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England’s missed opportunities leave Mark Wood hoping to stop whitewash | Ali Martin

Fastest bowler in Ashes series has been let down by bad luck and worse batting, but should still be savouredGood news has been in short supply for England’s cricketers during this Ashes series but some arrived for Mark Wood in the shape of the new year honours list: his father was awarded an OBE for services to pensioners for his work at the Department for Work and Pensions in the north-east.Derek Wood was also among the first to sample his son’s speeds in the back garden at home in Ashington. “We had to stop when I was about 13,” the younger Wood told me six years ago, shortly after winning his first Test call-up. “We had a long thin garden...

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Hope can rise from this Ashes debacle, if the ECB stops choking the golden goose | Barney Ronay

It is possible to arrest the decline in English Test cricket, starting with bringing those overseeing it to accountChris Silverwood is taking the positives. Chris Silverwood was expecting this. Chris Silverwood has found, squinting through his Victorian eyeglass, something to build on here.Watching Silverwood’s deeply weird performance in front of the cameras at the end of the third Ashes Test in Melbourne – batting away concerns, wincing in the sun, and wearing throughout the pitying smile of a man who knows that all of this is simply another stage in the vast, unknowable masterplan of Chris Silverwood – it was hard not to worry a little about England’s head coach; to search in vain for the line between nightmarishly bad...

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Magical hour with Starc and Cummins deserves to be defining Ashes memory | Geoff Lemon

This one-sided series will not be remembered as a classic but Australia’s threatening bowling in Melbourne stands outIt is safe to say that the current Ashes series will not be remembered as a classic of the genre. We follow sport for the contest, and the total lack of one is the reason there is so much consternation from wider English cricket quarters, even as the team tries to apply blinkers to get through two more Tests. There have been plenty of one-sided Ashes series, and most teams struggle away from home, but this has been another level.When the tiny trophy has been played for in England in modern times, the contests have been closer. There is 2005, of course, the...

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Scott Boland’s perfect day sums up Australia’s seamless Ashes series

Fast bowler tore through meek England to win Ashes in rapid fashion but tougher tests await the hosts in Asia next yearAt the end of 2002, Australia retained the Ashes inside 10 days. In 2021, the official figure will be 12 days. But that includes a surrender just after lunch on the fourth day in Brisbane, and well before lunch on the third day in Melbourne, scarcely enough in each case to be included as a day’s play.On Monday, in these pages, we wrote about the extraordinary emergence of Scott Boland. On the second evening, his two wickets before stumps set the match on a path towards an inevitable conclusion. On the third day, Boland realised that conclusion himself, taking...

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Boland’s starring role for Australia adds extra layer of significance | Geoff Lemon

The debutant offers hope of progress for Indigenous Australians with a moving reaction from the standsThere were four moments across the first two days of the third Ashes match when the Melbourne Cricket Ground rose, in movement and in voice, to the hometown bowler Scott Boland on his Test debut. The second time was when he took his first wicket, as Mark Wood’s dismissal was upheld by the video umpire. The third time was when Boland, batting at No 11, scored his first runs with an edge through the slip cordon.Those either side were more important. The first, before the match began, when Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin spoke during the welcome to country, noting the rarity of an Indigenous Australian...

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