We look back on the 1989 series in our Ashes Archives
New-look Aussies launched era of global domination with 4-0 victory Paul Edwards continues his look into the Ashes archive and this week it’s a massive home reverse for England which marked a hold on the Urn by the Aussies that would not be loosened until
It was difficult not to admire the Australian team that dominated international cricket in the Nineties, but some England supporters seemed to manage it. One could see their point. If you arrive at a Test match wearing a T-shirt claiming your opponents are not much good and probably possess a criminal heritage, it is probably a trifle dispiriting to watch these alleged incompetents thrash your favourites out of sight.You might, indeed, be a little barmy to come back for more.
Yet that was the lot visited on England fans at home and abroad during the eight Ashes series played between 1989 and 2002-3. That Australia won each series barely needs saying; what was impressive was the manner of their triumphs and the margins of most of their 28 victories in 43 Tests. England managed seven wins, five of them being secured after the urn had been retained. It is a period of dominance without equal in Ashes history.
During Australia’s heyday - the era of Warne, McGrath, Healy, Gilchrist and the Waughs – England supporters could take a little consolation from the fairly obvious reality that their team was being beaten by one of the finest Test teams there has ever been. Losing to such a side was rarely shameful. The problem in 1989 was that England were expected to do rather well and retain the Ashes they had won four years previously and then retained with a 2-1 win in Australia in 1986-7.
That optimism, however, rested on the slightly naïve belief that English cricket was well-managed in the late Eighties and the misguided assumption that Australia would continue to perform as moderately in Test cricket as they had done for most of the decade. The former was quickly shown to be false but England’s disunity and rapid decline that summer was hastened by an Australian side whose captain and coach were united in their determination to end their own country’s slump.
The tourists’ 4-0 win in the six-match series was as memorable for Allan Border and Bob Simpson’s leadership as it was for the galloping chaos that bedevilled England. Even more significant was Border and Simpson’s establishment of a culture characterised by hard work and selflessness, qualities which were passed on to Australia’s future captains, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, both of whom were on their first Ashes tours.
“Border had not had a conspicuously happy time since the job was thrust on him by the resignation of Kim Hughes in 1984-5,” noted John Thicknesse in Wisden. “He had won only one series out of eight … but his commitment was undiminished, and in the coach, 53-year-old former captain Simpson, he had a kindred spirit. Relieving England of the Ashes would have been high on both men’s lists of life’s priorities; and when the chance was there they grabbed it.”
Both Border and Simpson would admit that one could achieve little in Ashes cricket without talent but they might also mention that the cultivation of ability was helped no end by the right team ethic. The captain was also determined that any pleasantries would be left until the Ashes were won. Border had already skippered relatively weak Australian teams in two Ashes series, in both of which he had been defeated.
“You can do anything but don’t lose to the Poms,” Ian Chappell, one of his predecessors, had told him. But Border had lost and now this quintessentially tough little cricketer had a team with which he could divert the flow of the river. He was not going to let the chance pass him by.
“We didn’t realise Australia were going to be quite so good… or that Allan Border would have changed so completely,” wrote Gower in his latest autobiography,
“Border had been a friendly foe in previous meetings, uncompromising on the field but congenial off it, but the only words I got out of him in three months were “heads” “tails” or “we’ll bat” (he never bothered to put us in).”
It was not until the Ashes had been secured at Old Trafford and he had become the first Australian skipper since Bill Woodfull in 1934 to win back the urn in England that Border’s approach lightened a little. “Sorry, mate,” he told Gower at a barbecue, “I had to be a bit of a shit.”
Crucially, of course, the Australian captain also had the players with which to make the most of England’s weaknesses. Only three bowlers in Test history have managed more than the 41 wickets taken by the Terry Alderman in 1989. Accurate, probing and relentless, the West Australian seamer dismissed 19 batsmen lbw in that series, 15 of those decisions being given against top-six batsmen. At the other end Geoff Lawson’s greater pace made him an admirable foil for Alderman and he took 29 wickets, 17 more than Neil Foster, the most successful England bowler.
The batting was led by the opener, Mark Taylor, whose 839 runs in a series have been bettered only by Don Bradman and Wally Hammond. Taylor made one double hundred, one common or garden century and five fifties in 11 innings; his lowest score was 27. Batting at No.6, Steve Waugh made unbeaten hundreds in the first two Tests and when he was eventually bowled by Angus Fraser in the first innings of the third match at Edgbaston he departed with an average of 393.
Waugh ended the series with 506 runs and his average trimmed to a mere 126.5. Patrick Eagar’s photograph of him playing a forward defensive shot to one of John Emburey’s off spinners on the third day at Lord’s is a glorious image of
It was not until the Ashes had been secured at Old Trafford that skipper Border’s approach lightened up a little
impregnability and resolution. Everything is right; the angles made by Waugh’s body might have been calculated by a geometrician. In its way it is as powerful symbol of that series as one of Taylor’s cuts, wicketkeeper Ian Healy’s joyous appeals or Alderman snaring Graham Gooch.
England began the series poorly and descended fairly quickly into something of a shambles. Having left out Emburey, David Gower inserted Australia in the first Test at Headingley. The tourists thought this one of the better invitations they had received and made 601-7 declared. England lost by 210 runs.
In their defence it was pointed out that injury prevented England selecting their first choice side in any of the six matches and that Robin Smith, Allan Lamb and Gower himself all batted nobly in losing causes. The best eleven in the land would probably have given Australia a run for their dollars; unfortunately, argued increasingly vociferous critics, that team never took the field. Players came and went as they might in an Aldwych farce. Decent county cricketers were unlucky not to be picked and pretty unfortunate if they were. In six matches England fielded 29 players with only Gower and Jack Russell managing the full half-dozen. Australia fielded the same eleven in five of the games.
It all gave the Press plenty of ammunition and the late Alan Lee took his opportunity brilliantly in The Times. Here he is just prior to the third Test at Edgbaston:
“For those who have understandably lost track of England’s problems, this is the latest bulletin. From the originally selected 12 delete Smith and Lamb, prepare to omit Foster and Gatting and add Curtis, Tavare and Jarvis. This will hopefully add up to 11 men available to resume the Cornhill series this morning, although it would be wise if the manager made an early check to make sure that no one had fallen foul of the hotel stairs.” Just to make a grim situation even worse, on the final morning of
the fourth Test and with the Ashes about to be lost, eight of the England cricketers who had played in the series were named in a rebel tour party which was due to visit South Africa that winter. At least it allowed four players to make their debuts in the final two matches of the series. “Mike Atherton, Devon Malcolm and Greg Thomas were, however, produced for the obligatory photographs and managed the kind of forced smiles normally seen on the passport snaps of conscripts,” wrote Lee on the morning of the fifth Test at Trent Bridge, where Atherton and Malcolm made their debuts. Australia won the toss at Nottingham and opted to bat. They lost their first wicket at 12.12pm. Sadly for England it fell on the second day after Taylor and Geoff Marsh had put on 329. Australia won by an innings and 180 runs. The final match at the Oval was drawn but by then the character of a grisly season had been clearly drawn for home supporters. “We were beaten horrendously by a very good side that grew in confidence as the series wore on, and as their confidence grew ours was sapped further and further,” wrote Gower in 2014, although he had expressed very similar views when talking to his biographer, Rob Steen, nearly two decades earlier. Yet that series is now properly remembered not so much for England’s train-crash of a summer as for the emergence of an Australian team which became the envy of sides playing other sports. It would be 16 years before an England team led by Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen wrestled back the Ashes in maybe the greatest series of the lot. In 1989 the era of green and gold was beginning and it was something to see.