That was then. This is now.

The Australian cricket team arrived in London full of optimism and bullish charm. An Ashes tour is still regarded by most Australian and English cricketers as the pinnacle of cricket competition. Of course England invented cricket and Australia and England were the first and, for a long time, only Test cricket combatants.

This Ashes tour is seen by many as more the case because Australia and England at this stage are clearly the top two Test cricketing nations and this has not been the case for the past 30 years. The winner of this Ashes tour will genuinely be able to lay claim to the title of the best cricket team in the world.

All this talk of the Ashes tour and the start of the tour itself, lead me to contemplate how the shape of Ashes tours have changed. It is heart warming to know that the players still hold the Ashes as special. That has never changed. However, many, many things have changed.

For a start, and rather obviously, the length of the tour has changed. That applies to the length of time getting to and from England (air travel brought widespread changes in that area), the time spent in England and the number of games played.

As an example, the first 1948 tour match started on 28 April and the last match on 8 September. That’s almost five months of continuous cricket. When I say, “almost”, that’s what I mean. The Australian team played 31 matches on the tour, including five Tests. Twelve first class matches were played before the 1st Test, mostly against county sides. Those matches went between 28 April and 7 June with just two days off (7 May and 18 May). There was a two day break before the 1st Test. The tour match following the 1st Test started on the very next day, and so on it went. In total, the team played 115 days of cricket in 19 weeks – an average of 6.05 days cricket per week.

A look at the first class tour averages is startling with many bowlers taking above 100 wickets for the tour and the batsmen scoring mountains of runs.

Contrast that to the 2005 tour. Three warm up OD matches and a 20/20 match will precede and 20 match round robin ODI series (10 matches for each team). A single first class match is played before the first of the five Tests is played, with four more tour matches interspersed. If all matches go the distance, the team will play 50 days of cricket in 13 weeks – an average of 3.85 days cricket per week. And modern players like to talk of their heavy playing loads!

The length of the trip itself has changed drastically. The 1961 Australian side was the last team to make the journey via ship. As was the common practice, they stopped at Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) for a hit. In the early days, the ship would stop at Perth for matches as well. Many of the 1930 team returned via the USA for matches arranged through the board of control. While the trip to England took a large chunk of time out of a man’s life, it did provide a great opportunity for team bonding. Warwick Armstrong took the chance to stoke the boilers for 2 hours per day, in an effort to keep his weight down before the 1925 Ashes series. (It didn’t work). Interestingly the England and Australian teams for the 1925 tour travelled to England together. The 1924-25 and 1925 series really were back-to-back!

While on the lifestyle issues associated with travel consider this: If the record for the number of beers for air travel between Australia and England is 52 (David Boon), it is quite frightening to calculate the number of beers that Boonie could have consumed in the six weeks on the ship. Or if he would have had any brain cells remaining. Or if he would have needed a liver transplant in London. Of course, such behaviour would not have been contemplated in 1948. Or perhaps more realistically, such behaviour would not have been proudly broadcast to Bradman and the world.

Of course now days, One Day cricket is played, there is a leg of the tour dedicated to that form of the game and there are separate Test and One-Day squads.

And finally, some comments about the press and what players say to the press. I doubt very much if there was less interest in times gone by. An Australia cricket team arriving in England has always aroused great interest and received extensive coverage by the media. Of course, these days the media options are far greater and the content is considerably more volumous. On top of that is every player and his dog wanted to tell the world his hopes and aspirations for the tour. Bowlers name the batsmen they will be focusing on and the like. I found McGrath’s tongue-in-cheek comments about he and Gillespie being a batting force to be reckoned with (following their dissection of the Kiwi attack last summer) rather amusing and quite in order. On the other hand, I think some of the guys should shut up and let their bats do the talking. I saw Michael Clarke interviewed last week and he announced that he was in the best physical shape of his life, would be in good nick going into the first Test and he could see himself raising his bat at Lords. This I found rather irksome. I think the more traditional line of “I’ll be happy to be in the team and contributing to the cause” would go down a lot better.

dongles

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