I believe that talk of match fixing in an Ashes series is utter rubbish
As I said in an earlier post, there is too much pride at stake for either team to "throw" a match. The cynics will always cry foul, but I simply ignore them, as most of them have no idea what they're talking about.
"Shout from the rooftops", well, everybody loves a winner, and none more so than most Aussies but, even after a comprehensive flogging at the Adelaide Oval, the attendances at the WACA ground in Perth were excellent. Anyway, beating the current England team in such a way is worth shouting about
.
If there's one team in world cricket that Australia absolutely
hates to be beaten by, it's England, so to suggest that they would deliberately lose a match against England is absolutely ludicrous. The reverse is also true, there's no way England would ever lie down against Australia. England won in Adelaide because it was far the better team, and Australia won in Perth because it was better - simple as that.
You say that the current Aussie team is the weakest we've ever had, but that has been said about most Aussie teams - when they lose. Australian cricket is certainly in a rebuilding phase, having lost so many good players due to retirement, and it will take time to "blood" new and inexperienced players. The strength of most national teams goes in cycles, look at the once mighty West Indies. England went through a bad patch, but I believe that the current England team is one of the best for many, many years. They are a vastly better unit than the one that was beaten 5-0 here on their last tour, even though a number of the current members were in that beaten team.
England has one big advantage over Australia and that is, if it can't find enough good local players, it can always import South Africans, or even the odd Aussie or two, to bolster its strength. Even an Irishman (Eoin Morgan) has been called upon. Australia did it once, with Kepler Wessels, who couldn't quite decide which country he wanted to play for
However, time will tell which team comes out on top, but my money is still on the Aussies. Not too much of it though, as I'm not over confident
Peter.