Second Test: Australia v/s England

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*Hussain says England facing 5-0 Ashes loss *
By Julian Linden

ADELAIDE (Reuters) - England captain Nasser Hussain says his team is facing the humiliation of a 5-0 series loss after being crushed by an innings in the second Ashes test.

Hussain said the prospects of England avoiding a series whitewash were bleak unless his players suddenly started playing better against a red-hot Australia side.

"I anticipate them wanting to beat us 5-0, they'll be completely cut-throat, they'll show no mercy at all," Hussain said on Sunday.

"The old days of teams turning up and thinking this game doesn't matter, we'll win 4-1 or whatever, are gone, that's not the Australian side we're playing against at the moment.

"Unless we improve we'll get beaten."

But, in an equally blunt admission, Hussain said England had no real idea how they could stop the Australians and the best they could hope for was to try and copy what they did.

"I don't think there's any disgrace at having a look at the best side in the world and trying to learn from them," Hussain said.

"I'm not asking each of our bowlers to be Glenn McGrath or our batsmen to be Ricky Ponting, I'm just asking them to improve their disciplines.

"It comes down to technique and ability. It's a simple game that everyone else makes complicated.

"If you look at the way Glenn McGrath sets up his over or the way Ponting bats, it's not a mental thing, it's a technical, positive thing.

"I just have to repeat what I said after the last test match, 'if you don't get your disciplines right here you'll just get blown away'."

Hussain scoffed at suggestions his team were psyched out by the reputations of Australia's players, sarcastically suggesting they had a mental edge over the entire cricketing world.

"I think Australia have a psychological stranglehold on the world of cricket at the moment and everyone else should just pack their coffins up and go home," he said.

"The truth is, how you play the game of cricket is how we're being outplayed.

"There's no great mind games people on their side and there's none on our side, it's just a technical ability thing.

"I just hope that people in the dressing room don't get too defeated by what they read and listen to and what they've done so far.

"They've got to try and pick themselves up and try and win little battles, maybe not look at the big picture, just try and win their own little personal battle.

"We've got to try and win sessions, things like that, you just carried away with everything else that's going on and we just need to look at the real basics of the game."

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by ehsan: *
**Hussain says England facing 5-0 Ashes loss *

[/quote]

What a dumb captian!

England Cricket Board should fired Hussain and make Alec Stewart Captain of the team.

Just my two cents ..........

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Australia Finish off England

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McGrath took a spectacular catch

**Australia dodged the rain on the fourth day in Adelaide to complete an innings victory over England. **

Needing 210 to make Australia bat again, the tourists began the day on 36 for three, hoping to last at least as long as tea, when heavy rain was forecast.

And a 74-run fifth wicket partnership between Alec Stewart and Michael Vaughan kept spirits high.

But, despite three short delays for bad weather, the match was all done and dusted by the time the clouds really burst

The bowling was unchanged for 23 overs from the Cathedral End, with spinner Shane Warne taking three wickets for 36.

And Glenn McGrath added to the scalp of Mark Butcher on the third evening to finish with four for 41.

Australia made an ideal start in the third over of the day, when Robert Key fell pulling Andy Bichel to midwicket.

But it was not until McGrath’s spectacular diving catch at deep square leg shortly before lunch that accounted for Vaughan for 41, that the fight was over.

Stewart’s 41st Test half-century came from just 67 deliveries, with five boundaries.

And two runs later he became the fourth Englishman, and the 12th Test batsman overall, to reach 8000 career runs.

But, after surviving the half-hour session between an extended break and a second short stoppage for rain, Stewart and Craig White fell to successive balls.

White faced 50 deliveries for five before he top-edged an ill-advised pull off McGrath for substitute fielder Brett Lee to take at midwicket.
And Stewart followed to the first ball of Warne’s next over, as he was struck on the pad in front of middle stump by a straighter delivery.

A lengthy tail was never expected to hold up proceedings for too long, and two further wickets fell for the addition of just four runs.

Matthew Hoggard was yorked by McGrath and Steve Harmison lbw to Warne.

And a last wicket partnership of 25 was ended when Dawson was caught behind off McGrath for 19, having hit four boundaries in two overs from the veteran pace bowler.

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*England captain Nasser Hussain says his team is facing the humiliation of a 5-0 series loss after being crushed by an innings in the second Ashes test *

I said that before the start of the first test. England haven't got the players to compete with Australia on this tour. Graham Thorpe is their best batsman and he's not there.

