Pratyush said:
Okay we have been unfortunate to be in a period when Ashes havent been as exciting as its glorious past was with Australia streamrolling Englands series after series.
What are your memories on them though..
My best Ashes memory is also my first - Malcolm, Caddick and Gough slicing the Australians to 54-8 on the first morning of 1997, and though it was slightly soured by Warne's slogfest it perked-up with Hussain and Thorpe pasting it around. That was pretty much as good as it got that summer and, really, ever since.
There've been odd good memories, of course - most particularly one that hasn't been mentioned yet - Tudor dragging Caddick and Gough along into bucking the trend of wasting poor starts and slicing through the Australians to 102-7 at Trent Bridge in 2001. It had been so disappointing to see all the catches go down in the last 2 games (14 -
fourteen - in 2 games) and have to watch all those runs being scored that had no right to be scored. This time, they were held. Sadly, again that was as good as it got. Gilchrist played his best knock of the series and instead of a healthy first-innings lead we had a deficit, and we just couldn't quite build a big enough target despite having a platform on a couple of occasions.
Butcher's knock of course was quite magical, especially given that I was certain he was building-up for something like that (I wasn't expecting an innings quite that good, but he just had that feel that he was waiting to burst through almost every time he came to the crease), but it was the only day in the entire series where we were on top pretty much throughout.
Likewise, the SCG match of 2002\03 had a fantastic creaking pendulum, something I always love to see in cricket. Even the second day of the match at The 'Gabba was good, as Caddick and White cut through the Australian middle-order with surprising skill. We were already out of the game, of course, and the villification Hussain got for that decision at the toss has always burned in me as one of the gravest injustices of my time.
And while it's not The Ashes, my favourite England-Australia ODI apart from the recent Champions Trophy game was the one at Bristol in 2001. The following game had some breathtaking second-innings bowling, too, but it was slightly harder to appreciate the awesome quality because it was a little depressingly familiar.