jacknife and howzat,
i am willing to accept that my reading of virtually nobody was not perhaps as intended; and was along the lines of "for all practical purposes" nobody... and i thought that that was inaccurate since the from the time the great australian team was disbanded, three decent teams have visited and two have won, with south africa being the one referred to by me. and before the era of the great australian team, the windies and england used to do rather well....the martin johnson can't bat, can't bowl, can't field lot being a rather nice example.
jacknife,
regarding the waning point that i had made before, i don't see how that wasn't what u said.... that there was no talk of australia being on the wane. but let's agree to disagree on that since there will be no changing of minds on either side from the sounds of it.
boybrumby,
interesting point about those who make their living from knowing who favourites are ie bookmakers. the assumption is that they are all acting rationally or at least more rationally than those who punt patriotically. sure. but, given the fact that they do get it wrong often enough, perhaps the opinion of some venerable hoary locked sage should be given equal weightage. many commentators - here the one that first comes to mind is the roundtable discussion with boycott and vaughan and chappell and someone else in the telegraph i think - showing that they gave asutralia very little chance of winning the ashes.
my memory might be askew but i am pretty sure that that was before the tests had started. in essence, the question is: whose opinion is more worthy when deciding if england were favourites or not before the ashes?
