"We have been on record saying that we will look at ways to address this deficiency and believe giving players greater experience with the Dukes ball is one way of doing just that. "In recent times, Australian teams travelling to England haven't adjusted well to local conditions and the swinging Dukes ball," Pat Howard, Cricket Australia's Executive General Manager of Team Performance said in confirming the initiative earlier this year. To try and redress England’s recent home dominance, Cricket Australia has announced it will trial Dukes brand balls – which have been identified as a key reason why swing and seam bowling is so much more difficult to counter at UK Test grounds – in the second half of the next Sheffield Shield season. Quick single: Eranga reported for suspect action The 18 years stretching back to the most recent success in the UK would exceed the current longest drought which was the six consecutive Ashes series defeats from 1884 to 1899, when Joe Darling’s team hung to clinch the five-Test series 1-0 despite being forced to follow-on in each of the last two matches. Which suggests that while Australia has long been viewed as the toughest Test nation to dethrone in its backyard and India represents the most challenging cricket environment, even for its sub-continental neighbours, taking a home series off England has never been more difficult.Īs exemplified by that fact that should Australia’s next offshore Ashes campaign go the same way as those of 2005, 2009, 20, their losing streak in conditions that were once considered a second home would set a new, unwanted record. Quick single: Cook secures history and Test series winĭuring that time, only Australia (12 series wins from 16 played at home) and India (11 from 14) have recorded a better winning percentage against all comers, albeit from significantly fewer series contested.Īnd England is the only team to have secured a series win in both of those foreign locations over the past decade. Over the past 10 years, when England has taken to hosting two visiting Test outfits each year even during Ashes summers, they have only lowered their colours to India (in 2007), Sri Lanka (with a 1-0 result on their previous tour in 2014) and South Africa (on their past two visits in 20). WATCH: Cook's history as England secure winĮven more dominant than the 68 per cent series success rate achieved across the first 50 years of Test cricket in England when the opposition was essentially Australia save for a few visits by West Indian and South African teams that were finding their feet in international company.Īnd even superior to the 70 per cent strike rate England managed in their most recent dominant age from 1951-71, when the locals staved off most comers and Test cricket in its home land became as stodgy and predictable as the island’s cuisine of the same era. Which is not dissimilar to the way India has been largely unbeatable at home over the past four decades.Įngland's summary dismissal of Sri Lanka across a handful of dominant recent days in the nation's north-east netted them a 15 th Test series victory from 21 played over the past decade, a winning rate of more than 71 per cent on their home turf. Quick single: Courageous Cook hits 10,000 runs landmark Not so much like the influence post-war migrants brought to bear on boroughs from London to Liverpool, but more recently in the invincibility that England's Test team has exercised in their own conditions. At the height of the Raj, British expats longing for life back home dressed in impractical starched collars and planted rose beds in the gardens of the their Barackpur bungalows to try and make India a little more like England.Ī couple of centuries later, England's renaissance as a Test cricket power achieved initially under Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss and reinvigorated by the current pairing of Trevor Bayliss and Alastair Cook has resulted in the United Kingdom becoming something of a 21 st Century India.
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