The Ashes Tests
With all the hype preceding Australia's arrival in England, especially Glenn McGrath's assertion that Australia would win 5-0, many people expected a good, tight contest, although Australia's fans predicted a clear overall victory. English fans were quietly confident that their strong run - winning 15 and drawing 2 of their last 18 Test matches - would continue and they could at least stand up to Australia, having lost the last eight Ashes series.
Read more about this topic: Australian Cricket Team In England In 2005
Famous quotes containing the words ashes and/or tests:
“His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)