All Tests:
Played: 310 Won by Australia: 123 Won by England: 100 Drawn: 87 Tests in Australia: Played: 157 Won by Australia: 77 Won by England: 56 Drawn: 24 Tests In England Played: 153 Won by Australia: 46 Won by England: 44 Drawn: 63 All Series Played: 66 Won by Australia: 31 Won by England: 30 Drawn: 5 Series in Australia Played: 33 Won by Australia: 17 Won by England: 14 Drawn: 2 Series in England Played: 33 Won by Australia: 14 Won by England: 16 Drawn: 3 70's Cricket and Cricket in the 80's1970's: In 1970–71 England were finally successfull in reataining the ashes with a 2–0 win on foriegn soil. The 1972 series finished 2–2, with the hosts England under captain Ray Illingworth reigning victorius yet again. In the 1974–75 series, with the England team breaking up and their best batsman Geoff Boycott refusing to play, Australian pace bowlers Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee wreaked havoc. A 4–1 result was a fair reflection as England were left shell shocked. England then lost the 1975 series 0–1.
INFLUNCE OF WSC(WORLD SERIES CRICKET): Australia won the 1977 Centenary Test which was not an Ashes contest, but then a storm broke as Kerry Packer announced his intention to form World Series Cricket. WSC affected all Test playing nations but it weakened Australia especially as the bulk of its players had signed up and the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) would not select WSC-contracted players and an almost completely new Test team had to be formed. WSC came after an era during which the Australian and English dominance was challenged; the Ashes had long been seen as a cricket world championship but the rise of other cricketing nations was easily predictable and unstoppable. England won the 1977 series 3–0 and then completed an ovverwhelming 5–1 series win against an Australian side missing its WSC players in 1978–79. 1980's: England won the 1981 series 3-1 at the time the WSC split had ended. This series included with no doubt one of the greatest combacks of all time by England, led by Ian Botham. In the series of 1982-1983 the Aussies won 2-1 but contrary to that the next tour the Pomms won the 1985 Ashes 3-0. Despite suffering heavy defeats against the West Indies during the 1980s, England continued to do well in the Ashes. England started the 1986–87 Ashes badly and attracted some criticism. Then Chris Broad scored three hundreds in successive Tests and bowling successes from Graham Dilley and Gladstone Small meant England won the series 2–1. The Australian team of 1989 was comparable to the great Australian teams of the past, and resoundingly defeated England 4–0. Captained by Allan Border, the team included the young cricketers Mark Taylor, Merv Hughes, David Boon, Ian Healy and Steve Waugh, who were all to prove long-serving and successful Ashes competitors. England tagicly suffered badly from injuries and poor form. RECEnt series/toursEngland won the Ashes back again in 2009, overrall the scores being 2-1 in their favour. Then the Aussies were smashed by a strong and formidable English team in the 2010-2011 series. The First Test at Brisbane ended in a draw, but England won the Second Test, at
Adelaide, by an innings and 71 runs. Australia came back with a victory at Perth in the Third Test. In the Fourth Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, England batting second scored 513 to defeat Australia (98 & 258) by an innings and 157 runs. This allowed England to take an unbeatable 2–1 lead in the series and so they retained The Ashes. England went on to win the series 3–1, beating Australia by an innings and 83 runs at Sydney in the Fifth Test.It was the first time the Pomms had won a series on Australian soil in 24 years. The 2010–11 Ashes series is the only one in which a team has won three Tests by innings margins and it was the first time England had scored 500 or more four times in a single series. |
40's, 50's and 60's cRICKET1940's: Cricket was inturupted in the fourties by world war two, which many of the players on both sides fought for thier country. The Ashes resumed after the war when England toured in 1946–47, and as in 1920–21, found that Australia had made the best post-war recovery. Still captained by Bradman and now featuring the dangerous new ball partnership of Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller, Australia were convincing 3–0 winners.
