Ashes Memories Part 1 - Alderman's Ashes

1981. Ah, yes, which was all about Ian Botham, wasn't it? Oh, and Bob Willis steaming in to take 8-43 in That Match at Headingley. Well, yes, in a way. England won the series 3-1, owing much to the England all-rounder's renaissance and never-say-die attitude with ball and bat. However, it's easy to forget that one bowler took 39 wickets in that 6-match series and another took a rarely-beaten 42. Yet they both finished on the losing side.

The first was the incomparable Dennis Lillee. Arguably past his prime, slowed by injury but still a match-winner, Lillee always bowled his heart out and took 11 wickets at The Oval and 8-80 in the low-scoring opener at Trent Bridge which the Aussies won. However, it was the less well-known Terry Alderman who ended up with what is still one of the highest wicket hauls in a Test series, 42. He took 9 at Trent Bridge in his Test debut and the same number in both the Headingley and Old Trafford games, both better remembered for Botham's heroics.

As if that wasn't enough, he went on to take 41 in the 1989 series, when the Aussies absolutely destroyed England, at an average of just 17.36. While Steve Waugh, Boon, Jones, Border, Taylor and Marsh stacked up the runs, there was Terry, always with a strange benign smile on his face, swinging and cutting the ball this way and that at barely medium pace making excellent batsmen like Gooch, Gower and Smith look rather foolish. Gooch allegedly asked to stand down as opener because he couldn't fathom how to play Alderman!

No doubt the Aussie would have had the same effect in 1985 had he not taken part in the infamous rebel tour of South Africa. In his whole career, he played in only 41 Tests and took 170 wickets. Amazingly, 95 of them came against England at just 21.59. He wasn't the same against anybody else or anywhere else. His style seemed to suit English conditions and wickets back in the 1980s. In my memory he always seemed to be wearing a sweater, ambling into a stiff breeze, but I suppose the sun did occasionally shine warmly in England in those days!

The record books may favor the likes of Botham, Lillee, Harmison or McGrath but I reckon one of the all-time Ashes greats was the almost forgotten TM Alderman. Maybe Graham Gooch would agree.