Smyth - Gentlemen and Sledgers

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For Mum and Jay

1882 1929

SPORTING TIMES, 1882

IVO BLIGH, 1882

BILLY MURDOCH ON W. G. GRACE

BOBBY PEEL, 1894

ERNIE JONES TO W. G. GRACE, 1896

SPECTATOR ON MONTY NOBLES BATTING, 1899

GEORGE HIRST TO WILFRED RHODES, 1902

R. D. PAINE ON GILBERT JESSOP

AUSTRALIAN BARRACKER TO UMPIRE CROCKETT, 1903

A. A. MILNE ON JACK HOBBS

ARCHIE MACLAREN ON SYDNEY BARNES

SMALL BOY TO WARWICK ARMSTRONG, 1921

RONALD MASON ON JACK GREGORY, 1921

FRED TATE, 1902, LOOKS FORWARD TO 1924

PATTIE MENZIES 0N HOBBS AND SUTCLIFFE, 1926

GEORGE GEARY TO GEORGE DUCKWORTH, 1929

1930 1948

DON BRADMAN SCORES 309 IN A DAY, 1930

DOUGLAS JARDINE ON BRADMAN, EARLY 1930 s

BILL WOODFULL TO PLUM WARNER, 1933

DOUGLAS JARDINE TO HAROLD LARWOOD, 1933

SPECTATOR TO WOODFULL CONCERNING JARDINE, 1933

A CHILD REACTS TO LARWOOD, 1933

BRADMAN TO NEVILLE CARDUS, 1934

GUBBY ALLEN TO WALTER ROBINS, 1936

BRADMAN ON STAN M c CABES BATTING, 1938

M c CABE TO UMPIRE FRANK CHESTER, THE OVAL, 1938

WALLY HAMMOND TO BRADMAN, 1946

KEITH MILLER BOUNCES GODFREY EVANS, 1947

NEIL HARVEY TO KEITH MILLER, 1948

BRADMAN ON HIS LAST TEST INNINGS, 1948

1950 1968

BARROWMAN AT SYDNEY QUAY, 1951

LORD KITCHENER, 1953

LINDSAY HASSETT AT THE OVAL, 1953

LEN HUTTON ON FRANK TYSON, 1954

KEITH MILLER BETS AGAINST A DRAW, OLD TRAFFORD 1956

AUSTRALIAN UMPIRE ON KEITH SLATERS ACTION, 1958

RICHIE BENAUD TO WALLY GROUT, 1961

WALLY GROUT ON KEN BARRINGTON

ENGLAND SPECTATOR TO THE AUSTRALIAN BALCONY, 1964

FRED TRUEMAN ON HIS TEST BOWLING RECORD, 1964

BARRACKER TO A SLOW-SCORING BILL LAWRY, 1966

JOHN ARLOTT ON DEREK UNDERWOOD, 1968

1970 1989

JOHN SNOW, 1970

JOHN SNOW TO UMPIRE ROWAN, PERTH, 1970

RAY ILLINGWORTH, 1971

AUSTRALIAN MANAGER RAY STEELE, 1972

ROD MARSH SINGS AUSTRALIAS TEAM SONG, 1972

JEFF THOMSON, 1974

SYDNEY DAILY TELEGRAPH , 1975

COLIN COWDREY GREETS THOMSON, 1974

DAVID LLOYD ON BEING HIT BY THOMSON, 1974

DAVID STEELE TO ROD MARSH, 1975

TONY GREIG TO DAVID HOOKES, 1977

DENNIS LILLEE ON GEOFF BOYCOTT, 1977

RODNEY HOGG ON MIKE BREARLEY, 1978

ALEC BEDSER ON IAN BOTHAM, 1981

BOTHAM TO GRAHAM DILLEY, HEADINGLEY 1981

BREARLEY ON BOTHAM, EDGBASTON 1981

THE TIMES , 17 AUGUST 1981

GEOFF LAWSON ON LILLEE AND KIM HUGHES, 1981

JEFF THOMSON, MELBOURNE 1982

DAVID GOWER, 1985

MARTIN JOHNSON, NOVEMBER 1986

CHRIS BROAD, 1986

1989 2003

IAN CHAPPELL ON DAVID BOON, 1989

ALLAN BORDER TO ROBIN SMITH, 1989

TED DEXTER ON DEVON MALCOLM, 1989

GRAFFITI SEEN ON A TOILET WALL, 1989

UMPIRE M c CONNELL TO PHIL TUFNELL, 1990

GRAHAM GOOCH ON THE 1990 91 ASHES

GOOCH ON WARNES BALL TO GATTING, 1993

MERV HUGHES ON SLEDGING GRAEME HICK, 1993

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH-MIRROR , 1993

GREG CHAPPELL PREVIEWS THE 1994 95 ASHES

AUSTRALIAN FAN TO PHIL TUFNELL, 1994

UK IMMIGRATION WELCOMES TAYLOR, 1997

MICK JAGGER ON M c GRATH, 1997

STEVE WAUGH ON NOT BEING SLEDGED, 1997

MARK TAYLOR, 1999

DUNCAN FLETCHERS BOWLING PLANS FOR GILCHRIST, 2001

SHANE WARNE TEMPTS MARK RAMPRAKASH, 2001

MARK WAUGH TO JAMES ORMOND, 2001

SYDNEY DAILY TELEGRAPH HEADLINE, 2002

MICHAEL VAUGHAN, 2002

JUSTIN LANGER TO ANDREW STRAUSS, 2005

ANDREW FLINTOFF, 2005

ADAM GILCHRIST, 2005

DUNCAN FLETCHER ON PONTINGS MELTDOWN, 2005

KEVIN PIETERSEN TO MARCUS TRESCOTHICK, 2005

ANDREW FLINTOFF TO MARK NICHOLAS, 2005

