Back in eighteen eighty two a test match series between england and australia started a regular feature for cricket fans. The eighteen eighty two series provided a victory for england, and it was the australian's who got a request granted to play a fourth test match, and whilst they won, it was england who got to keep the famous ern where the ashes are kept. The series is played every two years, though only once every four years back here in England.
this dvd lasts two hours eleven minutes, and it provides a historical platform in terms of cricketing. clips shown of great catches, supreme batting performances, and legendary bowlers of cricket's all time, hall of cricketing fame. The dvd also is interesting to see how world war one and two affected english cricket.
the results of the ashes are mainly australia's dominance of the ashes tournaments. Where as england's succes in this strongly faught event is rather historically usually short lived.
throughout the dvd, cricketing legends of the sport including
early on in the film a person is shown making a treble hundred score against england, and later being interviewed by a reporter, and then bradman in no uncertain fashion with a school boy voice is caught moaning about the british weather, and modestly describes his performance in so far as saying that he does not intentionally bat in the field to break world records.
nineteen
seventy seven ashes series great stand out points shown in this, included scoring his one hundreth, hundred score against australia. From the nineteen seventies it has to be said that the quality of television begins to improve in quality, and this dvd provides such evidence in terms of being able to watch cricket on a television. england win the series five to one, Though this is mainly down to the australian team signing up to the world series event and unable to play against england. From a historical factual point of view, the details contained here make this really a most enjoyable sporting history film to watch.
nineteen eighty one, ian botham is shown scoring big totals with the bat, and bob willis taking some great wickets. any english or any cricketing fan can see botham taking some marvellous wickets. almost managed to complete a hatrick of wickets in succession, narrowly failing, though with australia needing thirty seven runs with many wickets for in hand, botham delivers his perhaps most famous cricketing performance. single handedly he dislodges australia's middle and lower order batsman to ensure . In the third test match he continues to scoring in what looks like an exhibition performance scoring one hundred and two in about one hundred deliveries.
nineteen eighty five series, captaincy against the australians resulted in victory for the england side once again. The commentator declares "life is very good for david gower right now". Also the former essex main batsman is also shown scoring well, and hitting some beautiful shots.
in search of fast revenge for the nineteen eighty five defeat, australia led by allan border, the bloke with the moustache, his team hits back along with great examples of bowling from terry alderman.
nineteen ninety three saw shane warne's legendary delivery against mike gatting, provided an almost unplayable ball. The ball is pitched outside leg stump and the ball zips back and hits mike gatting's off stump. Mike gatting's look of disbelief in being bowled out by delivery on the first ball of the second day, along with warne's extravagant celebration, is a great moment for a cricket fan to savour.
gower as the narrator sums up the sport's history very nicely all through the ashes and main cricketing events. as this film is made, back in two thousand and three, it does not cover most recent ashes contests. Though at the same time, it did cover england's famous victory against pakistan in karachi and india winning a test match series against australia. This aspect nicely introduced the two thousand and one series between the australian's and england,
the special features are that it contains only the all time greatest bowlers, greatest batsmen, greatest wicket takers, all time scores from past series. This aspect of the features is slightly dissapointing, in terms of that it only shows the stats, no action clips, or commentary are made in this section.
thought's and comment
this was a thorough and comprehensive regarding the ashes history, the facts and commentary of event's is top class. david gower's narrations detailed briefly the history of the sport through out history. In terms of watching this I found myself watching the more modern day clips over and over again. I did not find so much interest in watching the early years of the film, though I did watch this once only. It found it really good and easy to compare the relatively controlled and rather boring early day players, compared to the stylish and hard hitting play of the modern day.
disadvantages of this dvd
i found that this dvd covers the ashes in its one hundred year plus history, and it would be difficult to cover all main aspects in great detail from a archive show. the number of clips per test match series are rushed through at times, and short in depth. The earlier coverage showing black and white images also is poor, and you can see crowds of people wearing really old fashioned hats, and clothes. these are the edwardian days lol.
conclusion
overall I enjoyed watching some really funny comparisons from days of old to the much more clinical and aggressive modern day cricket matches. watching this, did enable me to appreciate some of the olden time bbc black and white archives. It also showed the competitive spirit of this most significant cricketing event. quality of the pictures are naturally are not as good as I would have liked, though as this is all based on television archived events I can not really complain. The archives and commentary seemed to focused on remarkable individual performances and results, and rarely failed to raise any dissapointing or poor individual cricketing achievements, or even patchy moments throughout the game's history.
watching the early years I found slightly boring to watch. in fairness it did do a very good job in showing the truly great moments of ashes history. from an entertainment point of view it really shows some great reflections in terms of how loud and much more noisy the crowd were during the famous botham and gower years. These days it is a crowd of growing uncertainty and frustration of how england will fare as a team. This dvd is highly recommended for those wanting to watch great cricketing moments.
my own view regarding this summer's ashes contest is that England as a cricketing team have a good chance of defeating Australia in this summer's ashes contest. The reasons for this are that Australia have no Shane Warne, is not in the best form recently. England on the other hand have some good test cricket players and are likely to cope well against the Australian batting attack which this series is led by . Other than that there is little strength in the Australian camp.
I have to say I like One day and 20-20 matches but get a bit bored with the tests, preferring to watch the highlights later in the day. Might get this for my father in law though as he'd love it! Paula
OnTheChin 01.05.2008 15:44
Very good review of a dvd that would interest me.
avacarrdo 30.04.2008 20:09
A great review. I've got friends in both Australia and England who would really like this.
Presented by Ashes winning captain David Gower, History of the Ashes is a comprehensive ... more
look at one of the oldest and most keenly contested of all international cricket rivalries.Beginning with an explanation from the late great broadcaster John Arlott...
![The History of Ashes [DVD]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78490695.jpg "The History of Ashes [DVD]")
Apr 25th, 2008
(Jun 19th, 2009)
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