who had their son going to do some on field stuff at the game tomorrow.
To put it bluntly, England were woeful this summer. Terrible effort. Could be multiple Ashes series before they win another test on Aussie soil. Very disappointing that two of the five tests finished on the third day. I reckon the Poms should make a play for Ricky Ponting as head coach as was being speculated in some papers.
The first ball of England’s first innings in the first test in Brisbane, which saw Rory Burns bowled around his legs, set the tone for the series. England never recovered after they were bowled out for 147 in that innings.
The Australian is reporting that New Zealand is almost certain to pull out of its ODI and T20 tour of Australia. Cricket writer Peter Lalor says that the New Zealand government has not granted the cricketers any exemptions from a 10 day quarantine on return, and that there are reports from across the ditch that the Black Caps had not even applied for Managed Isolation Quarantine (MIQ) on return.
The series is scheduled to start in Perth on January 30.
Because the NZ government had signalled home isolation would be in place for Trans-Tasman returnees by this point. Now it’s off the table for the time being.
And there’s no group isolation booking for the Australian T20 team (again because of the open border scenario now dashed) so I suspect that’s sunk too.
Shame some sort of system couldnt be established to facilitate the two legs - although its understandable that the NZ Government might be a bit jumpy about it given there have been covid issues in and around our cricket teams (international and bbl) this summer
Hopefully CA will be able to do a deal with Sri Lanka to add on one to three ODIs to that series, otherwise we’ll have a situation where there’s been no ODI cricket at all this summer (for the first time since pre-World Series Cricket I’d imagine).
Australia is facing the same issue as the Kiwi cricketers (and members of NZ netball team currently involved in the Quad Series in London) - 10 days in MIQ in NZ.