England’s shame in Ashes shambles
WE HAVE watched and we have wept. A national humiliation. Never has an England cricket team performed so ineptly. Why? No technique. No ability. No guts. No belief. No leadership off or on the pitch. Have they never heard the phrase no surrender?
GORDON MORRIS, Southwick, Wilts. WHAT a complete and utter shambles Down Under. England cricket has hit an all-time low. There can be no excuse, apart from the fact we simply are not good enough. Our batsmen show no fight: their attitude is all wrong, as is their temperament and application. I wonder how much the shorter forms of the game have affected the way we play? Across the country, cricket has been dying for years, with many villages and towns no longer fielding teams. My county has lost dozens. To play in a league today means you have to travel miles for matches. The England and Wales Cricket Board needs a rethink, or the game we know and love will be lost.
GEOFF HARRIS, Hunstanton, Norfolk. BOWLED out for just 68: what a disgrace. Yet another gutless and predictable collapse by the worst collection of batsmen ever assembled by England. I won’t be watching another minute of this embarrassing tour of Australia.
PHILIP CODD, Manchester. I WISH to announce that on December 28, 2021, in Melbourne, Australia, following a long illness, English red-ball cricket finally died. Pallbearers at its funeral will be Messrs Strauss, Graves and Harrison who, in their time in charge of English cricket, heavily promoted the supremacy of its white-ball format and were content to exile first-class cricket to memory. They should hang their heads in shame.
PETER RICKABY, Selby, N. Yorks. VICTORY must be bittersweet for Australia. Beating a toothless opponent is no indicator of your superior skills.
STEFAN BADHAM, Portsmouth, Hants. ENGLAND have been battered.
ADRIAN WALTON, Oundle, Northants. A TELLING statistic missing from the scoreboard: in the second innings of the latest Test match, no England batsman lasted ten overs. Australia’s bowling attack is good, but not vintage. England’s batsmen lack technique and the right mental attitude.
ADEYEMI BANJO, London SE15. THIS Australia v England series should be renamed the Crashes.
GRAHAM ANDREWS, Bideford, Devon. THAT’S the Ashes out of the way, so let’s hit the beaches and the barbie. Why would anyone cross the globe to stand around on a boiling hot cricket ground for a month? It’s only a game and the worst England could do was to come second.