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The 2023 Ashes has seen history being invoked at different points in its runtime. It was Edgbaston 2005 all over again when Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon sneaked the visitors over the line in the first Test. When Lyon hobbled off the field at Lord's with a calf tear, there were throwbacks to Glenn McGrath's injury that played a role in turning the course of that 2005 series. This week at Headingley, both sets of players revisited events from the corresponding Test match four years ago and how Ben Stokes' heroic fourth-innings 135* kept the Ashes alive. After Australia's lead was halved following another Headingley win for England, Cummins wouldn't be overly perturbed at history repeating itself in Leeds as long as the series continued along a similar path in the following Test at Old Trafford. For the Stokes-engineered heist had little effect the following week in 2019 as Australia calmly bounced back to register a thumping 185-run victory in Manchester, win that ensu...

Australia offspinner Nathan Lyon has been ruled out of the remainder of Ashes 2023 with a calf injury. The 35-year-old suffered the injury, one he described as a 'decent tear', while fielding on the   second day of the Lord's Test . He didn't bowl in the match thereafter but hobbled out to bat and added 15 runs for the final wicket with Mitchell Starc in the second innings. Australia went on to win the Test by 43 runs to go 2-0 up in the series. Incidentally, this second Test of the series had been Lyon's 100th in a row for Australia. Only five players before him - Alastair Cook, Allan Border, Mark Waugh, Sunil Gavaskar and Brendon McCullum - had managed this feat - a testament to a player's consistency as well as physical conditioning. In Lyon's absence, Australia are certain to bring in offspiner Todd Murphy into the XI for the Headingley Test that starts on Thursday (July 6). The 22-year-old enjoyed a breakthrough debut tour of India earlier this year, ta...

  Legendary Australia captain   Allan Border   has revealed that he is battling Parkinson's disease, a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement. The 67-year-old Border, the first player to get to 11,000 runs in Test cricket, revealed that he was diagnosed with the disease in 2016. "I walked into the neurosurgeon's and he said straight up, 'I'm sorry to tell you but you've got Parkinson's'," Border told Newscorp. "'Just the way you walked in. Your arms straight down by your side, hanging not swinging.' He could just tell." "I'm a pretty private person and I didn't want people to feel sorry for me sort of thing. Whether people care you don't know. But I know there'll come a day when people will notice." "I get the feeling I'm a hell of a lot better off than most. At the moment I'm not scared, not about the immediate future anyway. I'm 68. If I make 80, that'll be a mira...