Australia thrashed England by 218 runs to win 2nd Test at Adelaide.
England are doing very well at the moment and, right now, their home advantage is second only to India. Australia are ranked below England in Tests anyway and even if it the Ashes were held in Down Under (which they will be soon), England would be favourites, or at least even money. This is going to be tough for England.
It is a bit premature to say that Australia will win the Ashes but there are certainly some good signs. England are still huge favourites, but they haven't exactly had an ideal preparation, as they keep on losing to lowly New Zealand, and are struggling to get adequate warm-up matches.
Australia have correctly dumped Mickey Arthur, but they did not even attempt to find the best possible coach to replace him. Instead, they just promoted the assistant coach, Darren Lehmann to the role.
Mickey Arthur was sacked as Australia's national cricket coach on Monday. Arthur came from South Africa where he improved discipline dramatically that led to South Africa doing much better in international cricket. He set high standards and told them that they should be the best in the world. This worked very well, largely because it was true. He gave players more self-confidence, and helped to stop the self doubt. They still choke occasionally and still have that psychological torment, but Arthur did a lot to help to get them out of that mindset. The players spoke highly of him. Unfortunately for him, the administrators did not. Arthur said that the reason that he quit as South African coach was because he disagreed with Cricket South Africa's ideas of how to run the team.
The indomitable Australian cricket team of the late nineties and noughties has gone on a downward spiral over the last five-six years, especially after the retirement of stalwarts such as Glenn McGrath, Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden and Shane Warne. Adrian Meredith tries to figure out what went wrong and what could have been.
In just over two months from now, Australia will be heading over to England for the first leg of back-to-back Ashes to be played home and away. And, if Australia keeps going the way they are right now, they are going to lose both sets of Ashes.
Australia have lost the first two Tests, at Chennai and Hyderabad respectively, and are down 0-2 in the four-Test series. The following article discusses the pros and cons of each option that are available before Australia:
Australia lost the 1st Test with all 20 of their wickets falling to spin. In contrast, India lost 12 wickets — eight to pace and four to spin. And that says just about all you need to know about how Australia can win.
It has been widely reported in the press that Usman Khawaja is the first Muslim to play cricket for Australia.