The Ashes 2013

The Game Room
261

Agreed - though at least that team actually cashed in on pitches that they should have scored runs on - notably at Adelaide in the first innings (before utterly losing it in the second half of the match). This team is doing nothing with the bat. No one has scored a ton yet. No one is averaging more than 33.5. Some of our best players are not averaging more than 25. Some of this is good bowling from a reasonably balanced attack. Some of it has been awful shot selection though.

Also, that team were playing a side with a few all time greats in it. There are some good players in this Australian side - but we are making them look like world beaters with our efforts currently.

I don’t really know what the answer is for England - but it doesn’t look like it is going to be resolved in this series. The fact of the matter is that this is probably our best collection of cricketers on this tour. There were only a couple of marginal calls for the touring party and the players that are on the fringes are actually the ones performing best (Root has our highest score in the Tests on tour and the highest average, Carberry has done OK with the bat, better than many others, Stokes has done alright, arguably better than the nominated third seamer in his matches). It’s established players who are not performing - let’s face it, we are not going to be dropping Cook, KP or Prior anytime soon.

262

Agree with the first two, not so sure about Prior.

His feet aren’t moving, nor his hands on a pitch that certainly isn’t easy to ply his craft on. He wasn’t demanding with his glovework that the team’s outfield cricket was up to Test standard.

Kerry O’Keefe tells a joke about Prior’s competitiveness.

Prior gets hauled before a firing squad, blind folded and asked does he have any last words. “Yes, HOWZAT!!!”. As long as I’ve watched him, he ain’t one to die wondering.

He, in wicketkeeper terms, is being very quiet during the Aussie second innings.

It was a severe test under trying conditions and it may have broken a stalwart. That his batting has fallen away is another signal.

263

I do think Alistair Cook should be given his marching orders. England have been lucky in the last 10 years, they have had good captains. He seems uninspired and really clueless about what to do. Someone like Broad or even Prior would be better.

264

Yeah, there’s a few journos up here rumbling about Prior but things would have to be really bad for him to be dropped on this tour I think - worse than today even. I have seen Bairstow keep. He’s not that good behind the stumps either to be frank - I think it was a major risk taking him as the back up keeper in the first place. He was basically there as they wanted to keep him around the squad and should have been a “break in case of emergencies” option, with a possible view to doing some work with him to help improve his keeping. I can see Prior being dropped for the next series in England if this continues but maybe not beyond that.

I think, for the next incoming tour, England should probably be putting Root back in at opener (thanks to Carberry but he is not a long term option, due to his age), move Bell to 3 where he will have more time to bat and drop Swann, who hasn’t looked good since he first developed an elbow injury, for Monty. They can then work out what they want to do with Stokes - I’d be tempted to revert to a 4 man attack and have him come in at 7 or 8 dependent on who is keeping wicket, with Bresnan being dropped. Prior might well be dropped too. That opens up 5, 6 and 7/8/wicketkeeper for younger players and they can go into a bit of a rebuild.

That would probably strike the right balance between reacting to this performance, whilst backing some of the key performers from the last 2 years opportunity to find better form, whilst those same guys will also see that their places are not sacrosanct.

Whatever they do needs to be part of a carefully thought out long term plan though. We have been here before and done some silly knee-jerk things in the past and it has been damaging.

265

FYI Boycott has a lacerating column on the current situation, worth a read

And Askance maintains his perfect record for anti-prophecy! Must be approaching a record by now.

Yeah, me too. I hope there’ll still be 11 English players able to walk onto the field … !

His keeping yesterday was woeful. Stumping chances just do not come much easier than that one he fluffed, his head was moving away from the ball instead of being over it. Weird for a WK of his experience.

266

This now definitely eclipses the 2007 Ashes as most disappointing English tour I can remember. I suppose it could all turn around by the end, but that really isn’t looking likely at all - the Australians are on top of their game in both batting and bowling, and England look all at sea.

The BBC twitter feed mentioned that this was the first time a team has asked another to chase over 500 to win three times in a row. It’s actually going to take a much better performance from England not to make it 4 in a row.

As for solutions to the problems, it’s not an easy thing. It does appear as though we actually have the best guys out there playing, so maybe it’s a backroom or coaching issue? Australia certainly seem to have turned around after replacing Micky Arthur.

267

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. I mean of course Alistair Cook’s captaincy.

Oh, Oz win the Ashes. After 8 years.

Englands batting took 6 innings to click. They finally played like they should have all series. Stokes is a good lad he will go far. But, not enough.

268

Hatsoff Johnson.
nice dressing room celebration shots…would have liked them to get wild n let loose more infront of camera

269

The logo of the English team should be rats abandoning a sinking ship. Graeme Swann just quit all cricket.

Are we in some bizzaro world.

