Good day, very good day for the tourists. After a uncertain start his middle 50 was reminiscent of the Cook of tours past. Looked like he was about to run out of gas at the end of play but some benevolence from Smith saw him bring a up a well-deserved 100.
If we’d had this result in say Adelaide the series might still be up for grabs. But that would have meant transplanting this drop-in pitch
The 'G is not a good wicket and, faced with conditions less than ideal, the Aust batting line-up collapsed like cards because they lacked application, patience and technique. Shows how poorly they’d perform when on tour.
I’m a long-term supporter of Khawaja but his effort yesterday was simply awful. Coming in @ #3 for his country with the score 1-122, having just won an Ashes series, batting on a road and it looked like he couldn’t be bothered. Maybe had his mind on his BBL contract or summat. Bancroft stained his copybook because he plumb forgot how to play short, medium paced leg side stuff … on a road?
With the Marshes the applicable line is about all those monkeys having just typed a Shakespearean sonnet, what are the odds of them ever doing it again? Cummins crook as a dog, but still coming back on the field twice to bowl 11 overs while green around the gill. Consequently, with the team down a seamer how many overs did the allrounder MarshM bowl? Just 4. His captain doesn’t trust him to bowl and the country doesn’t trust him to bat.
I can see that argument for Cook, but Root?
He’s had a crappy series which puts him a rung or two down the ICC batting ranking closer to where I think he belongs [i.e. he ain’t vying for the podium with Kholi, Smith and Williamson] but he’s still of international class and I don’t see much in the queue to replace him.
I guess a bit of hyperbole on my part in the case of Root, but I was more referring to his career as captain - had it been 5-0 he may well have stepped down from that, either by his own choice, or not.
Shame he didn’t go on to make a really big score today but Cook has more than made up for it - just class. I think not declaring was probably the right decision (especially given Cook used that time to smack a few more boundaries) - much easier to get runs on the board now than on day 5. Let’s see if Australia’s batting can perform under scoreboard pressure tomorrow (mind you, they did rather well on that front in Perth…).
I was hoping that Jimmy Anderson knew enough to run himself out on the last ball of the day so that Cook could break the record for the highest score by someone carrying their bat. I wonder if he could retire hurt overnight and then make a miracle recovery to open the bowling.
Excellent hand by Cook to deliver all the advantage to the visitors.
Interesting change in his demeanor. Last night, walking off with 100 from 164 deliveries with 15 boundaries he looked absolutely buggered. Walked straight off the field without looking at his captain.
Today, having batted the full 6 hours for an additional 140 runs from 245 deliveries with 12 boundaries he walked off with Anderson with a spring still in his step and a smile on his face.
To play out from here Australia need to bat out day 4 with no more than 4 wickets down. They’d be unlikely to be more than 100 in front at stumps. Then bat as long as possible on day 5.
The Poms chasing more than 150 in less than 2 sessions for a win won’t be easy. But an England win must be getting above a 45% chance … to which you could add the probability of Aust getting skittled for less than 175. tomorrow.
Interested to here views of others on the Khawaja catch to dismiss Broad.
The live broadcast looked straightforward enough, but the close-up showed it bobbled out of his hands.
Now there’s only one person who could know if it was taken clean and Usman doesn’t know himself.
The umpires could not have any sort of view from the distance they were away and yet their call of out meant there needed to be clear evidence the ball hit the ground.
I reckon he did take the catch but still think the review should have been not out.
Haven’t seen a single ball but England seem to be the only team capable of winning. If Smith had not dropped Cook on 66 it would be a different game but Australia have had their share of fortune so no complaints.
Shame about the weather, just typical that in the one match their team doesn’t perform, the weather helps them out! England still have an opportunity if they can get a couple of quick wickets tomorrow morning. Easier said than done.
Aussie media claims of ball tampering seem pretty desperate. Whingeing Aussies just because things aren’t going 100% their way?
I laughed at the comment by England’s Aussie coach Trevor Bayliss, “We knew when we came here it was going to be 24 million versus 11 and we just laugh it off, it’s part of the game, you’ve got to put up with it.”
Seems nothing in that ball tampering rubbish. I believe no one said it was that- Mike Hussey commented Anderson may have a please explain but the match referee and umpires were not concerned. Seems some hot under the collar journo’s got a bit carried away.
For Australia it must be worrying that 6 out of the top ten batsmen are English and two of those Australians (the Marsh brothers) scored most of the runs in one innings (as did Cook for England). If you remove Smith from the series- and he has scored almost twice as many runs as the best English player it could be a very different series.
Stumps Day 1 Fifth Test Sydney.
