The Ashes: UK press coming to grips with success

Graeme Swann of England celebrates with his team mates after dismissing Marcus North. Photo / Getty Images

Some of the English press are still coming to grips with the success of their cricket team in Australia.

How else to explain highly respected sports writer Simon Barnes' opening line following England's thumping win in the second test in Adelaide.

"Sir Donald Bradman! Gough Whitlam! Rupert Murdoch! Rolf Harris! Ned Kelly! Dame Edna! Crocodile Dundee! Kylie Minogue! We have beaten them all! Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, can you hear me? Skippy, your boys took a hell of a beating!," he wrote in The Times.

It is hard to remember the last time the likes of WG Grace, Winston Churchill and Danger Mouse crept into cricket articles.

The problem for English sporting scribes, who rate amongst the finest in the world, is they are running out of ways to praise their team and disparage Ricky Ponting and his men.

Ponting has been long portrayed as a sinister character in the UK press, his every growl and grimace on the field splashed across British newspapers.

And they have had plenty of opportunities in the past few days of the Ashes to capture that image.

Not even his increasingly dignified and regular post-defeat speeches are slowing down the assault as England close in on their first test series win in Australia in a generation.

Former England captain Mike Atherton said the one-sided win in Adelaide could be a watershed moment for the national cricket team.

"It is 17 years since Australia were last beaten by an innings at home, that against West Indies at Perth in 1993," he wrote in The Times.

"These two dates may become to be regarded as significant in the years to come: prior to that defeat in Perth, Australia had suffered some barren years, and if the evidence of this game is anything to go by, there may be some pain to come now.

"This day may become a significant one for England, too, for here, after 18 months of hard work and planning, was clear evidence that, with the right focus and ambition, they can become the best team in the world.

"On this evidence, it is not enough to aim simply to retain the Ashes.

"It is hard to recall an England team that has played better cricket over five days in the last thirty years. They were that good."

The Daily Mail said a series victory was within England's grasp.

"It is very hard to see England losing the Ashes now," wrote the paper's cricket correspondent Paul Newman.

"Not this England side. This England side are different."

Meanwhile the Australian press are struggling to find any answers to the once dominant side's fall from grace.

Jamie Pandaram of the Sydney Morning Herald has called for sweeping changes to be made to the current side.

"The Ashes are all but gone - there is no evidence to suggest Australian bowlers can take 20 wickets once, let alone twice - now the minimum required to regain the urn from a clinical England side. They cannot sink lower," he said.

Changes to the Australian squad was a popular theme in the Australia media.

"Desperate times require desperate measures" wrote Robert Craddock of the Herald Sun.

"Australia will consider up to five changes for Perth and the novel option of Brad Haddin batting at number six to give it the extra bowler".

The Australian writer Malcolm Conn said the second test loss "was unacceptable and un-Australian".

"To be flogged in Adelaide by England on a typical belter of a pitch is as bad as it gets...On the surface there appears nothing wrong with this team's work ethic as a collective; Ponting would accept nothing less," he said.

"But Ponting did say after the defeat that there was an attitude problem that was stopping the side performing at its best. It does not look so much like attitude as confidence.

"This once-mighty side does not appear to believe in itself any more."

- AAP/Herald online