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Matt Reeder: The Ashes heroes who are paying huge price for glory
THEY gave us perhaps the most enjoyable, dramatic and truly glorious Ashes summer in the long history of battles for that precious little urn.
Eleven heroic men, giving it their all, trading blow after blow with their world-class opponents, desperate to carve their name in history.
Those players who contested the 2005 Ashes quite rightly won great plaudits the world over for the quality and passion of their performances.
It was quite simply the best series of cricket that, certainly, I have seen, and I bet there are many others out there who would share such an observation.
But as we all look forward to this summer's resumption of the Anglo-Aussie rivalry, it is worth posing the question of whether we actually lost more than we won four years ago, both in a sporting sense and in a personnel sense.
Michael Vaughan, the captain who so skillfully master-minded that Ashes assault, will finally admit defeat in his long struggle for form and fitness this week and retire from the game.
That summer of 2005 will rightly be regarded as his high-point, the pinnacle of a brilliant career. But frustratingly for Vaughan, and for so many of his colleagues who celebrated with him that day at The Oval, it was a moment of glory which came with a high price.
The 2-1 victory was, of course, achieved with the most epic of fightbacks, and as we watched an England captain lift the urn for the first time in 18 years, it felt unbelievably good to know we had beaten a side which still boasted the chief tormentors of previous years in Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Ricky Ponting.
But it is the cost our players and, therefore, our team paid for that victory which has meant the expected 'kick-on' in fortunes everyone hoped for in the aftermath of 2005 never quite materialised.
It was meant to be the spark we needed to ignite a new era of English dominance. We had beaten the best in the world, could boast players of undoubted class, and had the backing of a nation riding high on a wave of intoxicating success. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, let us whizz back to that great day at The Oval for a moment.
Kevin Pietersen had just done the unthinkable and smashed his way to a quite thrilling debut Test century and handed England the Ashes for the first time since 1987.
Even on the morning of that final tension-filled day, few had dared to believe that this was actually going to be it.
They may have dreamt it and hoped it but few were shouting about it. England may have been leading, but the Australians only needed to win the final Test to secure a 2-2 draw and retain the coveted prize.
Indeed, it was not until the final session of that final day, as Pietersen continued his onslaught, that we could finally relax safe in the knowledge that the Ashes were ours once again.
We partied hard, celebrated with gusto and prayed for a brighter future when England would surely return to the top of the world rankings as THE best cricket side in the world.
Unfortunately, a series which had delighted the nation with all the twists and turns of a seaside roller-coaster and produced some of the most gripping sport in living memory, had also exhausted everyone concerned – particularly the England players.
As is so often the case in sport, when a side sets their focus firmly on one goal and is prepared to achieve it, almost, at any cost, they then struggle to lift themselves for the next challenge.
And so with the England class of 2005.
Vaughan and then-coach Duncan Fletcher had spent years planning their Ashes assault. Beating the West Indies both home and away while also earning an impressive win in South Africa; they were a side in form and at the peak of their powers when Ponting and his players arrived.
The pace-bowling quartet of Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones and Steve Harmison knew they would need every ounce of effort and maybe more to take 20 Aussie wickets in a match and they were so pumped up that they gave everything but blood in their quest.
Batsmen Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell, Vaughan and even Pietersen battled against the wily Warne and the miserly McGrath, always alert, never able to drop their guard for a moment, while wicketkeeper Geraint Jones played the entire series under the glare of an uncertain general public.
In short, they all gave so much in order to secure this finest of victories, that when it came to pushing on to the next level, they struggled with broken bodies, broken minds and a flatness that eventually saw them relinquish the Ashes 5-0 just two years later.
An opportunity had been missed and a very good side was disbanded, re-built and then re-built again in a desperate search for similar winning chemistry and talent.
Trescothick, Vaughan, Flintoff and Simon Jones have all struggled with injury or illness while Bell, Strauss, Harmison, Hoggard and Geraint Jones have suffered through poor form and lost their places at some stage in the intervening years and Ashley Giles, of course, retired after the shambles of 2007.
That leaves Pietersen, and while he has had his fair share of trouble, with losing the captaincy and more recently with an Achilles injury, his form has remained a constant and once again he holds the key to Ashes glory.
Beating Australia is not going to be easy, no matter how much they might have struggled against Sussex or how many stars have since retired, and it will take a huge effort to beat them... just ask Messrs Flintoff, Vaughan and either of the Joneses.
