My Ashes diaries from Australia: 2013/14

To kickstart my new blog and play around with it a bit before posting anything new, I’m going to start with publishing my reviews of each of the 5 Tests when England were sadly whitewashed 5-0 down under between November 2013 and January 2014.  A trip of a lifetime for sure with me watching every single Test in person, just a shame about the result.

The next 5 blogs were originally posted on my Tumblr site as I travelled around Australia so any predictions or looks forward were made at the time; so worth bearing in mind that hindsight can be a wonderful thing.  Also, they contain my thoughts on each of the 5 cities that hosted Tests, so there’s a bit of travel blogging and the like in there too (albeit not all, further ramblings can be found on my aformentioned Tumblr site).  So, enough gabbing and time to confront again the demonic sight of Mitchell Johnson and more…

UPDATE: Links to my 5 Ashes blogs in one place:

• Gabbatoir Blues: Brisbane Ashes Test, 19th to 26th November 2013
• Do the collapse (again): Adelaide Ashes Test, 3rd to 10th December 2013
• Hot Burritos #1 and #2: Perth Ashes Test, 11th to 18th December 2013
• From despair to where? (er, Sydney actually:) Melbourne Ashes Test, 26th to 31st December 2013
• Sydney Five-oh: Sydney Ashes Test, 3rd to 5th January 2014

For reference, Cricinfo series summary (scorecards, match reports etc) is here

UPDATE 2: Non cricket and more detailed, original blogs from the trip have now also been added:

• Travel Bonus: Dubai (the warm up/pre-season friendly), 15th to 18th November 2013
• Australia Road Trip, Brisbane to Sydney, 27th November to 2nd December 2013
• Melbourne Director’s Cut: 19th December 2013 to 1st January 2014
• Sydney Director’s Cut: 2nd to 13th January 2014

POSTSCRIPT 

Cricket wise, things did improve after 2013/14 of course (well some of the time…).  For example, I was also privileged enough to be at Trent Bridge in 2015 to see us “take back the urn”, for a bit at least…

The urn returns: celebrations at Trent Bridge, Saturday 8th August 2015