Bowling just like this too. I remember when England lost two wickets someone remarked that it was just two fluke balls amongst the usual rubbish. So here’s hoping.
Look at our opening bowlers. Take away Perth and Johnson has 2/332. Hilfenhaus has 4/329.
Strauss just damm unlucky that after 20 overs of fruit salad he gets on the wrong end of that pearler from Hilfenhaus and now Trott plays on from Johnson!
Spooky!
And after all that, we have a very evenly balanced game.
Yes, but the Poms are sitting firmly on their end of the see saw, the Aussies are clinging on by their fingertips.
Didn’t get to see much of Beer. He looked OK, bit of loop, nice bit of turn but didn’t look to have either Cook or Pietersen in any great difficulty.
How’d you think he went?
Well he got Cook out off the no-ball and got his last ball to hit the shoulder of the bat and drop around the corner, safe but totally uncontrolled. He went better than I expected, however I assumed he would be garbage. I await tomorrow with interest. If he could just be half a Daniel Vettori, that would do. And once again thanks to Mitchell Johnson, although he was only $17 to top score this time. Love our crap batting.
What I find totally funny is the Australian media are so desperate for a world beating new batsmen, you’d swear that Kawaja was the next Bradman reading some of the papers.
Maybe it’s just me but a 37 on debut is far from impressive as far as I’m concerned. Score a ton on debut, and I’ll be impressed, 37, not so much.
I think we should be able to manage a draw here. Unless we let Swann get to us on a rapidly degrading pitch. But then again that may just provide Beer a surface he needs to earn some brownie points to get more than a single test.
It also doesn’t look, from the available evidence, that Khawaja is capable of scoring a run in front of the wicket. But he looks good and seems to be having fun and we have fuck all other batsmen, so lets just hope no-one works him out for a while.
The press often fall foul of “got to write something” syndrome, but Kawaja does look promising. It’s not so much about the runs he scored, but the way he made them. He looked organised and seems to have the necessary technique. He edged three balls, but each time it dropped short of the slips, because he played with soft hands. Compare and contrast with Philip Hughes, who made a similar score. He was very disciplined about leaving the ball over the morning, at the cost of missing scoring opportunities, until he played an awful poke at a short wide one.
At the rate the game is progressing a draw seems unlikely, unless there is more rain. What is the forecast like?
While I acknowledge he looked good with the shots he was playing, I think Australia’s problem at the moment is we have too many batsmen of the 20/20 persusaion. It seems that no one (apart from Hussey) in the batting lineup is willing or in fact able to play the type of innings which we so desperately needed in several tests. That being a grinding, “I’m going to bat all day” type of attitude. They all seem to have their heads in our recent glory years where we had the talent (in form) to easily score at 4 runs an over without difficulty and without losing wickets. To me it looks like we’re still trying to do that but either don’t have the talent, or the ones that are aren’t in form to do this anymore.
Good point.
Forecast calls for showers through to Friday. Doesn’t look particularly heavy though, so maybe an hour or two will be lost to rain.
At the risk of tempting providence, WTF are Australia doing? Take the second new ball and have Watson and Beer bowling within 15 overs? Almost men against boys.
Because the three ‘front-line’ quicks were bowling like busted “I-don’t-even-know-what’s-anymore”
I shouldn’t have spoken too soon about the draw. Looks like it will be another attempt at a rearguard action to avoid an innings loss. And we all know how well Australia does that lately 
On the positive side (For England) how good a series has Cook had? They were just saying on the broadcast that he has now spent longer at the crease in an Ashes Series than anyone else. That’s impressive, even against an anemic bowling attack.
Australian cricket desperately needs a clean out and straighten up. Our preperation for this series was woeful, while the Poms to their absolute credit came over pumped, primed and ready to give it to us.
Bell out, so England are unlikely to kick on to six hundred at any rate. Old news by now, but at the start of the innings Strauss was a joy to watch - swing or not, he was seeing it like a hot-air balloon. Shame about Colly, but nice to see Bell help himself again.
