England, August 08: Historians may conclude that England lost the Ashes at 4.50am yesterday. That was when their sleep and sweet dreams of career-defining triumph – dreams that they had every right to nurture – were rudely interrupted by a fire alarm at the team hotel.
Fewer than 10 hours later they had been dismissed by Australia for 102 in the fourth npower Test and barely two more hours after that Australia had a lead. By the close the tourists were 196 for 4 after three sessions which could only have a helter-skelter as a companion piece, and although this was but the first day of the five allocated, no judge, with or without marbles, was calling anything other than an Australian victory perhaps as soon as tomorrow.
To get out of Leeds with anything but a defeat would take cricket of a wholly different quality from that which England purveyed yesterday. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, from the unwanted gathering outside the city centre hotel on.
–Agencies