Zac Gelman - ARTICLES

Unlike some of its sporting counterparts, cricket hasn’t always had the greatest advertising campaigns, however over the past few years this has changed for the better. In the lead up to the first test, Ashes HQ present the top five Ashes and Ashes related advertisments of the past few years.

5. 2006/07 Channel 9 Ashes Promo

A play on the infamous ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ campaign, this ad gets into the top five for Pom soap jokes and for Lara Bingle enacting every cricketer’s greatest fantasy.

4. 2009 Sky Ashes Promo

I’ll be back!

It gets a bit cheesy towards the end and is let down by a cricketer’s fundamental inability to act, but a great idea nonetheless.

3. VB Boon & Warne

This ongoing campaign has been a bit hit and miss, though these are two of the best:

Any ad which advocates placing David Boon in a museum next to Phar Lap deserves to make the list.

The baby Warne creeps me out, but I can’t stop laughing at the image of Warne victims living out their days in a padded room in an mental institution.

2. Big Warnie

What’s the one thing that’s better than Shane Warne? A giant Shane Warne, of course. The faces of the bemused onlookers are absolutely priceless.

1. Budweiser Ashes 2005 ad

This ad sums up the 2005 euphoria. It’s a complicated game with complicated rules and a complicated history, but who cares? England won, let’s celebrate!

The Australians batted a lot better in the second innings of their tour match against Sussex with most batsmen getting much needed runs under their belts. Marcus North remains a slight concern and is yet to prove that he is anything other than a one-hit Test wonder.

The bowling dilemma hasn’t gotten much easier ahead of the first Test. Johnson and Siddle are certainties, but the remaining two spots are still up for grabs between Clark, Lee, Hilfenhaus and Hauritz. I’d personally go for Clark and Lee with Hilfenhaus slightly unlucky to miss out. I feel he’s a bit too much of a one trick pony, however he does keep it tight and can bowl long spells, so if he was selected it wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

Anyways, for those that missed the action, Sussex Cricket have kindly posted highlights from each day’s play on their website – click here to watch.

The recently finished Australian tour of India ended with its fair share of action and excitement. Could Australia chase down such a mammoth lead? With such a long batting order anything was possible. However as the top order began to throw their wickets away – one by one – one got the sense that this Australian team had little idea what it was doing, which really was the theme of the ill fated tour.

Renowned fielding coach Julien Fountain recently spoke to CricketWeb, answering questions posed by the active community within the CricketWeb forums.

After all the glitz and glamour of the IPL, Test cricket was back with a vengeance this week with two memorable Test matches held on opposite sides of the world.

Cricket will never be the same. The game that we know and love has been violently ripped out from under us.

The entire Cricket Web site will be down for about four hours tomorrow (Monday) morning from 5am AEST.

An intriguing day of Test cricket saw Sachin Tendulkar notch up his 39th Test century at the fourth Test against Australia in Adelaide.

India have kept the four match series alive after bowling Australia out in just 50 overs for 212 on day two of the third Test at Perth.

New Zealand have completed an innings victory against Bangladesh in just three days to win the two match series 2-0.