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I wonder why Mark Ramprkash is not there? He has a good record against aussies and England picked this funny loloking batsman Robert Key ...
Well they are handicapped with injuries and Austrials jut mauling them!

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You can't blame the poor English side, they are struck with injuries, most of their player are not even playing, so this is not a real English side, they are being treated like how Pakistan were being treated a month ago.
I don't think Australia should rejoice over this victory, in their past 3 test series they have beaten 3 top sides who played half of their starters.
They have yet to play a strong team with their main players fit.

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Whatever man!

They flexed us, SA and England with uncanny ease, this is the greatest test team ever......above and beyond the 1980's WI and Don Bradman's 1948 "Invincibles".

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Just Brilliant! :k:

How McGrath Took Miracle Catch

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The Pigeon has landed: Glenn McGrath launches himself full length to snare England’s Michael Vaughan in the second Ashes Test at the Adelaide Oval yesterday.

Steve Waugh called it “a miracle”. Glenn McGrath said it felt as good as taking a hat-trick. Cricket’s memorabilia makers will probably just call it “The Catch”.

Already with more than enough wickets to be one of Test cricket’s great bowlers, McGrath yesterday also ensured himself a place in the sport’s folklore with his unforgettable airborne catch to dismiss England’s Michael Vaughan during Australia’s innings-and-51-runs triumph in the second Test in Adelaide.

If there were any doubts about an Australian victory, they evaporated late in the morning session when Vaughan, the first-innings century-maker, played a sweep shot at leg-spinner Shane Warne which flew high off a top edge towards the square leg fence.

McGrath, the lanky 32-year-old paceman not known as one of Australia’s most fluid men in the field, took off from deep backward square in the direction of the ball.

Few believed he would arrive in time to stop the ball landing just inside the boundary rope. However, McGrath sprinted 20 metres before flinging himself through the air at full stretch, and with his outstretched hands met the ball centimetres off the ground. It hit his left hand, rebounded into his right … and somehow stayed there.

It was a catch so stunning that team-mates, including Warne, and even South African umpire Rudi Koertzen, laughed incredulously. As the man known as “Pigeon” later reflected on his swan dive, he said he too had not rated his chances of holding the catch very highly.

“Out of 100? Probably zero,” said McGrath, admitting the “20 or 30 metres” he covered would probably be exaggerated to “60 or 80” when he retold the story in 10 years’ time.

“I was a bit slow in starting so when I got nearer the ball I thought, ‘I’ve just gotta dive for it to make up for the slow start’,” he said. "When I was in the air it was coming down in the general vicinity of where my hands were, and then I felt it go in, just touch one hand and go in the other. When I was sliding along the ground it was still in there. It was a pretty good feeling.

**"Tugger [Steve Waugh] classed it as a miracle and I’d probably have to agree with him. It’s similar to a hat-trick - it’s something you dream about and to get it is an amazing feeling.

“I’m not taking too much credit for it, it just fell into my hands.”**

Asked if his team’s resident practical joker and pest had snared one of the great catches in history, Waugh said: **"Glenn certainly does [think it was]. He’s talked about it non-stop now. It was a miracle. We weren’t expecting him to catch it and neither was he.

“It was an outstanding outfield catch. One of the best outfield catches I have ever seen.”**

Waugh noted the significance of the catch in England’s demise, as it snapped a defiant 74-run partnership between Vaughan (41) and wicketkeeper Alec Stewart (57).

For McGrath, the catch capped a memorable day also highlighted by Australia’s crushing victory and his advance to sixth on the all-time Test wicket-takers’ list, past Pakistani Wasim Akram’s 414 scalps.

His effort will rank alongside only a handful of others as one of the finest outfield catches seen in any form of cricket. The benchmark is generally regarded as that taken in the summer of 1981-82, when former Australian batsman John Dyson ran backwards towards the mid-wicket fence at the Sydney Cricket Ground and hauled in a spectacular overhead “mark”, Australian rules-style, to dismiss West Indian Sylvester Clarke.

It was also the equal of Mark Waugh’s miraculous flying grab from Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq in Hobart three years ago, Steve Waugh’s courageous running effort in 1989 to take a catch from West Indian Roger Harper, who belted a long, high drive to within a few metres of the long straight boundary at the Melbourne Cricket Ground - with Waugh finishing up behind the old MCG sightscreen - and Allan Border’s one-handed take off New Zealand’s John Reid in 1985-86.

McGrath has been no Mark Waugh during his career, taking just 27 catches through 88 previous Tests. It is no disrespect to McGrath to say he will never take another like this.