Bell dodged a bullet.
He got a very feint inside edge to a delivery from Watson. There was no deflection, but a distinct noise and he looked guilty as sin. But he chose to challenge the decision, which is his prerogative.
The problem being that the video evidence was inconclusive (but snicko, which isn’t part of the review process looked incontravertible). “Hot spot” is wonderful to show the ball hitting the middle and confirming the bleeding obvious.
On that basis, I would have thought there not being sufficient evidence the original decision should have stood. But Dar chose to reverse his call.
Doubt it will change the result. The Poms would still have accumulated enough runs to win in a chase, now they’ll probably have enough to win by an innings.
Crucial day, and the batting has come through again. Quite suprised to be honest, I was expecting this one to turn into a scrap. I’d still like to see Prior, Bresnan and Swann extend our lead tomorrow, so that we don’t have to chase much if Australia make a second innings score.
Hence the excitement over Kawaja, as he is more at home in first class than limited-over cricket.
Good to see Bell make the hundred his form deserved, but sounds like he had a big slice of luck there. I guess that the umpire had no choice but to reverse the decision given that hospot is part of the review process, but it casts serious doubt on it’s reliabilty. It’s not much good if it can’t detect the feathered edges. It should be easy to test these things in controlled conditions, makes me wonder if the ICC has done the due diligence there.
Shame that Collingwood failed again, from some of his comments I’m guessing he will retire from test cricket now. Morgan will probably get a run during the Summer.
On the Bell edge, very lucky and got away with one. Still, Mike Hussey was the beneficiary of a similar decision in Brisbane (no hot spot, snicko two overs later suggests edge), so it’s all swings and roundabouts as far as I can see (though Bell called for this review and Hussey had the review called against him by England). Definitely calls into question the Hotspot system though. I’m broadly in favour of the technology being used to get decisions right - but it seems that this has not been thoroughly tested and understood before being implemented.
It will take a monumental collapse in the 2nd innings for England to lose here, so they should actually win the series. I will still hold my breath for the minute, as I’ve seen England mess things up before, but it’s all looking very promising.
Despite my comments up thread, I will be sad to see Collingwood go. Always seemed like a likeable bloke, a bloody good fielder and an obdurate bat in some pretty desperate situations. His face after he undid all his hard work trying to save the game at Cardiff in 2009 spoke volumes to me - seems like a real team man; I imagine England will miss his personality in the dressing room.
It was Clarke actually not Hussey - in my first paragraph above - though I had to use my lunch time to trawl through the first Test write ups at The Guardian to be sure.
Yes I also think it may be time for Collingwood to step aside.
He’s a Durham lad same as me so I don’t say it lightly but he hasn’t had a good run of form with the bat for a while.
That isn’t to say he hasn’t done his bit. His fielding and general demeanour is a boost for the team but we are getting to the point where stragglers are standing out amidst the general high quality of the team. In way it is a compliment to the team that the finger can be pointed so readily at him.
Still, he’ll go with everyone’s fond regards I’m sure. Wouldn’t it be lovely for him to take a flying catch to win the last test?
But I won’t get ahead of myself here. Still a lot to do before that. I reckon another 50-75 runs are do-able tomorrow morning and so post a possible 300 lead.
That would mean Australia needing to bat well for the best part of 4 sessions to post a 3 figure lead. And even then time might run out to do anything with it.
We are looking good though.
Is the “man of the series” award already a done deal though?
Man of the Series?
You’d think it would be Cook at a canter for England.
Australia: I would have thought Hussey or Siddle. Siddle in particular has had a pretty good series in my view, often with very little in the way of support from the rest of his bowling team-mates.
What about a joint side? I think I’d have Hussey in at 5 and Siddle in for Bresnan/Finn - and a toss up between Prior or Haddin, both of whom have done well in differing match circumstances with the bat, and OK with the gloves (though Haddin has had to deal with a lot of filth from Johnson going as byes instead of wides) - but otherwise would pick the England team. Any advance on that?