766 and All That

Book excerpt: WICKET! 1st over: Ponting c Swann b Anderson 0 (Australia 0-2) Ponting has gone first ball! I don't believe it! An unbelievable start for England! Ponting has gone for a golden duck in his 150th Test and England have gone wild. Stop the clocks! Shout it from the rooftops! Australia are in utter disarray!The Ashes 2010-11 saw the coming together of the old foes in Australia's backyard. Back in freezing, snowy England, untold numbers huddled around their TV sets to watch the struggle into the early hours of the morning. But for many the joy was only complete with the accompaniment of guardian.co.uk's Over By Over.Around the globe they joined in from unlikely locations, offering stories of emotional drinking, marital predicament and witty observations as the series built to an astonishing climax. Could England really be about to crush Australia - in a manner not witnessed for a generation? There were Cook's runs - all 766 of them, Anderson's wickets, Prior's catching and the power of Pietersen. We saw established stars like Graeme Swann and Andrew Strauss, unpredicted stars like Tim Bresnan, spasmodic stars like Mitchell Johnson and fading stars like Paul Collingwood and Ricky Ponting.Now 766 and All That allows us to savour again the sweet taste of that absolute victory - exactly as it happened, Over by Over.