I know they name but was just too young to see him play, my earliest memories (nightmares?) of Pakistan involve Waqar and Wasim.
In the Ashes, I’m just pleased to end the day five down - hoping for a big partnership between Stokes and Bairstow tomorrow, and/or more rain.
Abdul Qadir- it foesn’t seem that long ago but 35 years- wow. He was an extremely good bowler usually coming with a frenetic run up.
I remember Qadir. I was in high school when he toured Australia with Pakistan. He played only one test series in Australia, but came a couple of other times as part of the three-way one-day series.
I wish I could say I was in High School.
Two days to go and it seems like good weather predicted So two days and time for wrong predictions:-
England to avoid the follow on by 100 or so. Paine, remembering the last Test gets gun shy and bats too long. Result is a draw.
As has been noted, I don’t believe Australia can lose.
England to fall short of avoiding follow on by 10 runs or so, Australia don’t force follow on, England save game with 5 wickets left tomorrow evening.
I had a look a couple of night’s ago. Since 2000 Australia have scored over 400 batting first 60 times. They won 41 of those games, drew 13 and lost 6. Surprising that they lost 10% of them although 5 were against India and one against England.
I assume Stokes will still be there at tea no matter what else happens and the game will peter out to a draw. I was surprised that Australia firmed in the betting while taking only 4 wickets, including the nightwatchman, in a day and needing 15 more wickets to win.
Well, Australia went out and knocked a quick 186, and have now declared. I don’t give England much chance here - a decent batting unit should be confident of giving this a go, but that’s not what England have.
And Burns goes second ball.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this - Australia are a flawed batting unit, a good to great bowling unit and one bat who might be the best of the post WWII era, and this is comfortably good enough to deal with this England side. I was expecting 2 down at close but would have given us an outside chance if the two were Denly and Roy. Instead, they’re at the wicket and we’ll be 4 down by 11:30. To have any chance, I reckon we need to be 2 down at lunch pretty much.
Again, something else to be honest about: the one Test we have won required that Smith not be playing and Ben Stokes doing the cricketing equivalent of feeding the 5,000. Smith is so far ahead of everyone else with the bat in this series, it is untrue. The series would probably be close without him. With him, I back Australia to win at The Oval too, to make this 3-1.
I give Burns a pass today - he’s scored 100 runs more than all the other openers in this series combined. Sometimes you’re going to get out cheaply when you’re an opener, it’s an occupational hazard. Root got a ball that, if he’d kept it out, you’d argue he’d have actually misplayed it to do so. Australia’s attack are bloody good.
More pertinently, I think we’re approaching the end of Root’s captaincy - I thought he was actively bad with some of his field placings today - and I would argue that there needs to be two or three different guys coming in for the batting line up for the NZ and SA tours. I’d probably pick three more openers to go on tour, along with Burns, and have one of them play three, dropping Roy and moving Root back to 4. Broad as a stop gap captain, until we find someone younger and better to do it, might be a way forward for relieving some of the pressure from Root too. Sibley and Crawley are where I would start with respect to the batting line up. I can also see them having another look at Malan for the SA portion of our winter - one of the few who looked decent enough in Australia on the last Ashes, he might suit bouncier tracks than he is going to find in England at Test level.
Qadir: terrible news. Relatively young too, to be dying. A real shame.
Well summed up Cumbrian.
And of course I was totally wrong.
I have to admit, when the Australians were 4/44 I was beginning to question my prediction that England couldn’t win the game. Nice century partnership, in reasonably quick time, stopped the rot, with Smith playing some truly contemptuous shots over the mid-on and mid-wiicket area. Paine pitched in with a nice quick 20 before declaring.
I think that’s a bit of an understatement. Smith’s brilliance has, I think, actually helped to hide the weaknesses a little bit, because everyone’s focusing on him. Labuschagne has been solid, apart from this most recent innings, but I’d feel more comfortable if the Aussies weren’t basically relying on one guy to hold the whole thing together for them. Smith looks impregnable most of the time, but even the best in the world can make one mistake, and then it all crashes down. This match might look quiite a bit different right now if Jack Leach hadn’t overstepped when he had Smith caught behind on 118 in the first innings.
