6 minute read
also known as The Vaughan Supremacy
As we’ve already told you (several times), we’ve released a book co-written with Dan Liebke: The 50 most ridiculous Ashes moments. In it we count down exactly what that title promises. But of course there have been far more than 50 ridiculous moments in the last five decades of Ashes cricket, so we’ve also published a bit of the overflow to promote the thing. Dan previously ran the 52nd most ridiculous Ashes moment – Mark Waugh replaces Steve Waugh – on his site and below we bring you the 51st most ridiculous moment: Michael Vaughan refuses a crush. These two chapters aren’t in the book, but they should still give you a pretty good feel for its contents. Please buy The 50 Most Ridiculous Ash Moments! Supplies are (really) limited, so there’s no time like the present! Ideal Christmas gift etc etc.
England were crushed in the 2002/2003 Ashes. This wasn’t a huge surprise for three main reasons.
- The lovelorn Steve Waugh led an Australian side that was close enough at its peak (and to be fair, was still quite handy even at its lowest point)
- England was England
- England was England in Australia
The margins of victory over the first four Tests were 384 runs, an innings and 51 runs, an innings and 48 runs and five wickets. A Warne-and-McGrath-less XI then suffered an unlikely dead rubber defeat in the fifth Test.
Warne had dislocated his shoulder during that last match. Not one to offer much encouragement to the opposition, Waugh said of his replacement, Stuart MacGill: “I have put it out there that he is one of the top spinners in the world.”
McGrath, meanwhile, had “suffered a strain on the left side of his ‘grunt’ muscle,” according to team physio Errol Alcott, who was clearly not averse to dazzling his audience with science.
Apart from the notable absentees, that fifth Test victory was in large part due to the efforts of the only England player to emerge from the series unscathed: a young, upright opener called Michael Vaughan, who had started his year ranked 40th in the world behind Ridley Jacobs and Neil McKenzie, but who would then rise to number one a month or two after the series ended, ahead of Matthew Hayden and Sachin Tendulkar.
None of England’s other batters fared well. And neither do their bowlers.
Over the course of the series, all other England players combined managed just a hundred: Mark Butcher’s 124 in that fifth Test. The Australian batters scored eight – despite getting two fewer innings.
Warne, McGrath and Jason Gillespie all averaged under 25 with the ball (as did Waugh and Damien Martyn1(If you count part-timers – which, for the point being made here, we might as well do.) No English bowler averaged less than 30. The pick of them was Ashley Giles, who achieved 31.83 after taking 6-191 in the only Test he played.
At the other end of the scale, Steve Harmison averaged 50, Matthew Hoggard 60, Alex Tudor 70 (from one test) and Richard Dawson almost 80 (even more devastating, from four tests).
Say what you will about Gilo, but we all know that successful Ashes tours to Australia are not built on the bowling alley of The King of Spain.
Michael Vaughan, however, seemed blissfully unaware of it all. With his teammates crowded all around him, the oblivious Yorkshireman hit three hundreds and averaged 63.30.
Vaughan’s increase in production that year was staggering, but his ability to play like someone who had flown in from a completely different cricket team had already been noticed. In fact, that quality was the main reason he managed to keep his place in the side, even without quite big scores.
The first time he started in a Test match for England it had been 2-2 against South Africa, and by the time he actually faced his first ball it was 2-4.2. Vaughan initially batted with another debutant, Chris Adams, saving his team from complete disgrace with one of the bigger 33s3given the context.
However, two and a half years and sixteen Test matches later, his record was the definition of mediocrity: just a hundred and an average of 31.15. This was not good enough, so in April 2002 he decided to immediately and fully master batting in the Test match.
In his next Test, against Sri Lanka at Lord’s, he top-scored in both innings. His first innings (64) was not enough to save the follow-on, so he made 115 in the second to secure the draw.
