But I must admit I can't help but sympathise with England captain Nasser Hussain at the moment" - Dennis Lillee, a man who once charged in to bowl against England with the crowd chanting "kill, kill", sheds crocodile tears in his Mirror column. "After many a rousing Ashes battle I never thought I'd feel sorry for a Pom. Forget hernias and hairlines: the real scandal of recent times has been England's treatment of Tudor. Since then he has played just eight Tests out of 45, and had a major say in four of them. Gough's injury and Harmison's shin splints have meant a long-overdue return to the squad for Alex Tudor, a man who on Test debut at Perth four years ago was too quick for the two Waughs, Ricky Ponting and Justin Langer. For the time being, his talismanic properties are best employed off the field.
And his most recent Ashes series, when he averaged nearly 39 with the ball, will be fresh in Australian minds. Gough hasn't played a Test match since August 2001, and would have been a reckless pick. In any case, the absence of Gough is not the disaster that mock-sympathetic Aussies are making it out to be. And the risk has - by and large - been vindicated. England's calculated risk was a necessary one, because a bunch of fully fit second-stringers would have stood even less chance of regaining the Ashes. Yet the first five are all likely to play at Brisbane, and Harmison probably wouldn't have been picked anyway. But they might like to consider this one too: of all the players England would ideally have chosen for this week's first Ashes Test, only Darren Gough is not available, and the only person who seems surprised by that is Gough himself.Īt various points on this tour, we have been told that Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick, Mark Butcher, Andy Flintoff, Simon Jones, and now Steve Harmison were injury doubts.
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