I don’t know. I think the Aussie batting unit has the makings of a decent enough spine; mitigation can be given for a few of them. Smith is obviously unimpeachable and Labu, aided by getting properly warmed up in county cricket, has looked decent enough. I don’t see what dropping Khawaja accomplished; he’s clearly better than Head and has run into one of the same issues that Root has (his openers can’t stay at the crease long enough for him ever to avoid coming in at single digits for 1 and only 2 or 3 overs of shine coming off the ball). In the long run, Warner will be fine - but he had been made Broad’s bunny in this series. I expect he’ll score heavily at home if he is retained, when he faces bowling that uses the inert lump that Kookaburra provide, on drop in pitches that offer less lateral movement. Wade seems OK to me - nothing special but there’s the makings of a player there.
Head, Harris and Paine don’t score heavily enough by the looks of things - Paine can bat but gives it away too easily some of the time, the other two don’t even really look like scoring big numbers of runs - and I would imagine all of them are not long for the side if replacements can be found (in the latter case, a lot rests on the stomach people have for Smith being reinstalled as captain in March).
This is still well better than England though. The number of our guys who can’t muster an average in the 40s is very large - even Stokes can’t boast this, though he has improved his batting significantly over the last 18 months - and is definitely too high; a few of of them are as much a Test match batsman as I am.
England 2-0 and we are all on suicide watch.
Oh please no. Has he shown any aptitude for the role at a first class level?
Is there not a Plan B in a county captain going round with batting credentials for red ball cricket above Roy?
I thought Broad was held together by packing tape and on his last season.
He’s had a very successful series, based on bowling wide from around the wicket to a left-hand overweight top order, clipping leg stump line and supported by DRS.
As a captaincy candidate he doesn’t pass the sniff test to my mind.
I was thinking re the Australian batting- it is certainly fragile and has been propped up a lot by the bowlers. So, I don’t know that Australia has much to lose by playing an extra quick- maybe Siddle- and using Starc as all rounder. I know it weakens an iffy batting line up but I don’t know much is lost.
Captaincy: I’ve moaned several times over the last couple of years about England’s captaincy options. To re-capitulate: England’s central contract system means that the players in the international squads play little to no county cricket; county cricket teams thus don’t give players who are in the England sides captaincy roles - as they’re never playing; ultimately, we are breeding a bunch of international cricketers with little to no experience of captaincy. The cupboard is bare because of the system (I don’t think I would change the central contract system wholesale - in the main, it has helped us produce better sides - but this is a flaw of the approach).
Then, taking the maxim pick your best XI, then pick your captain, I reckon it’s Broad as an interim pretty much by process of elimination. Burns has only just made the side and it’s by no means certain he’s going to stick for the long haul - he should probably be focused on that (in the long run, he could be an option - he captained Surrey to the County Championship before his international call up). Root would obviously have been sacked. Bairstow is in the strongest side in the minds of the selectors (not mine, but let’s play along) but is too aggro for the role. Ditto Anderson. Stokes is thicker than the proverbial two short planks. Archer has only just made the side. Leach likewise. Then there is Broad. Everyone else is playing for their place and couldn’t be captain on those grounds.
He wouldn’t be my first choice but we’re in a corner on this issue, to be honest. Buttler is someone being talked up as captaincy material - and I would be pro this if he actually scored enough runs to justify being in the team. Broad for 18 months whilst we get sorted out would probably be alright. He’s been vice captain before and apparently was a key voice in coming up with the bowling and fielding plans when he had the role. He can’t do much worse than Root.
This smells of sour grapes. You don’t take 500+ Test wickets by having only one trick. That Australia’s batsmen haven’t worked it out says more about them than Broad. And “supported by DRS” - you mean he’s getting wickets because the ball is going on to hit the stumps? Like everyone should?
