Brendan McArdle, always a source of sensible cricket comment, thinks Stressa was stupid to fess up about the mints, and also gives a pretty good summary of the 2005 Ashes:
England played in mint condition but that wasn't the only problem
Apart from the obvious desire to boost his book sales, it is difficult to understand what drove Marcus Trescothick to reveal his Murray Mint story from the 2005 Ashes series. Has he become bitter on a game that drove him to a state of mental anguish?
Aggers is currently giving Tressa the softly-softly (abridged version) on TMS:
~~ "What about the mints?"
~~ "Not much in it," says Stress. "They've been doing it for years."
~~ "At least we cleared that up."
Posted by: Tony T | Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 08:34 PM
Eric Clapton now.
~~ "Cricket is the blues."
Git.
Everyone knows cricket is a Carl Stalling soundtrack.
(Still, EC loves Test cricket; so he's not just a passable guitarist.)
Posted by: Tony T | Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 08:46 PM
I completely agree with this. His saying that it's unfortunate Trescothick 'fessed up because there's an asterix against the result now, is a pretty good way of putting it, though. But we were nowhere near our best throughout the series. Would the mints have made the difference? Who knows. It was still a great series with them, so there we are.
Interesting that despite the 5-0 drubbing in the series aftewards, that 2005 still hurts. If I think "Ashes" I think "putting up with a bunch of Poms in a London office in 2005", not "getting my own back in 2006/7".
It's just annoying that I can't rib my British mates about them being a bunch of cheats now that I'm in Holland!!
Posted by: Carrot | Monday, September 01, 2008 at 12:48 AM
So the chewing gum Shane Warne was using throughout the series whilst standing at slip and shining the ball was sugar free was it? (
And the stuff Ricky was playing with between his teeth (his gum always spends more time outside his mouth than in it....) was equally innocent I presume?
Posted by: Mark | Monday, September 01, 2008 at 11:38 PM
Now, Mark, while I agree with you nearly all of the time, I am forced to point out that 1) we DO use sugar free gum; 2) as the song goes "your chewing gum DOES lose its sugar on the stumps overnight"; 3) I don't think anyone here actually, truly and really thinks the mints were the reason Straya lost despite our taking the piss; and 4) Tressa knew he was cheating - regardless of how much the ball swings with a side full of minty slobber.
Posted by: Tony T | Tuesday, September 02, 2008 at 12:49 PM