270

Actually, I can understand it - apparently he was going to retire after this series anyway, and being belted around the park by Dave Warner et al must have been the last straw.

So no doubt we get Monty in Melbourne. No idea what his recent form is like.

England have an age problem, all their top players are over 30. Not that the Aus team are spring chickens, but aside from Root and Stokes who have they got coming through?

271

Interesting comparison of the different placement of catchestaken between the two sides in the first 3 Tests.

Over 80% of dismissals this series have been catches (and only 4% LBW compared to the England series where it was 64% catches and 18% LBW)

3 Australians have fallen to catches behind square on the legside vs a surprisingly high 17 English wickets. That’s more than Haddin as keeper has held (15) and not far off the total taken by Australian slips cordon (21).

Obviously Australia has been able to set more attacking fields for longer, but it also reflects the number of wickets taken by short-pitched deliveries and the success the Australian right handers have had against Swann

272

Another F1 car wreck fascinating example is Piers Morgan of British journalism and CNN talk show renown who challenged Brett Lee today.
His batting style could best be described as reminiscent of Python’s Black Knight

Piers Morgan survives an over from Aussie pace bowler Brett Lee in MCG nets

273

England fight back for a change, with the possibility of a useful lead if they can get rid of Lyon before Brad Haddin hits too many more. But once again, the difference between a mediocre Australian side and one that’s winning is that Mitchell Johnson is still taking wickets - he’s had several series’ worth of good performances in this one, which hardly seems fair. :smiley:

274

It’s perfectly fair because prior to this series he used to have several series’ worth of loose bowling in single spells.

275

Stumps Day1
Australia all out 326
England 1 down for 8

A good days cricket … certainly for the locals anyway.

To my mind the entire series encapsulated in one days play.
Phenomenal crowds of people attending. Queues were forming by 5am.
Australia scoring @ 4.2 runs per over but can’t bat out a day.
The Poms get their noses in front but fail to close out the innings and can’t bowl the requisite 90 overs in a day.
Australia’s McNugget batsmen collectively fail in the 1st innings, though they may set up winning lead in the 2nd innings.

As has been stated several rimes by other good judges, this is not a good Australian team.
For the England team that was top of the world rankings barely 12 months ago to be so close to the abyss of a 5-0 series loss is alarming.
For example if you are 4 down for 150 you aren’t travelling very well.
Only in one first innings in 5 Tests (Adelaide 4/174) has Australia been marginally better placed.
The difference is that the Poms haven’t been able to finish them off. That’s the big “why” of the series.

Whilst Johnson has been getting most of the bouquets, I’m coming to the view that “Man-of-the-Series” is Brad Haddin. He may finish the series scoring over 500 runs and has kept well, but the point he’s simply occupied the crease longer than any of the recognised batsmen. A batsman of his capability might have been expected to right the ship once, maybe twice in the series. He’s done that 5 out of 5.

    Player         Team   Inns   Runs   BF	      avBF

1 BJ Haddin AUS 7 465 649 92.7
2 CJL Rogers AUS 9 344 776 86.2
3 SPD Smith AUS 8 320 626 78.3
4 DA Warner AUS 9 507 683 75.9
5 BA Stokes ENG 6 200 432 72.0
In my estimation, if Haddin had performed similarly to Prior with the bat, Australia would have won soundly enough 2 -1 based on Johnson’s bowling. The reason a 5-0 whitewash is on the cards is that Haddin’s batting with the lower order has consistently taken the game away from England and given Clarke defendable totals.

PS;
My cricket club has been running a sweepstake on the number of times Watson being dismissed LBW in the series.

The lone apostle who backed him maintaining a clean sheet was sitting on a winnings of cool two and a half grand until Watto reverted to type. Unless the muppet leads with his pad again in the 2nd dig, the pot will go to a local charity.

276

Have you ever heard the following exchange at the end of the days play?

“So what went wrong for England today?”

“Well, I think they just bowled too full and allowed themselves to be driven too often”.

Never happens. So how the fuck is it that we have repeatedly bowled too short on good pitches? When a man has been whacking your short balls all over Australia for the past six weeks, why would you continue to bowl short to him? I’m unsure what we think we’re doing by bowling back of a length all the time. They obviously think that there is something in the Kookaburra that requires this – perhaps fuelled by how they managed to get wickets in Australia last time out (i.e. bang it in, get some wickets, rough the ball up, reverse it to get the rest – with a spinner chipping in). The fact that this has failed in the middle to lower order on the 9th occasion we have tried it (and the 8 times before that) suggests to me that we will employ exactly the same tactic the 10th time out. After all, it will be the last thing Australia will be expecting.*

We suck, we’re in bad form, we’re idiots or perhaps some combination of the three. I am not looking forward to our batting “efforts” that are to come. We’re also playing a decent enough team, certainly talented enough and ruthless enough to step on our throats after we trip over our own feet.