I appreciate he’s not Australia’s favourite player but come on.
I agree with PT. Broad has at times come across as self absorbed (long time ago) and his Test appearances are not all that regular. Bowlers are not historically proven to be the best choice as captains. Root does seem a little lost circling the wagons, but really it is one player that has been his undoing. I am not certain how Hutton and the other English captains handled setting fields to Bradman although I guess they also thought there were few options.
Thinking of Cumbrian’s comment regarding Smith being (possibly) the best batsman since the war, I note that he has now scored 9 succesive half centuries in Ashes Test which is an amazing statistic. I thought Graeme Pollock ond Barry Richards were very good, but their careers were so short it makes comparisons difficult. Of course seeing Gordon Grenidge and Des Haynes I thought they were powerhouses but I think eventually they only averaged about 40.****
Maybe Smith is special. He sure has a good average for a leg spinner.
I appreciate I am coming off as a Broad defender - and honestly, can see the other side of him pretty easily and equally wouldn’t want him as captain if there was a viable alternative, I just think there isn’t one - but what does this mean? Again, he’s got 500 Test wickets, played over 100 times for England and partnered for the new ball for most of the last decade. How can his appearances not be all that regular?
Smith is that good - but when it comes to Root, some of what he was doing yesterday to the other batsmen was bordering on ridiculous. His in out field for Leach in particular was bizarre and allowed the batsmen to milk him. He appears to have little plan but pack the slip cordon and hope for an edge or expect Archer to bounce players out. Archer, in particular, appears to have more brain than that and you can see him openly questioning the plans Root has on the field (on one occasion raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders when asked to come around the wicket for some chin music on a pitch he knew was not going to allow it be effective).
On this, of the guys that I have seen Smith is obviously right up there. Kohli is bloody good too but Smith is better at Test level (Kohli probably a better short form batsman). Viv Richards, Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara would be other names I’d offer up. Kumar in particular - if he’d never played the Tests in which he kept wicket, his Test career would have been 9000+ runs in 80 or so Tests at an average of 66, which shows a) how good he was and b) how much keeping wicket can impact even a very good player’s averages (it’s why I think Bairstow should have the gloves taken off him, in favour of a better keeper, so he might be able to be a better bat for this unit).
They’ve just shown a graphic on Sky prior to today’s play. All players in matches Steve Smith has played in this series are averaging 30. Smith is averaging 134.
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
Cumbrian, I agree re Broad and he is a far better bowler than I would have foreseen. Is there anyone else in the England side guaranteed of a place. I am not sure that England is not far different from Australia regarding captains.
I suppose the graphic reinforced that Smith (despite his flaws) is a quality batsman and they can be difficult to remove. Pity Australia didn’t have a few more.
Will watch until lunch tonight then I’ll have to hit the hay. If England win please don’t advise me as I’ll be sulking.
McGrath took over 500 wickets, Lillee 350 and both knew a bit about the game but even their Mums never considered them as captaincy candidates.
Warne took even more and his Mum did, but then she gave him diuretics prior to CWC 2003.
Not a word I’ve heard or read about Broad in 15 years has suggested he had leadership potential.
And if AUS are silly enough to pick 5 left handers in their top order then 1) patently ENG needs a plan and 2) it is working very well.
But when you are judging live an LBW appeal you check out the keeper’s movements. When Bairstow takes one and a half skips down the legside you have a good idea where the guy with the greatest vested interest thinks it is going. Broad isn’t getting LBWs by hitting off stump. You might remember Warner getting a life with a delivery shown to be clipping leg stump the nobody appealed for. Umpires of the past would not have given out on what is umpires call. The current crop are not giving benefit of doubt and hoping DRS will make the decision for them.
And to further demonstrate my contrariness, if I had to pick only one of the Big Three to bat for my team I’d pick Kholi, though Williamson is the best captain.