SYDNEY (Reuters):
England's shambolic tour of Australia plunged to a new low, with calls for the visitors to be sent home.
Australia crushed England by nine wickets in their tri-series One-Day International at Adelaide Oval yesterday. Australia cruised to their victory target of 111 with more than 25 overs to spare, booking their place in the finals after England crumbled to be all out for just 110.
Ricky Ponting finished not out 51 and Matthew Hayden was unbeaten on 30. Earlier, England had crashed to their lowest total on their disastrous tour of Australia and their ninth lowest from the 450 one-day matches they have contested since limited-overs internationals started in 1971.
Australian paceman Mitchell Johnson, who was promoted to the team in place of Glenn McGrath and Nathan Bracken, captured four wickets for 45 while Brett Lee (2-8), Stuart Clark (1-21) and part-time spinners Brad Hogg (2-16) and Andrew Symonds (1-20) shared the remainder. Hundreds of England's most loyal supporters, the so-called Barmy Army, flew home after the 5-0 Test-series whitewash.
Media attack
The Australian media now believe the players should do likewise.
"Send them home. Refund all tickets. Give them a fresh batch of OBEs, for being Obscenely Bad Englishmen," Robert Craddock wrote in Sydney's Daily Telegraph. "Andrew Flintoff is captaining one of the greatest British comedy outfits to visit our shores, but people have stopped laughing."
Andrew Ramsey, writing in The Australian, said: "In the era of reality television, the time has surely come for England's cricketers to be voted off this island. To be bowled out for 110 in less than 2-1/2 hours on one of the world's best batting pitches (Adelaide) against an opposition team resting two of its best-credentialled bowlers was more than embarrassing. It stank of a team that has as little pride as it does character."
Peter Roebuck, the Sydney Morning Herald columnist who once captained England to a one-day defeat by Netherlands, said the visitors appeared to have given up.
Under the headline "Bury this corpse, it's starting to smell", Roebuck said he could not remember seeing a worse performance by an international team in 25 years. England were astonishingly awful. Flintoff's side produced the most lamentable display of batting seen from an international team in the antipodes for a quarter of a century," he wrote. "Nothing springs to mind that can be compared with this awful performance from a precious, pampered and overpaid outfit that showed none of the fighting spirit so long associated with their country."
