On the contrary, given the provocation you are quite entitled.
When I posted the question I was thinking of two dismissals in the Melbourne Test: Watson bowling Carberry and Anderson bowling Clarke. Now you don’t need such outrageous deliveries to earn wickets, but just a bit of late wobble. Pitching it up about 2m to give it the time to move also helps.
Given the proportion of boundaries being scored I don’t think the outfields are significantly lusher than usual. The fact that games haven’t lasted the distance might mean that the pitches haven’t been as dry and abrasive but can you recall the chasms that were appearing in the WACA surface?
The key to reverse swing is getting sufficient sweat into the ball to affect it’s weight balance. There have been ample furrowed and sweating brows amongst the tourists.
Stumps Day 2
Australia 326 & 140/4 (30.0 ov)
England 155.
At stumps with already a 300 run lead Clark could have declared with probably sufficient runs on the board to win. Can anyone recall the last time that happened?
He won’t of course, so we’ll bat the innings out following another top order failure. Maybe Rogers gets his ton and Haddin the seven he needs to have the highest series aggregate for a wicketkeeper in Ashes history. Another half century and he’ll top the series aggregate.
Whether that means the lead is 325 or 500 is immaterial. The Poms will be batting tomorrow after tea, might even last until day 4.
This is a fucking disgrace. England didn’t get this badly mauled in 1976 when they ran into Holding, Roberts, Richards and Lloyd plus assorted supporting characters incensed by Greig’s foolish “grovel” remark, nor in 1980 when the Windies bowling attack was still stronger, nor in 1974-75 when they met Lillianthompson at the peak of their powers - they’ve been looking like rabbits in headlights for weeks now and Australia quite unlike the Test team that couldn’t buy a win just a few months ago.
Well. Thank God that is over. What a load of fucking bollocks. Stokes had a good series and Broad took his wickets at 27.5 and an Econ of 3.5. These are the only decent performances in the whole squad. Everyone else ranged from out of their depth through poor to totally fucking useless.
Congratulations to Australia. You’ve destroyed the poorest England Test team I have ever seen (and I have seen teams with IDK Salisbury in them) and rightfully so.
About the only other positive I can draw here is that over the next 18 months we only play 3 Tests outside England. So they have plenty of time to try and get things right in their favourite conditions. Of course, it will mean reserving judgement on anyone who comes in until they have actually played elsewhere but at least gives them some time to make changes, which will surely be in the offing once this set of ODIs and T20s are finished.
It will be interesting to find out where both of these teams stand really. I fancy if Australia keep being 5 or 6 for fuck all in South Africa, like they were in every first innings in this series, they will get massacred.
This is pretty much how I feel about this. This is much worse than the 2007 5-0 Ashes thrashing - we never, at any point in any of the games, looked like we were going to do anything. Stuffed 5 times.
The cracks we’ve papered over through the past year - the top order not firing, not knowing what our best bowling attack is, Graeme Swann not being the same since his injury - have shown in a major way in this series, and almost nothing has gone right.
I think Andy Flower will continue in his role - he’s said he wants to, and I believe that he can do it. I think Cook will continue as captain, as well, although I’m more ambivalent about that. I’m not sure if we’ll see Trott again.
While I heartily agree with the sentiments expressed, to be fair to England (though to misquote Douglas Adams, there is no particular reason to do so, other than for the sheer mental exercise of it) this part is not quite true - the team did well to take control of the fourth test during the first few sessions. Of course, that just made it all the more frustration when they comprehensively threw away their advantage.
What is the solution? I don’t know enough about cricket to have an opinion really, and so many things went wrong that the ECB must be wondering where to start. Perhaps just try to forget it all happened (after learning any lessons that are there to be learned, hopefully - e.g. vary your bowling tactics if they are not working, as mentioned up-thread) and hope that this was a one-off bad performance. The trouble with wholesale changes is you run the risk of worsening your prospects still further.
After losing both the ODI series and the T20 series in embarrassing fashion - the total score between England and Australia over all internationals was 12-1 in favour of Australia - this interminable tour is finally over.*
Except it isn’t. The body count is now ratcheting up.
The tour has cost us:
Trott - to mental illness.
Swann - to injury and a growing awareness that he wasn’t up to it.
Flower - say what you will, still England’s most successful coach - even if his methods appeared to be getting stale.
And now, the coup de grace, Pietersen is sacked by the ECB (i.e. it looks like his central contract will be paid up and not renewed) before a new coach has even been appointed - surely the new coach should be allowed to pick his own players and decide whether he can manage Pietersen’s personality? - and will no longer play for England in any form of the game.
A few things on this, imo:
It’s obvious that this is not about ability, nor is it about results. He was top run scorer on this shambles of a tour and is comfortably our most destructive batsman. He’s probably the most talented too. So this is about his personality, what he does in the dressing room, etc, obviously.
The statements that have come out are incredibly bland. As a fan, and it’s not often I get righteous about this sort of thing, I have the right to know why we are not picking one of our best players - I have after all plunked down £160 for tickets to games this coming summer. I am a paying customer of the ECB - not just a fan of the team. Here’s hoping our journos up here uncover and publish what went on.
KP is probably going to become the first cricketer to go out on the T20 circuit worldwide and really coin it in. Whether I like his personality or not, I hope he really succeeds and makes a boatload of money - he certainly doesn’t owe me (or the rest of England’s fans, imo) anything. He’s given us loads of entertainment and won us matches; he’s not even leaving of his own volition.
The management at the ECB - as alluded to above, I don’t see how this is a good decision, given that there is no coach in place.
There have always been difficult bastards in any dressing room - Bradman was supposedly difficult to get along with, Boycott was another, Botham yet another and I’d bet Warne isn’t easy to get along with sometimes either. Isn’t the point (and skill) of management to get the best out of players, regardless of personalities? Isn’t this an admission of total failure on one of the key tenets of building a winning team?
*It’s funny how results change perception - the last tour when England were winning seemed to flit by so quickly - this one feels like it started shortly after the end of the Neolithic Era.
I think there is one phrase we have to keep in mind here, “net benefit”
Was KP worth the hassle? He may have scored the most runs in the series but if his disruptive influence meant that others were not able to give their best or if constant disruption altered the focus of the team then he isn’t worth it. He wasn’t a Maradona, he was a Beckham, and we all know what the top manager of his time decided to do with brilliant players who weren’t a net benefit.
I also think we don’t need to know the details, especially as it may mean exposing others still in the team to unnecessary scrutiny.
He is certainly a great batting talent but I have a low opinion of KP as a person (and more so since I learned that Piers Morgan is a friend) and we managed him well enough for long enough to get the best out of him for multiple series wins. Even during that time he was a pain in arse for reasons of his own that were in no way down to poor management. They were poor choice on his part.
For whatever reason he is now seen as a liability and not a net benefit, so quite right that he gets cut loose.
He’ll whine and get all passive-aggressive (as he does) and if my judgement of him is in any way accurate he’ll be quite happy to take just enough blame for himself to justify smearing everyone else in his bound-to-be-imminent biography