England 233 for 5 off 81 overs (Root 83, Malan 56no)
Two late wickets took the gloss off what was a solid day for the tourists after winning the toss and batting.
Didn’t see that much of the days play, which was delayed due to rain.
A solid batting effort with each of the top 5 getting good starts.
Vince nicked off again after getting most of the hard work behind him as he has done regularly this series.
Cooks footwork reverted to the leaden style seen earlier in the tour was unable to get them going again as he did in the 4th Test.
England decided to go with two tweakers (though on form to date it’s more accurate to describe Ali as a slow bowler rather than a spinner) giving Mason Crane his first cap.
England rarely use leg spinners, only using 5 in the last 50 years Hobbs debut in 1967, Salisbury 1992, Schofield 2000, Borthwick 2014 & Rashid 2015 Their combined career stats are 35 Tests, 74 wickets @ 51.3
Crane’s his local form is good, winning best player in Sydney last season but he’ll require support from his captain. Root has probably never set a field for an over the wrist spinner. The locals will try to get on top of him early and if Root loses his nerve and takes Crane off as soon as the runs look like flowing the gamble and possibly the career will be lost. Mind you Shane Warne copped a fearful hammering from Ravi Shastri in his first SCG Test (Shastri scored 206, eventually becoming Warne’s first Test wicket with the figures of 1-150) and he ended up a handy bowler.
The number of times during this series when England were poised to make a meaningful move in the match, only to shoot themselves in the foot or fail to press home the advantage (dependent on how charitable one wants to be), has been pretty high. Everyone gets a start here (with the exception of Bairstow) and no one (with the possible exception of Malan) kicks on. It’s been damn frustrating.
Vince’s wicket is hardly a surprise - caught between wk and gully is how how he gets out in County Championship, it’s how he got out in his first stint in the Test side and it’s how Australia have routinely got him out here. I said at the outset I wouldn’t have picked him and, the odd knock aside (which as discussed above routinely finished before becoming truly meaningful), my view hasn’t really changed. He’s not a Test match bat and England should move on. Stoneman, unfortunately, looks to be in a somewhat similar boat but has only had these 5 Test matches - lack of options will probably see him stay in the side for NZ. After seeing a pitch almost tailor made for putting him back into form, something a little more sporting dealt with Cook; he’s going to be around for a while yet, i’d imagine, likewise due to lack of options as much as anything. Joe Root reaffirmed one of my earlier comments about how he’s not in that top tier of 3 or 4 Test batsmen in the world.
For the rest of this match, I am hoping only for us not to break Mason Crane. I’d take a blazing Moeen knock on day 2 if one were offered, but that’s unlikely given his form - he’s (un)fortunate that Woakes got injured, otherwise he’d have been dropped.
SA v India starts on Friday. Promises to be a bit more intriguing than the remainder of this, I would say - I can see Australia, behind Steve Smith being impossible to dismiss, winning reasonably comfortably, especially given the length of the English tail - with a key question being whether India can actually win away from home outside Asia.
Paul Farbrace gave a post-day interview this morning (evening) in which he tried to talk up Ali, saying he is due a score - which he certainly is, but even Farbrace didn’t make it sound convincing.
The post-day analysis discussed Vince and Stoneman, Michael Vaughan suggested the latter has a better chance of fixing his technique than the former, partly due to age - which seems reasonable.
They also said these Australian pitches seem to suit Malan’s technique - which is good as far as it goes, but a pity if it means he doesn’t do so well anywhere else (especially in England) - hopefully this won’t be the case.
Are you sure this is the right way around? I have two reasons for doubt. First, Vince is 26 and Stoneman 30. Second, Vaughan is involved in some way with the agency that represents James Vince, so is one of the first to talk Vince up at every opportunity (one of the reasons why I ignore all analysis from Vaughan on Vince as it goes); I’d be surprised if he’s stuck the boot in on him.
As an aside, Vaughan’s appearances in the media continue to distance him in my memory from the glorious batsman and decent captain that he was. I am increasingly convinced that the real Michael Vaughan has been kidnapped and is tied to a chair in The Outback somewhere, whilst this guy is an imposter designed to ruin our memory of him forever.
I wish they would declare these things. Ian Botham and Alec Stewart are another two who will big up a player without telling you that they represent them.
I don’t mind so much when it’s a lesser known player looking to break in to the team, but when it’s a current player, you can’t trust what they are saying.
