pfft! like he’ll ever amount to anything…flash in the pan that lad!
With Cook and Pietersen going this morning and England only with a lead of 66, my lack of faith in Bairstow and Bell is leading me down the pessimistic track. Strongly suspect that England are going to lose this game from here.
England lead by 68 runs with 6 wickets remaining
agar gets cook, great 1st test wicket
Ball and wicket both doing a bit. Anything over 150 may be a tricky target but England really need 300 to make it a bridge too far for Australia. We do still have batting that can get us there but I think we’ll be short.
England favorites here. any target tht they set is difficult to chase in 4th innings
Any target? I would say that if they collapse from here - not an impossibility - a target of 120 is eminently gettable.
I sort of agree with Novelty Bobble - these two and Prior need to lift us up to a target close to 300 for us to be in the best shape - though I think something over 225 would be defendable (though likely heart attack inducing).
Since when was scoring runs in county games an indication of ability to play Test cricket? 
any target in this case would be anything over 150 
england don’t look like setting just 120 atm.
Bell has dug in. Broad has supplied some support and England are ahead by 218. We should set a target north of 250 now, so I’d make us marginal favourites. If they can push that target up further, then you’d start to think that they should be strong favourites.
Still a lot of cricket to play though.
This pair going well. Lead is over 200 and if we get to stumps or thereabouts we’ll be in really good shape. 250 plus looking likely and if Broad is fit we have a proper attack again.
Let me state it here. Swann to get a five-for in the second innings!
Isn’t it marvellous how our collective moods wax and wane? That’s test cricket for you.
Aleem Dar just gave a shocking decision to not give Stuart Broad out when he’s nicked it to slip, and Australia haven’t got any reviews left! It’s a real shame, because that is exactly the sort of decision that the DRS was brought in to cure.
The other dodgy decisions have been a bit arguable both ways - that was a clear edge, and Dar hasn’t given him out. Poor decision.
Dar is usually a very good umpire. At the WC, all of his decisions were upheld. Strange.
If anyone ask why cricket is popular, show the, his match.
Indeed. It wouldn’t have happened though if Clarke hadn’t used a review speculatively on an lbw decision clearly shaping down leg side. If he’d used his reviews in the way they were intended - I.e. to get rid of the howler - then they could have got Broad there.
I hope it’s the type of decision that makes captains around cricket use the DRS in the manner that it is intended, not for trying to buy a wicket on the margins (for the record, I am being consistent, I had a conversation with truthseeker about this in one of the other cricket threads where I said that the tech is not good enough to be 100 per cent accurate at the margins, it is there to overturn egregious errors).
It was a horrendous error by the umpire though. For that, I have some sympathy with the Aussies. Broad should be back in the hutch. If it was going to be any of our bats who was obviously not going to walk though, it would be Broad - he’s a bit of a dick at the best of times. He was never going to just walk off.
This has been a belting game thus far. England look to be making good progress at the moment aided by that decision. Another 40 or 50 runs and they should be heavy favourites.
This is absolutely true and, the way this game has gone so far, I fully expect that England will collapse horribly tomorrow (I hope Bell gets his ton, at least, as he is in my Ashes Fantasy team) and that Australia will run it close. But will they win?
If you mean the decision when Pattinson appealed against Bairstow I can understand why they reviewed it. They obviously felt that the umpire had given it not out because he thought Bairstow hit it, having given the decision as a run to Bairstow. On review the Aussies were correct in that Bairstow hadn’t hit it at all. Funnily enough Bairstow still gets the run.
Personally, as a former umpire my preference with LBW decisions would be for the DRS to only be used to see if the batsman hit it. I can always live with the kinds of decisions in this match staying as the umpire rules them, it’s just awful when a ball is edged into the pad and the umpire misses it, and it’s often easy to miss.
I think I must have been spoiled by the change in test cricket wrt the scoring rates. The game overall is enthralling, but watching England creep along at 2 an over. God. I do however respect them for it. I wish that would show up in the Aussie play a little more, it sometimes seems the Aussies are ‘score quickly or not at all’, with no respect for the conditions. I hope that changes when we get our shot in the 4th innings.
Unless there is a spectacular collapse tonight, or a very sporting declaration from England, I think the only team that can realistically win from here is England. Australia should be playing for a draw.
I know nobody does any more, but Broad should have walked after that obvious edge. It’s meant to be cricket - fair play and all that. If England do win this then it will be soured by that obvious cheating.
Apart from anything else, it will give the Aussies something else to whine about. (Funny how, for all the decades of “whingeing Pom” abuse, the Australian cricket team are now the undisputed world champions at it!)
Fair enough, YMMV and all that, but at full speed, first time out, I thought, that’s going down. The shape of the ball and the fact that it hit him in front of leg stump basically being the deciding factors (I didn’t think Bairstow had hit it first time out either and was surprised to see the umpire give a run - an odd decision). If it had been us in that situation, I don’t think I’d have been happy to see them go for the review. Just too chancy for me.
I’m probably a bit more liberal on the DRS than you. I don’t mind the predicative element as much, especially when it’s stopped batsmen playing with the pad down the pitch to spinners who would have been going on to hit the stumps. It’s made people play with the bat more, which I reckon is a good thing. I’d agree though that the marginal decisions are not the ones I want to see overturned - ones that are going on to hit middle of middle are what I want to see taken out of the game - and I absolutely agree that I’d want to take out the ones where the batsman has got bat on ball (if we’re going to want them to play with the bat, they should get credit for having used it).
Not walking isn’t cheating, it’s not Broad’s decision.
Let’s look at Law 27 (2):
Neither (a) nor (b) happened. The “1 above” states that batsmen don’t have to wait for an appeal to walk off if they think they are out.
You can certainly suggest that it isn’t fair play, but it’s entirely within not only the laws, but the spirit of that law written above, which places the decision with the umpire.
Imagine broad’s reaction if that happened on his bowling.