1948 was the year of the invincibles - 4-0 winners and undefeated in 34 matches on tour—three of which were not first-class—including the five Tests, they remained unbeaten, winning 27 and drawing only 7.The 1948 series ended with one of the most unexpected moments in cricket history, as Bradman played his final innings for Australia in the Fifth Test at The Oval, needing to score only four runs to end with a career batting average of exactly 100. However, Bradman made a second ball duck, bowled by a Eric Hollies googly that sent him into retirement with a career average of 99.94. 1950's: In the majority of the next decade englands dominace was imininet due to the victories in 1953, 1954/55 and 1956, but with Australia winning the first and last ashes series of the decade consiberbly, the result being 4-0 and 4-1 respectivly. In 1954–55, Australia's batsmen had no answer to the pace of Frank Tyson and Brian Statham. After beating England in the First Test by an innings, Australia lost its way and England took a hat-trick of victories to win the series 3–1. The series 1956 saw a record that will arguebly never be beaten: british off-spinner Jim Laker's superhuman feat at Old Trafford when he bowled 68 of 191 overs to take 19 out of 20 possible Australian wickets in the Fourth Test. Australia managed to retain the ashes in 1958-1959, winning 4-0 and gaining ntheir new skipper Richie Benaud, who took 31 wickets in the five-Test series, and paceman Alan Davidson, who took 24 wickets at an average of 19.00 runs per wicket. 1960's: Over the course of the next four series in the 1960s, held in 1962–63, 1964, 1965–66 and 1968 the game experienced consiberle and significantly important changes. The powerful strike bowling attacks that both countries boasted in the preceding decade moved into retirement, and their replacements were of lesser quality, making it more difficult to force a result. England failed to win any series during the 1960s, a period dominated by draws as teams prefered a nuetral result than risk losing. Of the 20 Tests played during the four series, Australia won four and England three, with the remainder 13 draws. As they held the Ashes, Australian captains Bob Simpson and Bill Lawry were happy and obliged to adopt tactics and strategy of sedate batting that saw many draws. During this period, spectator attendances dropped and media critisism increased, but Bob Simpson and Bill Lawry disregarded the public dissatisfaction. It was also in the 1960s that the dominance of England and Australia in world cricket was seriously challenged for the first time. West Indies defeated England twice in the mid-1960s and South Africa, in two series before they were banned for apartheid, completely outplayed Australia 3–1 and 4–0. Australia had lost 2–1 during a tour of the West Indies in 1964–65, the first time they had lost a series to any team other than England. Ashes in the 90's to the current dayAustralia reached a cricketing peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, coupled with a general decline in England's fortunes. After re-establishing its credibility in 1989, Australia underlined its superiority with victories in the 1990–91, 1993, 1994–95, 1997, 1998–99, 2001 and 2002–03 series, all by convincing margins. Great Australian players in the early years included batsmen Border, Boon, Taylor and Steve Waugh. The captaincy passed from Border to Taylor in the mid-1990s and then to Steve Waugh before the 2001 series. In the latter part of the 1990s Waugh himself, along with his twin brother Mark, scored heavily for Australia and fast bowlers Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie made a serious impact. The wicketkeeper-batsman position was held by Ian Healy for most of the 1990s and by Adam Gilchrist from 2001 to 2006–07.
In the 2000s, batsmen Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Matthew Hayden became noted players for Australia. But the most dominant Australian player was leg-spinner Shane Warne, whose first delivery in Ashes cricket in 1993, to dismiss Mike Gatting, became known as the Ball of the century. Australia's record between 1989 and 2005 had a significant impact on the statistics between the two sides. Prior to the 1989 series, the win-loss ratio was almost even, with 87 wins for Australia to England's 86, 74 having been drawn.By the 2005 series Australia's wins had increased to 115 whereas England's had increased to only 93 (with 82 draws). In the period between 1989 and the beginning of the 2005 series, the two sides had played 43 times; Australia winning 28 times, England 7 times, with 8 draws. Only a single England victory had come in a match in which the Ashes were still at stake - the First Test of the 1997 series. All others were victories when the Ashes had already been secured by Australia. England began to recover in the early 2000s and were undefeated in Test matches through the 2004 calendar year. The 2005 series was predicted to be very close, competetive, hard fought and overall very exiting. It execced expectations as sthe series was still undecided as the closing session of the final Test began. Experienced journalists including Richie Benaud rated the series as the most exciting in living memory. It has been compared with and lived up to the standards of great series of the distant past, such as 1894–95 and 1902. |
The Ashes in time
The story of the ashes throughout the ages has been a great one, from many of the recent series to some of the earlier ones. There has been highs and lows for both teams and many obsatcles faced along the way.