Agreed on Haddin. Think he’s had an exceptional series and held things together well. Been a key factor in the series.

That said, both these sides would be marmalised by South Africa at the minute (SA would be able to run through the lower order in a fashion that the English have not been able to).

*Yes, I have resorted to Blackadder references comparing our cricket team with World War I tactics.

277

So a question for you.

Why are the English seamers unable to bend the ball?
In recent series past, both with the Duke and the Kookaburra, Anderson has swung it both ways early and then swung the ball in reverse to great effect later in the innings. Breslan got the ball to wobble a bit. Troy Cooley was thought to walk on water. OK, Broad and Tremlett are focused on banging the ball in. But keeping it tight brings it’s ample rewards against impatient batsmen and the Aussies have 4 of them in their top 6. Is there nobody in county cricket who can bowl bog standard orthodox offies and keep the runs down? I thought there were two in every team in English First Class team

Has Anderson forgotten how he succeeded ? Has nobody else in the squad looked at the tapes of the recent tours series and thought “these Aussie mugs have no idea against swing bowling … maybe we could try it again?”. All the mail I have on the Poms coach Andy Flower is that he knows 'is onions. So is nobody capable or nobody thought to try? Like you really should need a coach to tell a Test standard seamer how to bowl?

278

I have some ideas but they would require support from you/people in Oz I think.

We got it to reverse in the UK in the summer but it was the driest summer we’ve had in years. As a consequence, the pitches were dry but so, crucially, were the outfields, which meant the ball got scuffed up a bit more. The outfields seem (on the TV) reasonably lush in Oz through this tour. Is this actually the case? If so, they might not be getting the same wear on the ball that they have got in series past. This is all part of home field advantage and I am all for it, if the outfields have been well watered. I’d have done the same if the roles were reversed.

Anderson has not been the same since we bowled him into the ground to win at Trent Bridge. I suspect he may be carrying an injury. Whatever, he is not the same guy at the minute - so there is another factor as to why reverse may not be happening, one of our key guys is not right. I don’t think he’s forgotten how he’s succeeded, I just think we’ve kippered him - and he’s also not getting much support from his third and fourth seamer, nor his spinner.

(As an aside Troy Cooley did a good job with many of our bowlers but Anderson was not one of them, he totally knackered his action and ruined him for a good couple of years until David Saker told him to back to his old methods, and lo and behold he started taking wickets).

I also think that our pace bowling stocks have been revealed to be weaker than we thought. At least from the guys that went on tour. When your third seamer (and even though Stokes took 6 wickets he went at 5 an over, so you can chuck in our fourth seamer too) is getting whacked around, you’ve got a different game going on than the one England have been used to in the last 18 months - i.e. bore the hell out of people by bowling dry when the ball isn’t doing much, so that wickets may come through attrition rather than the miracle ball.

It has also not helped that Swann was very effectively targeted - usually he would be the one that you’d expect to get wickets whilst someone was holding an end up with pace bowling. This leads to players perhaps trying to do too much to get guys out instead of being patient and taking what reverse they can get whilst also being sensible about their run rates. All this told means that when Broad and Anderson are fresh, they are still bowling OK - not going for too many runs - but once they’re off (and they might have taken a couple of wickets, so you’re into the middle order then), you see guys who are not up to snuff, bowling badly, with a soft ball, that they can’t get to reverse. As a result Smith, Haddin and Johnson get to do what they want.

Selection has also been pretty poor with respect to the spin bowling - though this is perhaps off the topic of reverse swing. We probably set Kerrigan back 5 years at The Oval at the tail end of our summer and, instead of sticking with Monty in this test, have blooded Borthwick, who has promise but is still learning his craft. If they were wedded to an offie who isn’t Monty, they should have played Treadwell. That said, I am sort of pro blooding new players - they’re just so inconsistent in their application. If you really are building for the future, shouldn’t Root rather than the 33 year old Carberry have opened in this match?

So I think that there are a number of factors that could well be in play. I think, unlike many of the English journos who seem to be beating the drum that England are just sticking to the tried and true and need to do something different, that they have moved away from tactics that have worked for them in the past, some because of the opposition taking it away from them, some due to their own failings and some perhaps due to factors that they can’t really control.

I don’t even know whether I have answered your question. This has turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry about that.

279

I think England has given up. 5/25.

It’s looking increasingly as though there will be no cricket for me to watch on Monday. I wonder if I’ll get my money back? :frowning:

280

You would have been interested in today’s pre-play interviews with Smith and Haddin. Smith said, in talking about his 100, that England had bowled too short and Australia would learn from that. Haddin said that when the ball was pitched up both he and Smith felt that eventually you would “get one with your name on it.” When Cook changed the field to put two men out and they realized they were going to bowl short they decided to go for it.