It could have gone pear-shaped a couple of times if the relatively small number of clear chances they offered had been taken. But they weren’t and credit for their application. They scored more heavily off Lyon than previously in the series and Malan taking on the short pitched stuff saw the tactic pulled . Would have been better if the response had started higher up the order than by the #5 but it’s a promising development.
That Ali (and the tail) were not exposed to the new ball in the last half hour was and the scoring rate was good in the process. It’d be disappointing if they can’t post 400 from here. Game on.
Stoneman, after a bright start and a 50 got himself into a chasm of trouble and looked like his luck was in until he got fired by a perplexing DRS courtesy of Aleem Dar who apparently saw incontrovertible evidence not apparent to anybody else.
MarshM’s just preceding dropping of Stoneman shows why so many of us remain perplexed at the grounds he claims Test status. If you are that tall and still try to catch a regulation waste high chance with fingers up you shouldn’t be standing within cooee of the slips cordon.
But the stated rationale for bringing in MarshM was that the WACA was going to be much like the roads we’d seen in previous summers. He’d be required to bowl long stints with Lyon to enable the pace brigade to operate in short shifts. Apparently in their deliberations they forgot to ask the curator what he thought. What we got was a something closer to the classic WACA with grass, bounce, carry and a quick outfield. All-round a good cricket wicket.
Cummins & Starc both bowl nearly 20 overs and averaged over 140kph for the day. Hazelwood just a touch below. MarshM bowls 6 overs of medium pace with such penetration that captain Smith brings himself on for a couple of overs of leg spin. Why he couldn’t have bowled 8 on an indulgence and given the team another batsman?
Stoneman should definitely be kept for the time being, he’s been one of the relative success stories so far, pretty unlucky to get out the way he did, as has been said. Cook should retire whether he redeems himself with a big score or not, otherwise he will find himself not going at a time of his choosing, and I think he knows this. Vince is not a top-order bat as has also been said but could still do a job down the order, I think. Malan is the stand-out player so far, really hope he can maintain this form for a few weeks, or even a few hours would be very handy.
I’m not saying this is likely by any stretch, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to bat again this match…
Well, at least we got one more wicket. But if anyone gets a lead of any significance, it’s likely to be the Aussies. England need to get Smith out within the first 10 overs tomorrow otherwise the batting line up could be under pressure again.
Apparently England have never lost at the WACA after scoring over 300 in their first innings, but records are made to be broken. Plus a draw doesn’t give us a lot of hope of winning the series whereas a win would make it a genuine contest again.
Australia trail by an even 200.
If we were 6 down the tourists are in the box seat. Being 4 down the advantage is with the home side. So there’s naught but one/two good deliveries between them.
Australia need a further 250 to be properly placed to advantage and that will take at least two sessions to garner. By stumps tomorrow Australia could be still batting or the Poms could be 100 in front.
Not picking up that catch from MarshS when it rebounded of Stoneman’s boot might be another critical moment.
The standard of cricket is fair to middling but the contest is absorbing.
Think this might be an opportunity for Paine, whose keeping has been good, to demonstrate his batting prowess. His precedents Gilchrist & Haddin both played match winning knocks here.
Not sure how fit Overton will be but he’ll be needed.
Also love how that 12th man Handscombe has contributed materially more to the locals cause than the man who replaced him.
Smith and Marsh seem to have broken the English team entirely. The truly frightening thing is they keep touring until March. I suspect this tour could be the end of several English careers.
Real shame for Vince who by all accounts had played a literally flawless innings up to that point and then received a one in a million unplayable delivery. Continuing my relentless optimism, I hope he can come back from that disappointment and prove that he does, in fact, have what it takes at this level.
Australia showed what a good score really looks like on this pitch.
We need Malan and Bairstow to play like they did in the first innings, and some rain. I refuse to give up until defeat is actually confirmed. But when I check the score at about 6.30am, I won’t be expecting the game to still be going on.
If you are batting, regardless of your form or score at the time, and that sort of delivery comes along, all you can hope for is that you are watching from the bowlers end.
Well, the English miracle didn’t happen - congrats to an Aussie team that have been superior in every department of the game.
I know my blind faith has not been proved correct at any point so far, but I still believe we will avoid the whitewash, if only because the Aussie players will now be much less motivated and will be spending Christmas with their families. There hasn’t been such a gulf between the teams that we don’t deserve to nick at least one game.
There have been 6 occasions where a side scoring 400 in the first innings and then gone on to lose by an innings. It’s happened to England in 3 of their last 5 away Test matches in the span of around 14 months. In common with those games in India, 400 was superficially a good score, soon revealed to be short by 100-150 runs when the opposition batted. The batting hasn’t been good enough throughout - though Stoneman, Malan and Vince (who I identified as potential weak links at #2 in this thread) have well outperformed Cook, Root* and, the possibly injured, Ali. The bowling has been not much better - though this was predictable, given they’ve never had the tools to really cause problems in Australian conditions. Anderson has taken his wickets at 25.8, Overton shows promise but his figures are nothing to write home about. Everyone else has been worse. We’ve been thoroughly outplayed and Stokes would have made bugger all difference.
If Ali is injured, Broad has a knee problem (as is rumoured) and Overton really does have cracked ribs, I can see us having to play Crane and Curran, neither of whom are ready for Test cricket, in the final two matches. This has worrying parallels with Borthwick and Rankin from the last tour. First as tragedy, then as farce.