GLENN M c GRATH, 2006

SHANE WARNE TO IAN BELL, 2006

MARK KERMODE AS AUSTRALIA COLLAPSE, 2009

Chapter 94: Stop the clocks! Hold the front pages!
Shout it from the rooftops!
Australia are in utter disarray

THE GUARDIAN S ANDY BULL LIVEBLOGS, 2010

MITCHELL JOHNSON TO JIMMY ANDERSON, 2010

THE BARMY ARMY, 2010

DARREN LEHMANN ON STUART BROAD, 2013

MICHAEL CLARKE TO JIMMY ANDERSON, 2013

DAVID WARNER, 2013

BRAD HADDIN, 2013

THE ASHES, 1882 2014:
Series results and leading batsmen and bowlers

On its first day of release in 1997 , Oasiss third album Be Here Now sold 350,000 copies. I wasnt among the buyers, though I could relate to those who wanted no, needed to Have It Now. Four months earlier, I walked into HMV Hanley and saw an expensive Japanese import of Radioheads OK Computer , about which my youthful self had been impossibly excited. It was still three weeks before its UK release. My eyes bulged and my wallet soon contracted.

That sense of cant-sit-still anticipation has inevitably been eroded by a combination of the instant gratification of the digital age and lifes law of diminishing enthusiasm. But there remains one prospect that age cannot wither, and which unfailingly still causes the heart to race and excitement to mount: and that is the build-up to an Ashes series. The contest between England and Australia could bring out the excitable child in an -year-old. You cant illegally download it before its official release; you cant pay extra to get it early.

There is nothing in life to compare with the feeling on the first morning of an Ashes series even if, for England fans, there is often not so much anticipation as anticipointment, to use the portmanteau word coined by the comedian Paul Whitehouse to describe his experiences as a Tottenham Hotspur football fan.

England lost each of the first eight Ashes series I watched, by a combined score of . It was eight years before I saw England win a live Test and sixteen before I saw them win a series. Yet like all the other members of that generation not so much Generation X as Generation FFS (so frequently did we lament Englands inadequacies) I knelt once more at the altar of pain at the start of each series. And the eventual fulfilment, on September 2005 , of long-cherished hopes of an England series victory a date as treasurable as a wedding day or a childs birthdate makes that day a shoo-in for inclusion in the XI happiest days of my life when Im in my dotage.

Australians will have similar stories and similar dates: August 1989 , perhaps, or December 2013 . This book is not an Anglocentric view of the Ashes. One of crickets greatest gifts is that it teaches you to see sport with two eyes, and this is an impartial celebration of sports greatest rivalry. Although the pages about Adelaide 2006 may, I freely admit, be stained with English tears.

The miracle of Adelaide was also the match in which Shane Warne first called Ian Bell the Shermanator. That is quote No. in this book, which tells the history of the Ashes through the quotations and confrontations that have defined each series. The quotes vary from the apocryphal to the legendary to the unfamiliar, with some discovered during happy hours trawling the archives at the British Library, or browsing books I had picked up for p in a second-hand shop because you just never know when they might come in handy...