The home of English cricket has provided precious little comfort for England sides in recent Ashes memory. Take out the 2009 victory, when Andrew Strauss's first-innings hundred and Andrew Flintoff's memorable final-morning marathon with the ball inspired a 115-run success, and you have to venture into thickly-cobwebbed archive territory to find England's last Lord's win. That came in 1934, when left-arm spinner Hedley Verity recorded a career-best 15-104 and briefly stifled Sir Donald Bradman's vintage, although the tourists went on to win the series 2-1. A run of four successive draws in the late '70s and early 80s briefly kept the Aussies at arm's length, but since 1985 St John's Wood has hosted seven Ashes Tests and five have been won by the visitors. Highlights during that time, for Australians at least, include Glenn McGrath's 8-38 in 1997 and Mike Atherton's infamous 1993 run out one short of a century.
