The Spectator correctly predicted that Australia would regain the Ashes

Australia have regained the Ashes, much to the dismay of the British side. But did the Spectator’s Australian edition predict this might happen months ago? Here’s Terry Barnes’s piece from August, in which he suggested that Australian cricket does well under a Conservative government, and terrible under a Labor one. 

So the Australian Test cricket team licks its wounds after yet another disastrous Ashes series in which its top-order batting was too brittle and its bowling lacked sufficient penetration. What’s been overlooked, however, is that the crash in Australia’s Test fortunes since December 2007 coincides with the disastrous Labor tenures of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Tellingly, Australia’s greatest postwar Test glory days lasted from Mark Taylor’s team beating the West Indies at home in 1995 to Australia losing to South Africa at home in 2008-09. Just as the Australian team’s decline parallels Rudd and Gillard, this period of greatness almost exactly coincides with John Howard’s spectacularly successful leadership of the Liberal party and prime ministership.