So the Eighties are back for England. Heres to Ashes victories and World Cup Final Defeats.
English World Cup Final Defeats aren’t 80s. They are forever. Why England Lose. Good read.
I think AK84 was referring to the cricket world cup.
Well done England, another thoroughly professional performance after the double collapse at Perth. Job still not done though, a drawn series to retain the ashes would be a disappointment after the way we’ve played. I’d be happy with a fighting draw at Sydney, but a win would be the real icing on the cake.
Tremlett must have moved ahead of Finn in the pecking order, he is much more consistent. Bresnan has been a real surprise to me, based on past performances I expected him to be little more than steady, not to see him beating both sides of the bat. Anderson has had his best ever series, in the past when the ball didn’t swing he was something of a liability, but not any more. Not quite sure what our best attack is, but it’s clear we have quality cover. I’m hoping we can kick on from here and challenge South Africa and India to become the top test side, which we failed to do after the 2005 ashes win.
Real shame about Harris’ injury, he’s probably been your best bowler. Siddle must have cemented his place with this last performance. A lot has been said about Johnson, but I think the real problem is with his round-arm action. If his timing’s slightly off he’ll lose both line and length, while a more upright bowler will just lose his length. He always looks incredibly awkward to me. As we found with Harmison, an inconsistent bowler can be a real problem, he must be a nightmare to bowl in tandem with when he goes into pie mode.
Any idea what Australia will do now? Is this the end for Ponting?
I’d agree on all counts I think. Whilst this is all very nice, England need to win in Sydney to cement that wthey’ve been the better side for the series. 2-2 would be very disappointing.
England have a nice problem with respect to their bowling attack. It’s by no means certain that Broad is an automatic to come back into the team on the evidence of Tremlett’s performances in Perth and Melbourne and with Bresnan’s effort over the Boxing Day Test. I think Shazad has loads of potential and Panesar would be Australia’s front line spinner. That means England have got 8 bowlers to make our attack up with, all of whom I reckon could do a good job. The one thing they lack is Dale Steyn like hostility - but there is not much of that going around at Test level at the minute.
Sad to see Harris’ injury - he looked like he was going to be the guy to bowl in tandem with Siddle to cause England problems. The regression of Johnson (Perth notwithstanding) and the fact that he knackered Jimmy Anderson so badly that he took 3 years to properly return to bowling at a Test level leads me to think that Troy Cooley is a touch over-rated. Perhaps the Australians could do with looking for a new bowling coach.
Earlier in the thread, I advocated Hussey as a stop gap captain for Australia. I still think that is the right call until someone younger reveals themselves be in the team for the long haul and worth giving a crack at the captaincy. This, however, is not really the Australian way looking at the past - since Kim Hughes, they’ve only really had 4 captains. Whatever, I think they need to give Khawaja (sp?) a go in the last test. They can still salvage a draw but the Ashes are gone, so they might as well give it a crack.
Any young bowlers worth looking at - probably in place of Hilfenhaus and Johnson?
Trent Copeland from NSW. 11 matches 60 wickets at 19.16
Apparently he started out as a batsman.
Might as well give him a go then. He’s 6ft 5 as well so should be able to extract bounce - given what we saw at Perth, having someone who can do that to England’s batsmen might well make some inroads.
Have you seen Starc bowl? A few people on another forum I lurk at have been mentioning him - his average is quite a bit higher (at least according to cricinfo) but he’s another 6ft 5 bloke - and left handed too which might be of some use. A few people at the Guardian’s forum have been talking him up.
A guy I work with used to play with him. Apparently he fell out of favor after turning up to practice drunk. Whatever the case is he’s been out injured since November.
Nice - the Andrew Flintoff method.
Oh well, if he’s not available, not much good wondering about him.
Cameron seems happy
Ponting out injured for Sydney. Clarke will captain, and Usman Khawaja to come in.
5th Test in Sydney, play about to start.
Clarke won the toss, elected to bat.
Enterprising as it’s cool, overcast with a chance of showers. Interruptions are expected
Pitch looks to have a touch more green and isn’t as evenly grassed as you’d expect. Will last the 5 days.
First task is to get to lunch no more than 2 down.
Second task is to bat all day.
Australia 1 Shane Watson, 2 Phillip Hughes, 3 Usman Khawaja, 4 Michael Clarke (capt), 5 Michael Hussey, 6 Steven Smith, 7 Brad Haddin (wk), 8 Mitchell Johnson, 9 Peter Siddle, 10 Michael Beer, 11 Ben Hilfenhaus.
