MANCHESTER ’81 REVISITED
Phil Walker recalls the last time England triumphed over Australia at Old Trafford in the Ashes

In a blaze of heat and glory England clinched the 1981 Ashes at a sweltering Old Trafford with a game to spare.
The match featured two teams at opposite ends of their tether. The hosts rode into Manchester on a high, their early-summer travails long forgotten and with the whole country circling around the orbit of the most complete cricketer on Earth.
The visitors, meanwhile, had imploded. Their captain, the blond curly-haired aesthete Kim Hughes, had lost the dressing ro...