England finally beat Aussies

ENGLAND finished their miserable Ashes tour on a victorious note with a 225-run thrashing of Australia to prevent a historic 5-0 series whitewash in the final test yesterday.

Pounded in their first three tests to lose the series in a whirlwind 11 playing days before exerting pressure in the fourth Melbourne Test, Nasser Hussain’s tourists saved their best until last to outplay the Australians.

Buttressed by Michael Vaughan’s majestic second innings of 183 and 34-year-old paceman Andy Caddick’s 7-94 to skittle Australia for 226, England shoved to one side the memories of Australia’s superiority to savour a special victory.

England set Australia an overwhelming task of chasing 452 for victory, but swept to a massive victory as Caddick produced his second-best bowling performance to wreck the vaunted Australian batting line-up.

In the end the victory was completed in 54 overs yesterday as Australia collapsed under the concerted pressure with bowlers Andy Bichel (49) and Brett Lee (46) the topscorers.

It was Australia’s first test defeat at home in four years since England claimed the 1998 St Stephen’s Day Test in Melbourne and only their third defeat by England in the last 15 Ashes.

Hussain was looking at the bigger picture when asked if yesterday’s euphoric victory helped ease the pain of the 4-1 series defeat.

“No, not really, it’s the same old story, we lost the Ashes 4-1 so that’s the bottom line. But, it’s been a very enjoyable five days, it was a great Test match, one of the best I’ve played in, not only because we won, but because of the (crowd) support, the conditions, Steve Waugh, their team, our team... it was a great Test match.

Waugh said Australia missed their opportunities with some dropped catches on the opening day and England outplayed Australia.

Caddick maligned for much of the one-sided series, had his day on Monday with the wickets of Waugh, Bichel (49), Adam Gilchrist (37), Lee (46) and Stuart MacGill (1) to add to his dismissals of Justin Langer (3) and Ricky Ponting (11) on Sunday. It was his best test match return since his 7-46 against South Africa in Durban in December 1999.

Caddick’s 10 match wickets gave him 234 Test wickets and just two behind Alec Bedser (236), the sixth all-time leading English wicket-taker.

The New Zealand-born fast bowler condemned Australia to a heavy defeat when he snared the vital wicket of Australian skipper Waugh, who defied them with an exhilarating 102 in the first innings on Friday. Waugh played on to Caddick for six, and with the 10,000-test run-getter back in the pavilion, Australia had no-one who could extricate them from the deep hole.

Vaughan was chosen as man-of-the-match with his second innings 183 and also judged the man-of-the-series, even as a member of the losing side.