Congratulations to Alastair Cook and England on their Ashes triumph

England have won the Ashes, wrapping up the fourth test on the third day by an innings and 73 runs to take an unbeatable 3:1 lead in the series.
  • England have won four consecutive home Ashes series for the first time since 1896
  • This is the first time England have won an Ashes Test at home by an innings margin since August 1985
  • The third and fourth tests in this series also made England the first team in Test history for whom four different bowlers have taken six wickets in four consecutive fielding innings.
Congratulations to Alastair Cook and all the England cricket team for some magnificent play.

The spoof websites have been having great fun with this for some time, but I didn't dare link to any of them until it was mathematically certain that England would win the Ashes as I didn't want to look stupid if the situation changed - whatever jokes we may make, this is not a bad Aussie team and they did come back to win the second test by a big margin.

But now that England have won I can safely link to the following spoof news reports:

Trent Bridge wicket has miracle healing properties

England cricketers told by mums to play nice with Australia or not at all

(Included “How would you like it if someone did that to you? You wouldn’t, would you?”
At which point a number of England players tried to make the point that Australia had in fact done that to them in the second test "but it fell on deaf ears.")

Australian cricket team applies for political asylum

(Apparently they face "severe mental and physical abuse if they return to their home country...")

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