In 2005, it was England's summer. In 2006–07, Australia had its revenge. 2009 loomed as the tightest of contests in Test cricket's longest-running rivalry, both countries in a race to rebuild in the first rematch since the end of the era of Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist and Hayden. Test cricket faced its own challenge: to demonstrate the game's potential for drama and dash over five days in an era increasingly accustomed to cricket in twenty-over instalments. Compiled day-by-day, The Ashes 2009 captures the season's whipsawing fortunes and the story of its defining duels: Ponting v Strauss, Clarke v Flintoff, Broad and Anderson v Hilfenhaus and Siddle, ready for readers while the embers of the Ashes are still warm.
With Australia having lost their invincible aura and an improving England side having home advantage, the 2009 Ashes series was always likely to be a gripping contest. And with the hero of 2005, Andrew Flintoff, announcing this was to be his swansong, the level of interest reached fever point. Watching on throughout, with a calm, insightful eye was former England captain Mike Atherton, whose reports on the Ashes series in The Times were required reading for all fans of the sport. Having played in seven Ashes series himself, he understands precisely the unique pressures of cricket's longest and most intense international rivalry. In Atherton's Ashes, he provides his day-by-day account of how the fortunes of both sides fluctuated throughout a terrific summer of cricket. He analyses the key turning points for each team and reveals the vital technical issues that can make or break a player in such high-pressure scenarios. He explains how the decisions of the captains, Andrew Strauss and Ricky Ponting, helped shape events and brings vividly to life the best of the action. Atherton's Ashes is sure to be the definitive word on the brilliant 2009 series, where the outcome hung in the balance until the final Test.
This book is the first to focus on the relationship between tourism and cricket. The volume examines how cricket as a participant and spectator sport generates diverse tourism to both major and peripheral locations. It will appeal to researchers, students and teachers in tourism, sport and leisure.
A Season of Tests, Turmoil and Twenty20 Few Australian cricket captains have had a tougher time than that experienced by Ricky Ponting in 2008-09 - a controversial test tour of India, series home and away against South Africa, more than 30 ODIs, the ICC World twenty20. And, finally, the fight for the Ashes.Ponting began the year with a better winning percentage than any other captain in test history, but this adventure ended in disappointment, as his young side fell just short in England after a typically dramatic confrontation. the task of replacing recently retired champions such as Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist and Hayden is still a work in progress. However, this is a story with many positives, as Ponting's Australians produced a number of impressive performances, most notably in South Africa, when they stunned the home side in consecutive matches, and at Leeds, when they completed one of the most decisive test wins of recent times. the emergence of young guns such as Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus, Phillip Hughes and Peter Siddle points to an exciting future. throughout the period of cricket recalled in Ashes Diary 2009, Ponting played with a steely spirit that impressed many observers, including the Guardian newspaper which, after the final Ashes test, wrote, 'Staring down the barrel of a loss that must have hurt more than any other in his career, Ponting showed what a class act he is.' During the series, he had become Australia's highest test run-scorer. At the end, the crowd at the Oval gave him an extended standing ovation.this insider's account follows the path that led to this increased respect. It had been quite a year ...
In 1999, England slumped to a new low in their tumultuous cricket history. Defeat at home by a mediocre New Zealand team saw them fall to the bottom of the world Test rankings, below even Zimbabwe. Yet only just over a decade later, England reached the top. It was a remarkable and profound transformation, brought about largely by two men with an insatiable desire to succeed, Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower. In The Plan, Steve James tells the story of the renaissance of English cricket from a unique perspective. As the former batting partner of ECB managing director Hugh Morris, a player under Fletcher at Glamorgan and Flower's closest confidant in the press corps, James is the perfect analyst of this period in cricket history. From crucial choices of captain to innovative coaching and a complete overhaul of training and preparation for matches, it is the tale of a refusal to be second best. And in examining Fletcher and Flower's background in Zimbabwe, where James himself played, he uncovers the continental shift behind the turnaround. It is the story of how English steel was melded with African fire to create the most potent combination in world cricket.
Cricket has changed dramatically in recent years and now can claim to be a truly global game, thanks in large part to new media technologies which bring a global audience for World Cups and other major competitions. However, the globalization of cricket has not followed a pattern familiar in other sports: concentrations of wealth, media, and marketing leading to the domination of Western countries over the rest, and this fact alone makes it interesting for scholars of the globalization of sport. Cricket has followed a very different global path; the non-Western countries (former British colonies) have begun to dominate and have taken control of the economics and politics of the game. In short, cricket has been “Indianized”. The globalization of cricket has received a massive boost from the popularity of the newest form of the game (Twenty20) which is helping promote cricket as a mass TV sport. The rise of Twenty20, particularly the Indian Premier League (IPL), is transforming the way cricket is organized, played, and watched all over the world. This development both reinforces the globalization of cricket and also underlines that the “movers and shakers” within cricket are no longer the traditional elites in metropolitan centres but the businessmen of India and the media entrepreneurs world-wide who seek to shape new audiences for the game and create new marketing opportunities on a global scale.
Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of cricket's of development, diffusion of cricket through colonization, and impact on the changing notions of English national identity.
TESTING TIMES is the 2009 Ashes-winning captain's personal account of a remarkable two-year period in world cricket. When Strauss went out for his second innings in the Napier Test of March 2008, everyone thought -- including the man himself -- he was one false stroke from the end of his England career. With extracts from his diary Strauss gives a unique insight into the torment which many Test cricketers go through. Taking the reader behind the scenes, Strauss describes his momentous experiences, such as Kevin Pietersen's captaincy, the dramatic events of the Stanford Twenty20 series, the shocking terrorist attack in Mumbai, his feat of becoming the first England batsman to hit two centuries in a Test in Asia, his sudden appointment as England captain, and his team being dismissed for 51 in his first Test. Both revealing and forthright, TESTING TIMES captures all the excitement of the 2009 Ashes triumph in which his magnificent batting and calm leadership played such a role: the agonising last day at Cardiff, England's first Ashes victory at Lord's for 75 years, the horrors of Headingley, and finally the joy at the Oval of regaining the Ashes.
