It's the England cricket fan's nightmare. The series for the Ashes is re-run, and everything happens just the same second time round. But although you (if the cap fits) were all fortunate enough to suffer that defeat once only, since I got back to England I've been able to enjoy experiencing Australia's triumph again. How so? Well, going about as I was when the series was happening in real time, and having only intermittent access to the internet, I wasn't able to read much of the coverage in the English press. I did scan the Australian papers (of which more in a moment), but even that with less than my usual thoroughness when I'm following a Test series closely. On my return home, however, sitting on the study floor there was a big pile of cuttings, which I owe to the sterling efforts of WotN.
So, in the month and a bit that has elapsed since my return, late at night and sometimes in the very early mornings I've been going from Brisbane to Adelaide and then Perth again, and onwards to Melbourne and Sydney. I've been reliving the series - principally through the coverage in the Guardian, but with the reports from one or two other papers occasionally thrown in.
It was great fun this time again (thank you for asking), and against which England's win in the one-day series was as nothing. Here are some observations prompted by my reading.
As an Australian supporter, I've often been struck by the way in which the reporting of Anglo-Australian cricket in this country can be inflected by the partisanship of the reporter, so that the details of the play are presented, not neutrally, but through the hope that the England team should prosper. That's to be expected, of course, but it can mean that some things loom larger than they should, and others of greater significance are neglected. In any case, if there's a problem of this kind with the cricket coverage in England, it pales beside what happens in Australia. Very often the reporting in the Australian press is just a form of organized mockery - of the Poms, natch - a cheering on of the home side built around a few facts from what's been happening on the field of play. There are exceptions to this, and I did read columns about the cricket that were both informative and balanced. But in general I found the cricket coverage less good in Australia than it is in England, partly because of naked partisanship standing in for detached judgement, and partly also because some of the writing is just bad in a general sort of way – unstructured, unfocused, aimless. You know it's that when some way into the column you find you have no desire to carry on with it since it isn't going anywhere in particular.
Reading through the coverage of the 2006-7 Ashes series from this end has therefore been a pleasure not only because I was reliving the victory of my team. There was more useful analysis, more good writing. In amongst it there were the columns of one of the very best cricket writers in the business today, namely, Gideon Haigh. (That I stayed at Gideon's place in Melbourne is neither here nor there in this judgement. I already thought the same before I knew him.)
The way in which press cricket coverage in this country can be distorted by partisanship also stood out more clearly for me on this read-through - stood out against the comparative experience I now had from reading reports in the Australian papers. It can happen very obviously, as with the reporting of what appear (from TV evidence) to be mistaken umpiring decisions. If these mistakes go against England, then they are treated as part of the fabric of the universe, reported as objective facts: the umpire got it wrong. But if they go against Australia, they are often merely 'controversial', or the writer - and I'm thinking of one Guardian columnist in particular here - decides to concentrate on a different angle of the episode than the mistaken character of the umpiring decision.
The partisanship can operate more subtly as well, and I'll give as an example here the reporting of the first few days of the Adelaide Test. The basic story at Adelaide wasn't that difficult to divine. England won the toss on a good batting wicket and took advantage of doing so to compile a big - 500-plus - score. Australia's strategy in the circumstances was straightforward: to try to see to it that big didn't get too big too quickly, and then to come as close as possible to level (or better) on first innings, so that the match became a purely second innings affair. In this Australia pretty much succeeded.
Yet for four days, reading the English press you might have thought that we were back in 2005. It wasn't only that England had won the toss and got first use of a good strip; no, they were showing that they were Australia's equal, Warne and McGrath weren't the bowlers they used to be (true, but not in the way it needed to be to matter), and despite the Brisbane result we now had a real contest before us. In other words, cricket-writers-for-England were over-interpreting the material when, in truth, it was too soon to know. Hammered in the first Test, England had won a good toss in the second, that's all. Then, on the final day, the house collapsed.
The effect of this on many England supporters, who'd allowed hope to become expectation, was devastating. I don't imagine there'll be too many books published in England about the 2006-7 series. But me, I'll be reading as many as there are.