Congrats to Australia. Smith really is something and that bowling attack is pretty damn good.
*Whilst we’re on Root, this tour seems to have revealed that the big 4 of Test batting (Smith, Kohli, Williamson and Root) is at best a big 3. It might even be a big one, with Kohli and Williamson vying for the 2nd slot.
I don’t think it’s fair to say Stokes would have made no difference, given his presence should have strengthened both our batting and bowling line-ups. I do agree that he wouldn’t have changed the series result (unless he found a phenomenal Botham-1981-esque performance in three of the games - obviously very unlikely), but he would have made it more respectable.
I think we’re probably in violent agreement. I mean he would have made bugger all difference in that we’d still have been carrying 3 or 4 passengers so the margins of victory would have been broadly similar. He might have scored a few more runs. His bowling is basically the same fast-medium type that has been carted around for three matches though, so I don’t think he’d have made much difference at all on that end, particularly since he’s not the type of guy who should be bowling long spells, even if he were causing problems.
The main difference he would have made is that Mo would have been dropped had Stokes been available, so we’d probably have seen Crane. Whether this is a good or bad thing, I suspect we’re about to find out at the MCG and the SCG, since I can’t see the point in playing Mo at the moment in any case.
Hello folks. I’ve been out of touch as I am currently in Europe and the coverage of cricket in France is somewhat limited so I have been following what has been happening via Cricinfo and your posts (thank you). Naturally I have only seen selected highlights.
Just on this Test, if my memory is correct, in the 80’s Australia scored around 360 (of which Ian Chappell scored around 140) and it was said it was never enough. That was correct. England should have made a lot more on a pretty plain pitch. (So should the early Australian batsmen).
Much has been said of the failures of Cook and Root, but a concern for England must be the fading of Broad. He may be injured - as his been said- but the stats are rather damning.
On another note, I see a movie is being made about Tendulkar. The have interviewed the writer or producer or someone and the on screen printing said “The greatest batsman of all time”. I guess they haven’t heard of another small guy with an average of about double that of Tendulkar. Actually, in a list of averages for people who have played 20 Tests or more Tendulkar does come in about 20th. sigh. (Just a movie with typical hype).
Ski season trip, is it? Hope you’ve had a good time - all I can think about up here this time of year is buggering off somewhere warmer like where you’ve come from, rather than going to France! Hope you enjoyed it.
Re: Tendulkar. Well, surprise. I presume the film will be Indian made. Therefore, Tendulkar has to be the best of all time. Why? Because he’s Indian, that’s why. Nobody of any quality plays for anyone else, don’t you know. I’m sure there are people out there right now swearing blind that if Kohli were playing against England, he would be scoring more than Smith at a quick lick.
The only time I saw Tendulkar bat, he got 3. Bit of an anti-climax. Preferred Jayawardene and Sangakkara personally.
Us ski- more chance of me flying to the moon in a Cessna! If I rolled down a hill in my shape there would be chaos. On our way to Vienna and Prague in a few days so it is only a holiday.
Regarding the film I think it will be a product for the Indian market but the guy who was interviewed seemed to be British. I think Tendulkar was a tremendous batsman and he must have endured enormous pressure with the fans. However, I couldn’t rate him as the best batsman I have ever seen (naturally I never saw Bradman) and he also wasn’t a knock out as captain (although of course that is a separate issue).
Speaking of captaincy, I think it was Graham Swann I heard on the radio post-mortem this morning saying it was a poor choice to make Root captain - not because he is a bad captain, but because (as it often does) it appears to have seriously harmed his batting average. At the same time, unfortunately taking the captaincy away from Cook has dramatically failed to increase his average. The reason Root is captain is because there isn’t really anyone else. Actually, England could do a lot worse than sacking Root as captain and reinstating Cook (assuming both were willing, of course, which is probably unlikely). They won’t, of course, because of the prevailing view that the captain ought to be a ‘first name on the team sheet’ type of player, for which Root still qualifies but Cook now no longer does. But the theory that the best player on the team ought to be captain has perhaps never been the right one and certainly seems rather outdated now. Given there aren’t a surfeit of openers queueing up to replace Cook, he might as well contribute something other than single digit scores and let Root get on with what he does best - a single minded accumulation of runs.
Even in the event of that fantasy not happening, I think Root should step aside anyway. It takes a big character to take on the job of England cricket captain, but an even bigger one to step down for the good of the team. The only unusual thing about this case is it could revive Root’s career rather than end it (which is what happens to most England captains who resign). I think he won’t do so, if only out of a sense of duty (because as I say, who the hell else is there at the moment?).
I find it odd that despite the see-sawing outcomes of every Ashes series back to 2013, each with a fairly resounding win to the home side, the commentary tends to be so extreme (not here, but elsewhere). The losing team has reached some unprecedented nadir, half the side should be dropped and the entire cricketing culture needs to be redesigned. The winning team is virtually beyond reproach and anything the administrators have done is evidence of their superior planning. 1.5/2.5 years later, the result is reversed and the commentary turns 180 degrees.
Results would suggest that Australia and England have been comparable for the past 15 years and both have a strong home advantage (the outlier being England’s win away in 2010-11 which looks increasingly impressive with time). Maybe Cook and Broad have gone to the well once too often but, even so, I suspect if this series were played in England, Australia would have lost.
I guess I’m feeling a bit sorry for this English side; I can’t even muster much dislike for Stuart Broad. Maybe I need to spend more time looking at this: