I’m on holiday and lost all sense of time so didn’t realise that that we had a Wednesday start.
So, I come back to the apartment, fire up the laptop and my brain is flooded by strange messages that I can’t make head nor tail of.
What I think has happened is that Aus. won the toss, got skittled out in a worse collapse than the England one in the second test, Jimmy gets 6-46, England bat steadily for parity with only 3 wickets down and the chance of a good lead with Root poised to do serious damage.
I think I’ve got that right. Mind you…for some reason I also seem to think that Bell batted well at 3 for an important half-century and surely that can’t be right?
Yes, well - normal service pretty much resumed. At 12.30 I was thinking “please just let us still be batting at lunch” - which is not ideal on a day where you start with 7 wickets in hand. I’ll just put the mockers on this useful eighth-wicket partnership which currently sees the lead at comfortably over 100, so at least Jimmy’s efforts in the first innings aren’t entirely wasted. A shame we didn’t make more of the opportunity (Bell’s shot selection looked worse and worse the more wickets that fell this morning) but at least we’re in front. If we can make this lead 150 (as I said earlier), it’s useful, but we’ll need to bowl well again to avoid any possible wobbles in the fourth innings.
Has Bell done enough to hang on for at least the next Test? I’d say yes, as if England win his knock will be a key part of that, and if they lose he will probably still end up as their second-highest scorer in the match, so hard to drop him after that. But we’ll see. Lyth is probably more at risk unless he has a decent knock in the second innings.
He’s definitely more at risk than Bell. Buttler has to be looking worried too, I would say. Especially as Bairstow, who got a beauty this morning, could be entrusted with the gloves.
Smith just goes now - skied a pull shot. Warner looks in the mood though. Need to get him sooner rather than later.
Australia are now 130/6, still 15 behind, and Warner has gone.
Nevill could really put a dent in Haddin’s hopes of a recall with a gritty 50 here. If they lose another wicket soon, though, they could lose this tonight. It’s looking a bit unlikely, which I’m happy with, since it’s my birthday tomorrow and I can sit and watch England win
Australia end the day seven down and only 23 in front, so I’m cautiously optimistic. Anderson’s side injury is a major cause for concern, though, even if Finn has been playing a blinder.
At stumps Nevill has faced 117 deliveries.
The entire top order has faced 148 between them.
Flat track bullies and McNugget cricket muppets.
Batting on Day 2, with over 300 overs available to play, the Aussies go about their batting as if it was merely game 3 in one of those interminable and meaningless T20 series.
The standout performers this series? The umpires.
Matched against the best available forensic arsenal of visual, audio and infra-red technology for post hoc in ultra-slow-mo in the DRS using they are 21 from 22.
Anderson out for at least the next test, but he’s optimistic about his chances of being fit for the final game. Hopefully Wood will be fit for the next one.
As a man who grew up as an England cricket fan in the 1990s, when our test side plumbed depth after depth, I have The Fear. This is tailor made for a throwback to those days, where we fail to get these wickets quickly, wind up chasing 120 and collapsing like those line ups with Lathwell, Hick, Ramprakash, Lewis and Salisbury in them.
Comfy in the end - 8 wicket victory. Clarke dropping Bell on 20 perhaps a turning point. It would have been brown trouser time if he’d taken it.
Both of these sides are fragile. Well matched as a result but both would lose to SA - though I think SA would struggle more in Oz than they would up here. In SA, it would be very straightforward I suspect.
Finished without undue fuss, 8 wicket win in under 3 days.
England and Australia holding collapsing competitions in this series. Neither side’s batting is particularly good, although both teams have one genuinely world-class batsmen (Smith and Root), and both teams have a decent bowling attack.
Anderson forces a change for England, presumably Wood will come in if he’s fit. Lyth… Lyth has one hundred from his 8 Test innings so far, but he’s done nothing otherwise(that hundred represents over half his test match runs), and the question is how long they will stick with him. Too often this series the openers have gone early, and they did it again in this match.
Bell has surely done enough. Two fifties in his new position. He’s a divisive figure - he won’t have done himself any favours with the way he got out in the first innings - but I think he’s worth his place.
For the Australians, Nevill has shown his worth, and Haddin is unlikely to feature again unless he injures himself during this series.
Bell is now a lock for the series after two classy innings, albeit with a silly dismissal that could have cost us the match under other circumstances, and the second knock being made under no pressure. I think Lyth is only still there due to the lack of decent alternatives. Strauss must be fuming that Compton wasn’t given a decent run first time out, as he could still be there now if so. Given Lyth’s form, hard to argue against sticking him in anyway. You could also plump for Hales - England have completely failed to do well by adopting a slow and steady approach at the start of their innings. As I read somewhere earlier in the week, Hales would still be out within 30 balls, but at least he would have put on 50 instead of 10.
One of England’s quicks is going to need to step up to the plate in Jimmy’s absence - they have all shown they can take wickets, but none has come close to Anderson’s economy and that could be crucial.
The loss of Anderson is pretty troubling to be honest - especially as his record at Trent Bridge is something ridiculous like 35 wickets in 8 matches at 18 (I should look this up on Statsguru but you get my drift). The county season has also moved onto the one-dayer portion of it too, so there’s not many bowling to long form plans and fields. Assuming Wood is fit, they’ll pick him and that will be the only change.
I read some interesting stuff this weekend about the Aussie ethos of “our best bat must bat 3”. Not only has it not always been the case (Border, Steve Waugh, Greg Chappell didn’t bat 3 as much as Ian Chappell did either), there’s possibly the case that your best bat maybe shouldn’t bat 3 in England, because the nature of the wickets makes it more likely that they get exposed early to the new ball, whilst it’s still nipping around. There were a load of stats pulled out about how for instance IVA Richards batted 4 in England and did better than when he batted at 3, and so on. All this by way of saying that there’s a few saying if Clarke is going to go to 5, might as well put Smith in at 4 and put Marsh in at 3. It’s an idea. I think I would be tempted to leave Smith where he is though - I suspect that the pendulum is going to swing back this week.
I disagree with this, those 121 runs England needed to make may have looked like a walk in the park, but that was mostly down to Bell. He came in at 19/1, and in the previous England innings of this series wickets have tumbled at the top. It was Bell and Cook’s job to steady the innings and make sure they got there, and they did, but the pressure was very much on. 20/2 could have a dangerous shudder through the changing room, I think.
Yes, fair one - “no pressure” was a gross exaggeration. There is always the pressure of failure, no matter what the score. However, I think it is fair to say that given the relatively low total, he clearly felt he had the freedom to go for his shots, possibly for the first time in the series. A quick 40 and out would have been enough to cement his side’s position, where that is not normally the case batting at 3.
Not that I am pushing for him to be dropped - he is clearly one of the best batsmen we have to offer at the moment and I am glad it looks like he is coming back into top form just in time. I sincerely hope it works out for him.
I did eventually look it up on statsguru - Anderson’s figures at Trent Bridge are ridiculous.
Over 8 matches, he has 53 wickets at 19 and a quarter. His strike rate is 41 (i.e. give him a spell and, on average, he takes a wicket) and his economy rate is 2.8. He is going to be a massive miss in this game.
On the plus side though, for Londoners, ASLEF have come good again and are running a tube strike tomorrow (they did the same thing during the Cardiff Test). The upshot being I am “working from home” tomorrow - my laptop will be on, I’ll try and do something, but let’s be honest, I’ll be watching the cricket on the TV; my productivity was not high during the last strike day, though it didn’t help that England were doing pretty well too. I half suspect that the union leaders have tickets to the game…
