Battle for "The Ashes"

The current Ashes series has sensationally turned a sleeping nation back into an army of cricket fanatics - with tens of thousands locked out of every Test and cricket trumping even Premiership football for back page prominence. As England's young hopefuls - Flintoff, Pietersen et al - took on an Australian team of Ponting and Warne that most pundits regarded as the finest team the world had ever seen, could this become the year that England (the only unbeaten Test team in the world in 2004) reverse its losing run of eight consecutive Ashes losses? This is the blow-by-blow account of what has already been hailed as the greatest ever Ashes as recounted by one of cricket's greatest writers. Win, lose or draw the series has already been a victory for pure sporting excellence and heroic sportsmanship and contains some incredible once-in-a-lifetime encounters that will never be forgotten.