HAHA TAKE THAT U OZZIES (page 20)

Frog

about time you slovenly brits, there's no fun in a game that presents no challenge several years running !!!

ozziepost

Ooh Frog, that's twisting the knife in them, mate!

tijkmo

admit it you are already getting worried

(although trescothick was out)

tijkmo

ok credit where it is due

you beat us fair and square even with the rain and some umpiring decisions that could have gone your way and didnt

but if england have shown anything over the past couple of years it is their ability to come back..

not over yet ..methinks

unclebruce

NEWSFLASH:

"CALLOUS AUSSIES LULL Prisoners Of Mother England INTO FALSE SENCE OF SUPERIORITY"

Loosers & Aussie bashers note: we only get serious once the test is truly on..

unclebruce

Max Divergent

Thought this was an interesting perspective... ;-)

Down under, the playing fields of public schools have no meaning
Simon Barnes
July 25, 2005
THE ASHES. The only sporting trophy in the world that is supposed to be funny. The trophy was invented as a facetious joke, a protozoic form of English sports gallows humour, without which English sport could not survive. But here's the point: Australia never got the joke. They never thought it was even remotely amusing. Thus it was that they shaped the sporting consciousness of the world.
The Australians never really cottoned on to the idea that sport was a way in which gentlemen amused themselves. They had this crazy idea that it was serious. And they made a series of logical steps from this standpoint and thereby created the world of sport as we know it.
Because it follows that if sport is serious, then international sport is very serious. It follows that if your team is called Australia, you are not a group of gentlemen getting together for the sake of exercise and amusement. You are not so much representing your country as creating it.
That was certainly the case when Australia first began to play England for the Ashes.

England had Shakespeare and Agincourt and the Black Death and Darwin and an empire.
Australia had something better. Australia had youth. How better to express this truth than in sport? How better to define a nation than by playing sport with a seriousness of purpose that was nothing less than revolutionary?
The less history a nation has, the more it needs sport to define its national consciousness.
"Other nations have their history. We have our football," the former manager of the Uruguayan football team, Ondina Viera, once said.
A Brazilian newspaper expressed the same sentiment more exuberantly: "Our football is like our inflation - 100 per cent."
During the rugby union World Cup in 2003, The Australian printed a picture of Jonny Wilkinson on the front page of the sports section with the headline: "Is that all you've got?"
London's Daily Mirror responded with the same caption and a picture of Kylie Minogue's bum. But it isn't all Australia has got. It's got Kylie's bum and sport.
Well, there's a great deal more to Australia than sport, but all the same, sport has been a significant force in defining the Australian national consciousness.
Former England cricket captain Ted Dexter said: "They gaily revive every prejudice they know, whether to do with accent, class consciousness or even the convict complex, and sally forth into battle with a dedication which would not disgrace the most committed of the world's political agitators."
The English traditionally found this hard to come to terms with.
"In all this Australian team, there are barely one or two who would be accepted as public school men," CB Fry said in 1928.
The Australian cricket team - and by extension, Australia itself - worked on the principle of antithesis. They worked extremely hard at not being acceptable as public school men.
They put themselves out to be hard, rough and ready, easy-mannered, with no tolerance of snobbery.
From the start, Australia was ferociously egalitarian in everything except sport.
Dennis Lillee, we must never forget, greeted the Queen with "G'day, how ya goin'?"
In sport alone, Australia always has been unabashedly elitist and that was because sport mattered.
It set the pattern for international sport across the world. Before long, England took sport so seriously that it invented bodyline.
This was essentially a matter of contradictions. England, who invented sport as an aspect of gentlemanliness, took sport to a new and frightening level of seriousness.
Australia, who invented the notion of sport as a form of seriousness, took refuge in outraged gentlemanliness.
It was a defining moment in the emergence of Australia as a nation and sport has continued to play a huge part in the creation of national consciousness. And here comes another contradiction: there has been a seismic shift in arrogance.
In a way, Australia had invented sport as a serious business to combat English arrogance. Or perhaps the mot juste is smugness.
Australia used sport as a means of expressing one central truth. We are not English; we are not even trying to be English. In fact, we go to a great deal of trouble to demonstrate that we are the exact opposite.
And so the years have brought us a parade of flamboyantly un-English cricketers. Lillee remains perhaps the archetype, but a glance at the present team shows a raft of people at pains to emphasise their un-Englishness.
And the opposition? For years, England cricketers have tried to be as Australian as possible.
Australian cricket has been seen as the template for England's future and every player has striven to be as Australian as humanly possible; Australian, that is, in the sense of playing - living - with total commitment to the notion of victory.
English sport is the domain of wannabe Australians, all seeking fulfillment in serious sport. And as this astonishing reversal takes place, so another is happening alongside. It is no longer the Poms who are arrogant. Or do I mean smug?
The Times

i have said it before..might even have been on this thread...when i was in oz a few years ago i took a light plane trip round the outskirts of sydney..and there were cricket pitches everywhere..and i remember thinking that this was a key factor in the development of a good cricket team

but even taking that into account there is no doubt that the current oz team rely heavily on 2 players..in order to win games a team has to be bowled out twice..so regardless of how well, fast or cavalierly the batsmen play...the bowlers win the games...england have shown that they can bowl the present oz team out..twice..on good wickets

but then australia can do it better...but imo...only with mcgrath and warne..

they are getting older and will not be around for very much longer...sadly i think they will still be a force during this series..simply because it is against england...i say sadly from an english perspective..as a sportlover i still love seeing them perform..and i love their 'arrogance'..but i would also love to see the english batsmen work them out

ozziepost

Only in "The Times"!

They put themselves out to be hard, rough and ready, easy-mannered, with no tolerance of snobbery.
From the start, Australia was ferociously egalitarian in everything except sport.
Dennis Lillee, we must never forget, greeted the Queen with "G'day, how ya goin'?"

What a shame, the aussies won't play by our rules, top ho and public school and class distinctions and all that!

Yes, that's what's so darned free about Australia, the egalitarianism. When Mrs Ozzie and I are at a concert, we might have a Premier or a Prime Minister sit behind us. if we make eye contact, it's natural for us to simply say, G'day! That's what we're used to - seeing our leaders without a crowd of sycophants around them, or minders for that matter.

Recently, we met a former Prime Miinister in an Asian country. We were staying at the same hotel. He came over to us at breakfast and knelt alongside my chair so that I could show him some of my pics.

And that's what we're like. Great, ain't it?

BTW it surprises us downunder that the Brits can actually succeed at so little. What do they do in the Olympics? Gawd, they'll have to get up a bit of a sweat to make a showing at the London games.

HAHA TAKE THAT U OZZIES

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