I was driving in heavy traffic with a chatty 3-year-old so it is more than likely I misheard something, but I’m sure the speaker was echoing your opinion on Vince, Cumbrian - I’m pretty sure they said something very like “if he plays Test cricket for another 5 years he’ll still be nicking off in the slips”, which is why I posted it. It is possible that Vaughan wasn’t the speaker, but I can’t think who else it would have been (even I, the casual fan, under the above conditions, seem unlikely to confuse Vaughan with, say, Boycott or Swann). Is it possible Vaughan has fallen out with the agency you mention, so has decided to indeed put the boot in on Vince? None of this of course explains the age thing, but this is probably the part of the story that I was most likely to have misunderstood - perhaps he had moved on to a comparison with Malan at that point, or he didn’t mean to compare the ages of Stoneman and Vince in the way I described. They certainly said that physical technique is the easiest of the three important attributes to change (the other two being mental strength and physical strength), and that Vince’s problem seems more of a mental one, whereas Stoneman has had difficulty facing the short ball, which may be more down to technique.
Sorry to cause confusion, feel free to comment on the above if it might help clear things up!
I can hardly bear to talk about the game in progress, but from a brief look at the scorecard this morning, it seems Australia’s top order are once again going to show England’s top order what a decent score looks like. Our tail did reasonably well but they weren’t given a good enough platform to set a challenging total, it would seem. We’ll do well to get a result here - any chance of them coming off due to excess heat at some stage? Pretty sure that’s a thing in Oz?
Ah! I didn’t hear this myself but on one of my WhatsApp groups where I talk about cricket with my mates, someone was referencing the three attributes that you were talking about. It was Ed Smith, I believe.
Smith is an interesting analyst - he certainly tends to think about the game in a way you don’t hear from many others. He seems to be saying that Stoneman has a stronger mental make up than Vince and will probably be capable of adapting his technique to avoid getting out in ways he has been thus far in Tests (though I think this remains to be seen, obviously). Usually you’d think that the older player is the one who is going to have most trouble fixing his game, due to ingrained habits though, so I’m not totally convinced on that score either. I’d agree that Vince has shown no likelihood of avoiding nicking off - he hasn’t fixed that flaw in his game at lower levels, so how is he going to do it at the highest level?
Not only are Australia going to put up a good score, England’s tail, weaker for the absence of Stokes throughout the series (who would push Moeen back down to 8) and Woakes (a pretty damn good Test number 9) put up some good numbers, which just goes to show that the top order really did fail to cash in yesterday. The pitch seems better than the MCG but with application there’s plenty of runs in it. England to lose on the evening of Day 4/morning of Day 5.
Stumps Day 2
England 346 (112 overs Root 83, Malan 62)
Australia 193-3 (67 overs Warner 56, Khawaja 91no)
After picking up Malan early with a catch that would grace any highlight reel Australia reverted to the old bad habits of “The short ball is Plan A” for the tail. The tactic didn’t work and Aust fielding reached standards of ineptitude usually only seen with Pakistan. Poms did ok to get to almost 350 with all the batsmen out by 250.
Setting a half decent chase on day 5 will so it’s unfortunate that a bit more application from the top order didn’t see the total push past 400.
The wicket is reasonable but lacks bounce for anybody who doesn’t put in the effort. There was enough movement to get several edges from both Khawaja & Smith which didn’t carry. Consequently, at one stage late in the day, Root had moved so far up that he was wearing a helmet whilst fielding at 2nd slip.
Australia need to bat most of Day 3 and reach 450.
That Kimber article is well worth reading, if anyone hasn’t. We shared that around yesterday amongst my mates and the consensus is that it’s savage and on the money. It also benefits from him actually watching county cricket; something that a lot of the ex-player analysts don’t seem to be that arsed with up here (with the exceptions of Nasser and Atherton). The Cricinfo guys in general have had a good series. There’s a decent argument that England’s man of the series is George Dobell, who has been coming in off his long run pretty much since the CA XI game in Perth (before the Ashes started) giving everyone the full barrage. No one has been spared, least of all the English set up. Proper journos in provision of quality reading shocker.
ETA: there’s also a link to Sports Analytics Advantage in that lot, that I followed and unearthed some interesting stuff. The guy basically points out that there’s no statistical basis for Vince’s inclusion at all and has been saying so since before the squad was picked. Worth a read of several of his articles if you’re statistically minded.
Meanwhile, and off the immediate topic at hand, India had SA 12-3 this morning in their first Test. It’s currently 120/3. ABDV is back in the SA Test side and is scoring at an SR of 80, with Faf Du Plessis going along at approaching 60. India are going to need to get one, the other or both of them sooner rather than later by the looks of things.
His captain doesn’t trust him to bowl and the country doesn’t trust him to bat.