We will not complain, of course, so long as the the drama and quality of the cricket matches that of 2005 and, of course, the result is the same.
The players must be warned though... winning the Ashes can seriously damage your health.
O'Gara and the Lions deserve their shot at redemption
SPARE a thought this Monday morning, as you struggle to get into the new week, for Lions fall-guy Ronan O'Gara.
Imagine what must be going through the Irishman's mind as he faces up to the prospect of living the rest of his life knowing it was him who threw away the 2009 tour of South Africa?
Okay, so I am being a little bit over-dramatic, and yes, I know people have clearly had to live with worse things on their mind. But I doubt many would have felt as low or as guilty as O'Gara did on Saturday evening.
After what had been a tremendously enthralling encounter between the best of Britain and Ireland and the world champions, it seemed both sides would have to settle for a tied match and go into the third game with the series alive.
The Lions, so awesome in the first half, had been forced onto the backfoot by the rampant Springboks in very much a role-reversal of the opening Test a week before, and looked set for defeat as the final whistle loomed.
However, the tired red-shirted bodies hauled themselves back level, and despite losing both props and both centres, gave themselves hope of achieving parity in the series.
Step forward, or should that be lunge forward, O'Gara. He chased his own up-and-under in a move designed to try to steal victory for the tourists but as he raced to gather a ball that was always going to drop too far in front of him, he stumbled into Fourie Du Preez and was adjudged to have 'taken out his man in the air'.
Pretorian hero Morne Steyn stroked the penalty effortlessly between the posts from all of 54 metres with the very last kick of the game and the series was lost.
To blame O'Gara would be cruel. The simple fact of life at the very top of any sport is that games are so often won and lost on the smallest and most unfortunate of errors.
So the Lions must travel to Johannesburg playing for pride alone. Whether it helps or hurts, they will nevertheless know that things could have been so different. For 40 second-half minutes in Durban they battered South Africa but had given themselves too much to do after a poor first-half display. On Saturday, they blitzed the Springboks again, this time for the opening 40 minutes, only to be undone by a stirring comeback after the break.
Now, if they could just put the two 40 minutes together for Joburg then who knows? Maybe they can win some reward for some undoubted endeavour.
And let us hope O'Gara gets the chance to exorcise his demons by playing a part in that success.
Waiting for the roof and for Murray to put our nerves to the test
AWESOME, brilliant, outstanding. These are just three of the superlatives that sprang to mind as Andy Murray breezed into the second week of Wimbledon.
Until that moment, I have to admit that I had discarded all the talk of him being good enough to win the tournament as just that, talk.
But the manner in which the British No1 disposed of opponent Viktor Troicki in front of an enthralled Centre Court crowd proved to the watching world that he is not only good enough, but also that maybe his time has come.
The way he toyed with his opponent was almost cruel, forcing him to every corner of the court, serving up ace after ace and rushing through the game 6-2 6-3 6-4 in just one hour and 36 minutes.
The only ponderable was whether he would be able to get the job done before the rain fell, or whether he would also have the honour of being on court when the roof was used for the first time.
Not surprisingly, playing under the roof was not really uppermost in Murray's mind.
"Obviously I wanted to finish the match as quickly as possible," said the 22-year-old. "It would have been a nice bit of history to play under the roof, but I wasn't that worried by it.
"I have to give myself an A for coming through the first week. Today was very good. I felt a little bit uncomfortable at the start, but after the first set I started to feel more comfortable.
"I've got to be happy with the first week – I felt better and better with every match.
"But I'm going to have to play better next week if I want to come away with the title."
It is strange to think the majority of spectators watching the game on Saturday probably went home feeling a little disappointed.
Not only did they not see the roof in action, but the match they witnessed was so one-sided that they could hardly describe it as typical Wimbledon fare.
We have been used to dramatic matches involving Britain's best players.
Be it Tim Henman or Murray, they have both served up their fair share of edge-of-the-seat tennis in the past and it is somewhat odd to see a British player winning so convincingly.
However, as we enter week two, you can bet the fans who may just have felt there was something missing from their SW19 experience on Saturday, will get both of their wishes.
Yes, it will rain and the roof will be used at some point, and yes Murray will, eventually, put our emotions and our nerves to the test... but let's hope the latter will be on Sunday, in the final.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
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Sunny spells
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