Against India later in the summer he hit three hundreds in four Tests – a second in the summer at Lord’s, 197 at Trent Bridge and 195 at the Oval. He scored 615 runs in the series – 300 more than England’s second highest scorer, Nasser Hussain – and averaged 102.50. To further contextualize these efforts, England were still only able to draw 1-1.
He then underwent knee surgery.
Then it was time to go to Australia.
It is well known that the first Test in Brisbane was not a match at all after Hussain won the toss and elected to bowl (see chapter [redacted]). Vaughan was dismissed twice by McGrath, including a first ball lbw in the second innings. He further improved his credentials as an England Ashes tourist and also dropped two catches.
Before the second Test in Adelaide, Vaughan twisted his knee during the warm-up, meaning Hussain apparently walked into the toss not knowing whether he would even be fit to play or not.
Hussain rightly called and – unsurprisingly – decided he would take a bat this time. It turned out that Vaughan was fit to play. And play he did. He was dismissed for 177 in the day’s final.
Vaughan’s first boundary in that innings was a pull shot from Andy Bichel, which gave six runs. The delivery didn’t seem short enough to warrant the shot, but he got away with it. He then continued to get away with similar shots throughout the remainder of the series, shrinking the pitch’s ‘good length’ band – within which balls are considered too short to drive but too full to pull – to barely a sliver.
No side had lost a Test in Adelaide by batting first since 1966 – but this England side was made of different stuff. The other 10 batters combined couldn’t quite match Vaughan in the first innings, contributing just 150 runs between them. Australia countered at 552-9 and then bowled out the tourists for 159 (of which Vaughan made 41).
A week later, Australia retained the Ashes with another innings victory in Perth. Vaughan’s key contributions included running out partner Mark Butcher in the first innings, before falling victim to Butcher returning the favor in the second.
Shortly afterwards it was revealed that, in addition to his dodgy knee, Vaughan had been playing with a broken shoulder, sustained when he was hit by a delivery from Jason Gillespie during his second Test hundred.
“It hasn’t stopped me from playing and it hasn’t stopped me from doing anything, so I don’t see it as a problem,” he said.
It certainly didn’t stop him from scoring huge hundreds. In Melbourne he made 145 of 387 from England’s second innings as the tourists succumbed to a five-wicket defeat. If progress can be measured by the day a team loses, the tourists could at least celebrate surviving day five on this occasion.
But then came the victory in Sydney. A duck in the fourth over of the match didn’t seem to predict such a thing, but lo and behold! What was this? An English player who wasn’t Michael Vaughan who wanted to contribute?
Butcher’s 124 was not enough to prevent Australia taking a colossal one-run lead in the first innings, thanks to Steve Waugh’s century on the final ball of day two (see chapter [redacted]). But Vaughan still had an innings to play. He used it to make 183, which meant that although Hussain was the only other batsman to pass 40, Australia now faced a towering fourth-innings target of 452.
Despite a half-hearted and quickly aborted reversal of the batting order, which brought Bichel in at three, they fell 225 runs short, with Andy Caddick taking 7-94. Could there be something to this strategy of ‘players who aren’t Michael Vaughan also contributing in some way’? If England could really capitalize on this in 2005, perhaps their relentless Ashes push could finally come to an end.
So once again: The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments is out in the UK next week, but you don’t have to wait. That’s possible order it now to arrive as soon as possible – and we’d really appreciate it if you did, because this kind of thing really goes down well with publishers.
Our preference is for both moral and commission-based reasons bookstore.org but we would prefer to sell all copies that ended up elsewhere.
We have also seen it for sale at T.G.Jones (WH Smith for you), Blackwells And Great books.
If you make a strong and compelling argument, we’ll allow you to do that too buy the 50 most ridiculous axle moments from amazon. This is our least favorite option, but we prefer you buy it from Amazon then don’t buy at all.
It was released yesterday in Australia and has already been spotted in a store. If you’re Down Under, you’ll find a list of places where you can get it this page.
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