England has regained the Ashes from Australia by hammering them in the fifth and the final test match at the Oval. England needed to win the game to win the urn, whereas a draw would have sufficed for Australia, but the hosts required only four days to hand over a 197-run drubbing to the Aussies.
The Aussies looked like they were making a match out of it when they reached 80/0 overnight, but two quick wickets in the first one hour put paid to any hopes that existed. Ricky Ponting was then joined by Michael Hussey as the duo added more than hundred runs to bring the Australian hopes back. Ponting scored a half century and Hussey followed up with his, soon after that, but the captain was then run-out from a direct throw by Andrew Flintoff to let the English team back into the reckoning.
Michael Clarke’s amazing run in the series ended with a duck when he was run-out in a manner akin to Jonathon Trott’s dismissal in the first innings, and Marcus North departed soon after to leave the Aussies with nothing much to play with.
Hussey did get to his century and broke his long rut of form that had seen his average plummet like anything in the last one year or so, but the remaining batsmen collapsed under sustained pressure from Graeme Swann and the others to hand the Ashes back to England.
Stuart Broad’s spell had seen the English garner a 160-odd run lead in the first innings and that won him the man-of-the-match award, whereas Strauss and Clarke shared the man-of-the-series.
