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England keen to avoid 6-0 drubbing

The England & Wales Cricket Board is set to turn down Cricket Australia's push for six Ashes Tests in the 2009 series, and hopes to limit the 2010-11 contest in Australia to five Tests as well, admitting that they've come to terms with the fact that the 2005 series was a complete fluke and that their current side is just a tad better than shithouse. Australia are keen to make the most of what is their most lucrative series at home by adding a Hobart match, showing that even on a ground that turns up the roadiest of roads, England still wouldn;t be able to avoid losing twnety wickets insode four sessions.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 22,000 tickets have been sold for the first day's play at the MCG between Australia and India, compared with almost 67,000 at the same stage last year, when Boxing Day was sold out for the England Test. England, though, are increasingly concerned about the packed schedule, and would rather play 17 ODIs and 28 twenty 20 matches in an effort to manage at least one close result.

"As far as we're concerned the schedule for 2009 revolves around a five-Test Ashes series not six," Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, told the Mirror. "Not only is the risk of us being ground into the turf on our own patch six-nil way too high for us to take, six is just too big a number for most of the products of the modern English education system to count to. Remember, it gets quite cold in this country, and asking people to remove both mittens in order to be able to count to six is something we don't want to encourage. We'd cop the blame for someone's frostbite in the courts from somebody, for sure."

England are still sooking on about the proximity of their tours to Australia with World Cups. After losing 5-0 in the 2006-07 Ashes, they crashed out of the World Cup in the Caribbean a couple of months later. Of course, this had nothing to do with the fact that the teams selected for both the Ashes and the World Cup were down-and-out awful, and couldn't beat their way out of a wet brown paper bag.

Cricket Australia's spokesman Peter Young said: "Our preference in an ideal world is to play six Tests in an Australian summer, especially after last summer showed not only that Aussies will line up in their thousands to watch the disgraceful excuse for an English cricket team struggle to take a match into a fourth day, it also demonstrated that there are thousands of dumb Pommies who are willing to jam themsleves into economy class seats for 20+ hours, stay in crap accommodation, and get repeatedly get sunburnt to a melanoma-inducing degree. We also aware of the fact that these idiots in the so-called 'Barmy Army' don't actually watch any of the cricket, so really we don't actually have to shcedule a sixth match. I f we have to, we can just say there's a match in Hobart. We'll still sell them tickets, and in a great boost to the Tassie economy, they'll fill Bellerive Oval for several days, while the TCA can fill the tourists full of piss. When they get home, they'll say what a great time they had and how much 'atmosphere' they added."

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