Piers Morgan blasts Aussie cricket followers after being harassed over England’s Ashes catastrophe
Piers Morgan has revealed that Australians have been ruthlessly trolling him while he has been out doing his Christmas shopping in London.
Australia claimed an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series on Sunday with another dominant performance in Adelaide, besting their old enemy inside just 11 days.
As the Bazballers arrived Down Under, there was much hope that the side might be able to snap their 14-year wait to win an Ashes series in Australia.
Prior to the series, Morgan had backed the English to claim either a 4-0 or 5-0 win, with Stuart Broad also claiming that the tourists were coming up against the worst Australian side since 2010.
However, on Monday, Morgan had ventured out to the luxury department store Harrods in London, where the journalist, who is an avid cricket fan, bumped into several Australians.
‘Went to Harrods this morning and had at least a dozen Australians come up to me gloating about the Ashes,’ Morgan posted on X.
Piers Morgan has revealed that Australians have been ruthlessly trolling him about their Ashes victory, while he was doing his Christmas shopping in London
Morgan revealed on X that he was shopping in Harrods when ‘at least a dozen Australians came up to me gloating about the Ashes’
He then added: ‘Have all the convicts emigrated to Knightsbridge?’
After England had suffered defeat in the Ashes, Morgan had also taken to X to congratulate the Aussies, adding that his ‘prediction may have been a tad optimistic’.
‘Congrats Australia, you’ve hammered us, and did it by batting, bowling, fielding and competing better than we did,’ he wrote on X.
‘No point being a whinging Pom about it – we’ve been totally outplayed in every way. Fair dinkum.’
Morgan, meanwhile, copped some jibes online from many, including his friend and former Australia fast bowler Brett Lee.
‘Hey @piersmorgan,’ Lee wrote on X. ‘Seeing if you need a cuddle mate! How’s that Ashes prediction going?’
It comes as England have once again been left soul-searching Down Under, following their 82-run defeat in Adelaide.
And now questions are being asked about their leadership team, with Brendon McCullum and Rob Key’s jobs now under scrutiny.
Morgan had previously backed England to win 5-0, but he was roasted for his prediction by his friend Brett Lee (right) on social media
Morgan (pictured right with Kevin Pietersen) had congratulated Australia on their Ashes win
Key, the ECB’s managing director, has also this week admitted that his England regime has ‘mucked up on the big occasions’.
However, he hopes they are given time to ‘evolve’ after the Ashes defeat.
The urn has already gone, but there are two games left to stem the bleeding, starting with the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
Key accepts the team has not shown up at the biggest moments, having failed to win any of the last four five-match series against their major rivals, Australia and India.
They have now lost to both away, while twice drawing 2-2 at home.
‘Clearly, we’ve mucked up on the big occasions. Whether that was the home Ashes series or whether that was last summer against India where we should have won the series, the big ones have eluded us,’ he said.
‘The truth is we haven’t done that well enough for a while. There’s been some brilliant moments along the way and I still feel like there’s plenty of life in this whole thing, but we have to evolve. We have to make sure that we’re doing things better. You don’t mind losing, the regret is that you’ve not played anything like your best.
‘That’s my view on it but, as you know, these things are taken out of people’s hands a lot of the time. The decision really for the ECB will be whether or not they want to rip it up and start again, or whether they want to evolve and whether we’re the right people to do that.’
Rob Key (pictured), the ECB’s managing director, has also this week admitted that his England regime has ‘mucked up on the big occasions’.
Brendon McCullum (left) has already signalled his own hopes of staying on and Key (right), the man who appointed him in 2022 as Test coach and expanded his brief to cover all formats from the start of this year, remains firmly in his corner
McCullum has already signalled his own hopes of staying on and Key, the man who appointed him in 2022 as Test coach and expanded his brief to cover all formats from the start of this year, remains firmly in his corner.
‘Brendon has been a bloody good coach and is a bloody good coach,’ he said.
‘We’re at this point where you can have dressing rooms that fracture and they lose faith in the people around, but I don’t think that’s the case.
‘We’ve had three games here where they’re adapting slowly, and I don’t think personally that’s because we need a fresh voice or they’re not listening.
‘Sometimes the opposition is just bloody good.’
While a wider assessment of where it went wrong for England will surely follow in the new year, Key has already identified some errors.
He acknowledged the preparation period for such a big series, which included a white-ball trip to New Zealand and only one intra-squad warm-up match at a club ground, was inadequate, and hinted that additional specialist coaches could be sought after an initial clear-out of a bloated backroom set-up.
England return to play in the fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne on Boxing Day (Pictured L-R: Ben Stokes and Joe Root)
Crucially, he also suggested that too much confidence may have been shown by his selection panel.
Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope and Shoaib Bashir have all been shown significant support despite modest returns in recent times and they have yet to repay.
Pope looks certain to be dropped for Jacob Bethell at the MCG and Bashir has yet to feature, having struggled consistently in practice.
Key added: ‘You start looking at some of the decisions that we’ve made and think, ‘Should we have made a change there much sooner?’.
‘I don’t think that’s right to speculate on who those people are at the moment, but they’re the things that you look at.’
