Ashes generally, really & we had the better of things in the 80s as a whole.
Fair point. The 1998 South Africa win was an impressive achievement and they beat India a couple of times and NZ once. But they were still vastly underachieving at home all things considered.
Peter Moores wasn't coach in that 2012 South African series IIRC.
Team management, selection, tactics weren't the best. But ultimately we can't win a series away against England with a batting lineup like ours. It's a testament to the quality of our bowling that we managed to burgle the first test but from that point on it just didn't look likely.
I remember Matthew Engel writing that a real low point for English cricket was when Chris Cowdrey got to be Test captain largely based on the fact that he was chairman of selectors Peter May's godson.
Yeah that was the major failing of the early years of the Border/Simpson era. Reckon Botham's aggressive century in the opening Test was highly significant as that brought back all the demons of his success against them on previous tours.
Nope. Probably the only slight annoyance for England this test is that we didn't get the chance to see if we were right to stick with him or not.
Just barely, though. This is obviously not a popular opinion but the gulf that opened up between the sides by the end suggests that WI rode on the adrenaline of the BLM build-up initially and by the same token England might have been a little meek at first but as that factor abated something like the natural balance between the sides, at least in English conditions, was restored.
Absolutely nothing to do with BLM. We have a superb bowling attack and they blew England away in the first test and our batters managed to scrape together 300. Don;t let this terrible performance fool you into thinking we did not win that first test on merit. We were the better side for the vast majority of that first test and deserved to win.