England 1 Andrew Strauss (capt), 2 Alastair Cook, 3 Jonathan Trott, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Ian Bell, 6 Paul Collingwood, 7 Matt Prior (wk), 8 Tim Bresnan, 9 Graeme Swann, 10 Chris Tremlett, 11 James Anderson.
Looks like Australia are batting for the draw.
Lunch: Australia 55/1 (29.3 ov)
England bowling was a bit short, and there was no sign of swing.
Tremlett’s bounce made him the pick of the bowling.
There was a montage of Tremlett’s bowling to Watson showing only one delivery would have hit the stumps, and that just clipped the off bail. For a opening bat, if the bowling isn’t going to get you bowled or LBW, that releases a lot of pressure.
I thought it was good Test standard batting in the conditions, but Hughes going in the last over might be a career ending dismissal. A delivery he didn’t need to play and he played a short of a length delivery with hard hands and leaning forward. Catching practice.
Stumps Day 1 (light and rain ended play early)
Australia 134/4 (59.0 ov)
Well that was better to watch than most of the Aussie first innings this series, but the end result was much the same.
One of the great things about this series is seeing players who’ve underperformed show their calibre. Cook’s record against Australia was below Test standard prior to this series as has Bell’s. Similarly Swan has been handy, but only really effective when the conditions are made for him, notwithstanding he’s had this annoying ability to take a wicket in his first over.
Today I saw some very clever bowling. He starts his first over to a set batsman on debut. He’s bowling with a short leg, bit otherwise a fairly standard field. Swan bowls three tidy deliveries to Khawaja that are defended comfortably. Swan knows that Usman is wanting to keep the scoreboard moving.
Fourth ball gets a just a bit of drift and turn. Immediately Swan brings in a short cover, trying to crowd the newbie. The newbie takes the challenge, leaves his crease, playing the ball in front of the two short fielders, effectively negating their purpose. Fifth is another delivery directed at off stump and defended without trouble. Last delivery and every knowledgeable cricket follower knows that (if the delivery is right) Khawaja is going to go after it.
The ball has a bit more air, it’s angled at leg stump and Khawaja’s eyes light up at the prospect of a easy boundary as the legside field is up. He ends-up playing more of a paddle shot than the true sweep he wanted to and the on-drive he should have. The ball bounces a bit and spins just a bit and the resulting top edge is taken in a simple catch at square leg. Quality bowling.
They did him with the field placement, the short cover came from mid wicket - a 60m gap from backward square leg to mid on was just too tempting. Rotten luck for Khawaja to have the rain come immediately after. I imagine overnight he will be kicking himself knowing he could have started again tomorrow with an already handy score.
Sign of the times: Australia creeping along at two and a quarter per over. Not too long ago they’d be tanking along at four per, and damn the torpedoes - usually with a good deal of success.
Pretty smart England side though. Strauss likes to give something a try but doesn’t persist with any high cost strategies. They bowled everywhere to Khawaja for a while, worked out what he liked and then just didn’t bowl there any more. He had 20 odd off 30 odd but ended up 37 off 95.
And given the Aussie press at the moment, playing an aggressive shot and getting out is like treason. I think they all want to play like Cook, leave the get out balls and wait for the one you want.
Strauss is probably more conservative than he needs to be, but hell he’s England captain and has just retained the Ashes.
If you look at the Hawkeye shots, particularly the wagon wheel you’ll note that the only batsman who scored runs from driving straight was Phillip Hughes who usually cops exclusively short stuff.
The fact that they scored just 25 singles to go with the 16 boundaries suggests they’d abandoned the notion of old fashioned noodling, and working singles whenever Anderson & Co pitched on leg stump. We should be at least one wicket less down and a score of runs better off. Both Watson and Hughes looked like the leg glance had been banned, and transgressors summilarily executed.
Usmann must have thought that this Test cricket lark wasn’t so hard.
Plays his first game on his home ground. Comes in first ball after lunch and Tremlett gives him a half volley on leg stump and then a half tracker. Yep, he’ll be kicking himself, but he’s shown that he’s a genuine prospect. Last person to debut at #3 was Justin Langer in 1993.
Australia out for 280 due to some spirited lower order resistance.
England have replied with some equally spirited top order resistance - 0/50 after 10 overs :eek:
[scratching desperately for a glimmer of hope]
3rd Test Perth, England chasing 268 were 0-78 off 23 overs.
[/scratching desperately for a glimmer of hope]