Ok, the Ashes may have gone for real in Australia, and England may be starring down the double humiliation of both losing the series, and a 5-0 Series whitewash but I spent the xmas break from work trying to regain some pride for my digital team of brave English heroes. To recap, I was 2-1 down in the series and my carefully thought through plans were amounting to very little success on the pitch. To counter act this I fancied playing a bit fast and loose in the 4th test and decided to radically amend the team.

Michael Vaughn is brought back to captain the side and a whole host of players are dropped completely (Mahmood, Chris Jones, Strauss). This enables me to fill the team with players who either I’ve never heard of, or have about as much chance of getting in the actual England team as I do. I would love to tell you that this radical shake-up of English cricket had such a brilliant result that Duncan Fletcher, having read this blog, had called me up begging for me to share my superior and brilliant cricket strategy. Unfortunately it ended, and we’ll keep this brief, with an innings defeat for England and Shane Warne celebrating his impending retirement with 12 wickets across 2 innings…a poor show, the ashes lost, and my conclusion that Cricket coaching may not be the long term career option I’d hoped for.

So Sydney for the final test and an attempt to play for some pride. I decide to bring back the team that had served me so well in the second test and after winning the toss we decide to bat first. Once again Trescothick and Strauss do the business with a wonderful opening partnership of 130 and this is aided by another century from Peterson who seems to be smacking the ball all over the place. Harmison is also back to his best and after dismissing Ponting and Gillchrist gets England to a first innings lead of 250 runs. The second Innings doesn’t fair as well with Australia having to only chase 130 runs for the win. Fortunately for us Hoggard and Harmison once again come to the rescue (hell even Peterson took a wicket) and we win by 25 runs – an exciting end to the series that sees us lose the ashes 3-2.

To be honest I think I’ve played enough ICC for a while, it was great fun but combining my real life depression of losing the ashes series so badly (and at least I did better than the real England team) was only compounded by not being able to correct things in the digital game. Still I lost 3-2 and Duncan Fletcher looks like he may lose 5-0……who would you rather trust the England team to??