My wife was at a presentation dinner last year and one of the three guest speakers (An aussie cricketeer from recent bygone years - She did not recall his name (Not a sporting enthusiast my wife). Anyway said cricketeer was sharing anecdotes with the audience. Although all very amusing and some of them hilarious. My wife picked up on the one that struck a nerve. Words to the effect of "We never ever worried about playing the poms, we knew we would always beat them, but we had to breath through our teeth and say it was going to be a close thing to get the press interested!" Ouch!

Ashes 2005 is like Cup 66. Old news. Lets get that killer blow going that we have lacked in most sports for years. Not the " Its the playing, not the winning pish! Why keep the score?"

If you have to waste time to draw a test match great. I'd rather be going into game 2 all even than 1 down. It rattled Ponting.

hope they do try to sledge, there more they try the more runs he will score just to piss them off.

Might do, might not. Definitely worth a try though - I reckon Wankboy is ready to snap.

instead of chucking jelly beans I think we should throw betting slips at him

Gary Pratt (substituting for Flintoff) right under his nose at short cover. They'd be fools not to do it.

Interesting response. The writer's saying that he agrees that England shouldn't have done it but it's a bigger crime for Ricky to mention it. He may as well come out straight and say he's got a big chip against Ricky and/or Aus

do you know who the writer is?

Duncan Fletcher. Used the age old English method (even though he's Zimbabwean) of building one team to win one event rather than trying to sort out cricket from the ground up. I believe there was a rugby coach who did the same thing for England.

it didn't sound as though Martin knew who he was and therefore the relevance and context of his comments

No.

England Cricket coach for the 05' Ashes winning team. Also the same coach that Ricky Ponting verbal abused and got heavily fined for

So he has a personal gripe. That explains the flavour of the article then.

Never liked Fletcher. He was of the opinion that runs won test matches rather than bowlers. He was (and still is) wrong in my view.

If you have a team of batsmen who are averaging over fifty, is either because you play most of your matches in India, or because your bowlers bowl the oppo out for less than 250 every time.

The point he is making though is that who is Pricky Ponting to point the finger at playing in the "spirit of the game" when he has a track record like his.

It's like Gary Glitter calling Michael Jackson the scum of the earth and a dirty little kiddy fiddler

he was clever enough to employ Troy Cooley though, whose work with our bowlers will never be forgotten