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Hypocritical Piers Morgan is the obvious place to start as England’s cricket media and fans sobbed with despair over the Manchester rain that saw Australia retain the Ashes on Monday.
The Roar columnist Dan Liebke summed up the annoying British schlock jock perfectly with a comparison to Pauline Hanson after Morgan’s ill sporting bleatings filled social media as relentless as the rain fell from the skies in nothern England.
Before play Morgan suggested, “It will be the greatest travesty in the history of Ashes cricket if the trampled, battered, beleaguered, Bazballed, desperate, white-flag-flying Aussies now avoid inevitable defeat and retain the urn because of bloody rain.”
Later he complained that England had been robbed of the Ashes and his sense of rage was palpable and, go on admit it, delicious!
It didn’t take long for social media’s amateur historians, including Professor Mervyn Hughes esq, to out Morgan as a raging hypocrite, and a “flog” with a short memory, who had revelled in rain fall that came to England’s assistance in previous series.
In 2013, rain washed out the third Test and helped England retain the Ashes with the Poms 3-37 and needing 332 to win.
Stuart Broad tweeted back then: “We have retained the Ashes and it feels magnificent!!!”
Paul Collingwood, an assistant coach, added: “I love days like this. Never get bored of beating the Aussies. Ashes retained.”
One thing’s for certain, Morgan hasn’t acquired his 8 million Twitter followers by being a calm voice of reason, and there’s a clear school of thought that he can’t possibly believe 90 percent of the drivel he espouses. But the guy can deliver a headline.
Ben Stokes of England looks on during the end of match presentations. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)
Elsewhere in the UK media there was a sense of deep dissatisfaction that England’s best Ashes performance in years had been halted by notoriously miserable weather.
“Sport can be glorious; it can be cruel. It can be many contrasting things over the course of a lengthy contest, both wonderful and terrible, dramatic and dull, it can lift the spirits and try the soul,” wrote former England captain Mike Atherton in The Times.
“From Old Trafford, Pat Cummins exited with the Ashes in safe-keeping; Ben Stokes left knowing his chance of glory had gone.
“From wintry skies, amid increasing gloom, with covers on the square, “super-sopper” machines abandoned on the outfield and slowly sinking into the mud and a smattering of hardy spectators huddled under brollies in the stands, a hard rain fell on Manchester and the 2023 Ashes came to a sodden end. The series is still alive, but for Stokes the dream of regaining the Ashes under his captaincy in an English summer is over.
“What a terrible way it was for this Ashes above all, which has enthralled, entertained and captivated us every inch of the way, to finish, thus denying us a grandstand finish. The first three games ebbed and flowed with victories decided on the finest of margins, outcomes uncertain to the very end. Although this fourth Test was totally one-sided, it retained a small sense of uncertainty as a brief stoppage during the late morning raised false hopes for a proper ending, but it was not to be.”
Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes. (Photo by Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
He said England did not deserve their watery fate.
“There are those who will point to the missed opportunities at Edgbaston, especially, which mean the Ashes remain in Australia’s grasp for another 2½ years. Instead of that lingering regret being the strongest reaction, think first where England were two winters ago in Hobart, a shell of a side that played with no conviction or belief. The transformation since has been remarkable and even though “Bazball” will not get its affirmation with an Ashes win, the country has a team of which to be proud.
“They won’t get everything right, and they fluffed opportunities early in the series, but they did not deserve this anticlimactic, damp conclusion. Rarely have Australia been so outplayed as they were over the first three days of this game, and England’s brilliant and bold cricket deserved a more just outcome. Not since Ian Botham at his peak in the 1980s has an Australian team looked as rattled as they did in the field here.”
Nick Hoult, in the Telegraph, said the first draw of the Ben Stokes era “was more galling than any of the four defeats of his captaincy given how tantalisingly close England were to setting up a stirring Oval Ashes finale that would have captured the nation.
“England were on the cusp of a great win after putting together a fine performance before rain robbed them of five sessions and left huge puddles on the Old Trafford outfield.”
He said England will be motivated enough at the Oval, to prevent Australia’s star men from attaining a series win.
England captain Ben Stokes after day five of the Test at Old Trafford. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
“Steve Smith spoke for many of his colleagues when he said winning the Ashes in England was on his ‘bucket list’ before retirement,” Holt wrote.
“Snatching from a generation of Australians on their last Ashes tour, the achievement of breaking a 22-year winless series streak in England should motivate Stokes and his players. The crowing will be muted if Australia go home having retained the Ashes thanks to a washout at Old Trafford which meant only 30 overs were bowled on day four, and none on day five.”
Oliver Brown, also in the Telegraph, complained about the absence of an extra day in reserve to help get the game completed.
“For both WTC finals to date, the International Cricket Council made sure that a sixth day was kept on standby so that a draw could be averted. Why not for this Ashes-defining fixture?” argued Brown.
“Lest this be construed just as a bitter English lament, it was worth remembering what was at stake here. A series-levelling win for England promised to elevate the fifth Test at the Oval into a truly seismic climax, a spectacle that would have enraptured audiences in both hemispheres. How often does cricket have the chance to savour such global exposure?
“Instead, what awaits this week is a dead rubber. There is an argument that England can still grasp a Pyrrhic victory by restricting Australia to 2-2, but this smacks of desperation. Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum have made it a mantra that they are not interested in parity.
“Only in cricket could so little have been done to avoid this dampest of squibs. At the 2019 Masters, an impending Georgia thunderstorm persuaded organisers to send the players out at dawn in a two-tee start. The upshot? That a little after 2pm, Tiger Woods won his fifth green jacket in a sports story for the ages.
“English cricket, sadly, has been starved of its equivalent. And the bureaucrats must shoulder their share of blame.”
Former Test opener Michael Vaughan, also in the Telegraph, revelled in the hosts’ performance.
“England completely dismantled Australia to a point where they were unable to deliver the basics. They were psychologically affected by the Bazball juggernaut. Australia forgot that in Test cricket if your best ball gets hit, don’t go away from bowling your best ball,” wrote Vaughan.
“Australia were timid, scared and petrified of this England team all week in Manchester and played for rain. Australia were rattled: I can’t remember saying that before. They will know that only rain saved them. It ranks as one of the luckiest escapes I can remember.”
Over at the Daily Mail, Oliver Holt, looked on the bright side.
“An unsatisfactory, deeply dispiriting end to England’s hopes of producing a fightback for the ages will not change the fact that this has been a series that has captured the country’s attention and brought cricket in England into a new age of entertainment and thrill,” he wrote.
“There is an irony here, of course. T20 is supposed to be where all the thrills are now. The Hundred was introduced to appeal to a younger audience.
“But none of it will match the joy of the way Stokes and his side have played their cricket since the first Test began at Edgbaston last month and Zak Crawley smote the first ball through extra cover to the boundary.
“What a series it has been, one that inflamed the emotions so much that it turned the denizens of the Long Room at Lord’s into the modern-day equivalent of blood-lusting fans at the Colosseum as the Australians walked back into the pavilion after the controversial ‘stumping’ of Jonny Bairstow.
“Cummins was gracious when he spoke after the game. He said there would be ‘a bit of a party’ but no huge celebrations. He was not in a triumphal mood. Nor were the Australian press. A lot of their questions probed at the ineffectiveness of his captaincy in Manchester.”