The sports sections of Australia\u2019s major mastheads were on Monday largely dedicated to ridiculing pre-series predictions of an England Ashes victory, and announcing the end of the tourists\u2019 now-compromised attacking philosophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBazball is dead\u201d, asserted the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, quoting former Australian opener Simon Katich. The West Australian newspaper fully committed to the theme, mocking up a pronouncement of Bazball\u2019s passing on ye olde parchment, \u201cdeeply lamented by Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, but basically no one else\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the triumphal moment in the country\u2019s greatest sporting rivalry was diluted in Monday\u2019s newspapers, as a belated and ultimately hard-earned Ashes victory was pushed from the front pages by the fallout from the Bondi terror attack.<\/p>\n
In The Sydney Morning Herald, the match didn\u2019t warrant a mention on either the front page or the news section, even though the series arrives at the SCG in less than two weeks.<\/p>\n
Others carried page one photos with pointers to the sport sections, although the victory was the splash across the front of the hometown Advertiser in Adelaide, after the city broke its Test match attendance record.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s West Australian. Photograph: The West Australian<\/p>\n
Much ink on the back pages was dedicated to mockery of comments by English observers in the lead-up \u2013 including from Stuart Broad \u2013 that this Australian team was the worst since 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cRampant Aussies prove point,\u201d splashed the Advertiser across two of its seven pages of coverage, a spread duplicated in New Corp\u2019s other tabloids. \u201cHow the \u2018worst Australian team in 15 years\u2019 retained urn after just 11 days\u201d was the subject of analysis in the The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as News Corp replicated the theme: \u201cCummins\u2019 men beat odds to make mockery of Broad\u2019s prediction\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet a sense of celebration pervaded the column inches, recognising the achievements of an Australian team that overcame the loss of key players to secure the urn in just 11 days, tying the record for the shortest number of days required with Steve Waugh\u2019s greats of the noughties. \u201cLong live Ashes kings,\u201d declared The Australian.<\/p>\n
Mitch Starc\u2019s desire to play all five Tests and push for an Ashes whitewash threw forward towards the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, where captain Pat Cummins and spinner Nathan Lyon are in danger of missing out. Melbourne\u2019s Herald Sun warned: \u201cNext stop, 5-0\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sports sections of Australia\u2019s major mastheads were on Monday largely dedicated to ridiculing pre-series predictions of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-363661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}