King Cricket's Ashes Top Ten

This week's guest writer to accompany our latest Ashes Hero is the mysterious man behind the King Cricket blog. One of the more popular and amusing blogs out there (far yellower than this one for a start), the King has been entertaining readers with his adulation of Rob Key for a couple of years. And knowing how much he likes Matty Hayden I thought this would be the right week to run his list of the most influential Ashes characters:

Ian Botham For defying all reason.

Shane Warne Announced his arrival in some style. Even more miraculously, he managed to live up to that entrance. The man could paralyse a whole batting line-up. He grew with every Ashes Test and the Ashes grew with him.

Michael Vaughan Captained a winning side in 2005, but this has much to do with the front-foot pull of 2002-03. Where did it go?

Glenn McGrath and Mike Atherton McGrath to Atherton … and he's gone!

Steve Harmison 1-32 doesn't seem much of an opening spell, but at Lord's in 2005 Harmison cut or bruised each of Australia's top three on the first day of the first Test. While England lost, they had actually succeeded in imposing themselves for once. The opening spell of the next Ashes was just as significant.

Steve Waugh Everything that's great about Australian cricket. Resourceful when they needed him. Remorseless even when they didn't. He knew the illusion of invincibility was the most important ingredient in actual invincibility. An utter sod - and that's meant as a compliment.

Darren Gough A hat-trick at the SCG and a man who never seemed suffocated by Australian dominance - possibly because he was totally oblivious to it. A competitor England supporters could count on.

Adam Gilchrist Australia seemed unstoppable with six batsmen averaging 40 or 50. Then came a seventh. But it was how he scored those runs that kept England down. Deliberately played the ball over the keeper's head to reach a hundred, the piss-taker.

Douglas Jardine Any good rivalry needs a healthy dose of enmity. This man did more than any to provide that. "They don't seem to like you very much over here, Mr Jardine," Patsy Hendren said. "The feeling's f***ing mutual," Jardine replied.

Comments

[Moses]

That's a great Jardine quote, especially given the context of his later emigrating to Adelaide.