Cricket - Matches & General Discussion Thread

20 hours ago, my missus said:

Yawn.

Been staying up late? I wouldn't bother

I stayed up until lunch.

Warner and Labuschagne batted superbly. Australia seem a proper balanced side with batting and bowlers. They have a fairly long tail but it doesn't matter as at least one of the top order are likely to make a big score.

6 hours ago, Niels said:

I stayed up until lunch.

Warner and Labuschagne batted superbly. Australia seem a proper balanced side with batting and bowlers. They have a fairly long tail but it doesn't matter as at least one of the top order are likely to make a big score.

and that's why i find cricket really really boring.

9 hours ago, my missus said:

and that's why i find cricket really really boring.

Your loss, not cricket's.

Rather better from England on day 3. Still trailing, but Root and Malan batted like test players.

Good comment I saw earlier about how it always ends in a discussion about bowlers when the batting unit is consistently out for completely inadequate scores.

Everything is pretty much academic when you're all out for 147 having chosen to bat.

To make matters worse, they don't get paid for the game

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-11/ashes-england-hit-with-heavy-fine-for-slow-over-rate/100693452

Quote

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has come down hard on England for its slow over rate in the first Ashes Test at the Gabba, penalising the tourists 100 per cent of their match fee.

17 minutes ago, Farmduck said:

To make matters worse, they don't get paid for the game

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-11/ashes-england-hit-with-heavy-fine-for-slow-over-rate/100693452

 

Good

Outside of 2010 this has been normal service for 30 years ? Why can’t we compete there , we’ve had endless theories and reviews and it’ll be different next times coz we’ve learned but it’s always pretty much the same .  Take out 2010/11 and It’s 28-3 since 1990 , with us not winning a game since 2003 . I didn’t see it but I’m sure Rooty was as ever ‘ taking the positives ‘ . Batting as usual seems the major issue , without first innings runs you’re just not in the game 

Shouldn't this be in the obituary thread ?

9 hours ago, DavidM said:

Outside of 2010 this has been normal service for 30 years ? Why can’t we compete there , we’ve had endless theories and reviews and it’ll be different next times coz we’ve learned but it’s always pretty much the same .  Take out 2010/11 and It’s 28-3 since 1990 , with us not winning a game since 2003 . I didn’t see it but I’m sure Rooty was as ever ‘ taking the positives ‘ . Batting as usual seems the major issue , without first innings runs you’re just not in the game 

I don't think it helps that we big up the Ashes like it's the only thing that counts and then - for at least the past 10 years - utterly fail to prepare when we get there.

8 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

I don't think it helps that we big up the Ashes like it's the only thing that counts and then - for at least the past 10 years - utterly fail to prepare when we get there.

Yes i think thats a big factor .  Yet again , again , we are saying we’re totally underdone in terms of first class cricket 

27 minutes ago, DavidM said:

Yes i think thats a big factor .  Yet again , again , we are saying we’re totally underdone in terms of first class cricket 

Although, this time, there are reasons outside their control why the England side didn't get much preparation once they arrived in Australia.

Adelaide next, possibly with Broad and maybe Anderson in the attack. And a couple of innings under the batsmen's belts. Still expecting to lose the series, mind.

10 hours ago, Futtocks said:

Although, this time, there are reasons outside their control why the England side didn't get much preparation once they arrived in Australia.

They set up one match - against themselves, I believe - and it rained.

There was time for more, the ECB chose not to schedule any.

Hard to see anything other than more of the same for the rest of the series with hope occasionally raised by Root scoring some runs.

ECB have found a solution for Covid. Anyone who puts on an England shirt becomes unable to catch anything.

Burns is out already, and England aren't yet in double figures.

What an abysmal start.  Thank God that thunder, lightning and a shower came along ….. that is also good news for me as the temperature is dropping and we might get by without having to put the air con in tonight.  I have bought cars for less than it costs to run the air con all night!

I think this tour may be one that award winning books are written about in a few years.

There is a lot of being wise after the event going on. Most pundits including myself though that the pink ball in Adelaide would swing based on James Anderson's performance there in 2017-18. It has not. and England are stuffed.

As I have posted before, up until recently the priority for English Cricket was:

1. The Ashes

2. The 50 Over World Cup

Now it is

1.  The

2. The T20 Bi-annual World Cup

As ye sow so shall ye reap, as there is no First Class Crcket in August, spinners do not learn there trade on dry wickets and have a holding role on seam friendly wickets in April / May and September. Said seam bowlers struggle in  overseas conditions as they have a dry climate to deal with and not a damp one.

We cannot produce fast bowlers that stay fit because of the workload with English players playing multi-formats so we have Jofra injured, Olly Stone about to give up red ball cricket due to a persistent back injury and Mark Wod, the Ryan Harris of English Cricket, more understandably no able to play in consective back to back tests. Your lucky to get Wood for 3 matches in a 5 test series.

Which leaves England with the line up you see at Adelaide. All right arm and varying degrees of fast medium, with Ben Stokes pressed into the Neil Wagner, rough them up through short pitched deliveries mode.

We have no spinners of note for reasons already mentiopned above and Nathan Lyon is increasingly the difference in thios series. We have no variety, with Sam Curran already found out as a T20 medium pacer at Test level and they are doing there best to convert George Garton from a left arm quick to a left arm medium pace / Tonka in T20 mode.

Bowlers win matches - Australia have the better attack in all conditions and to be fair to the batting when the opposition is sticking 450 plus on you every game. You are playing from behind and thaqt's is not English Batters forte.

Careers will end on this tour and so will Root's captaincy with the possibility of Chris Silverwood's tenure also ending with a 5-0 defeat. But are they to blame or is it "teflon" Tom the Bonus king sitting in the ECB offices following the Colin Graves blueprint which has alenated existing fans but not brought in any new ones (and thanks to the honest views expressed on the General forum from non cricket fans who are  because you prove my point) . If you think by now with the stink from the various scandals this pair are discredited. think again they may be with the fans, but not the County Chairman as long as the money keeps flowing.

With optimism wiuthin the side and outside the team evaporarting faster than an Ice Cream at Coober Pedy a grim time awaits all expats down under. I am only grateful that the Federal Government's ban on visitors has spared me the indignity of  being able to fly over there to watch this in person. Bonza - Scomo..

13 hours ago, THE RED ROOSTER said:

There is a lot of being wise after the event going on. Most pundits including myself though that the pink ball in Adelaide would swing based on James Anderson's performance there in 2017-18. It has not. and England are stuffed.

My attitude was very much that openly basing an entire tour strategy on the ball swinging in a few sessions of two of the Tests shows some of the strangest thinking that England have ever set sail to Australia with.

And, even if that were the plan, the execution of it - bowling so slowly that the opportunity was limited combined with not actually setting up to use any swinging pressure that should emerge - was baffling.

The sad thing is, this was entirely predictable and all the words spilling out of Root's mouth just sounded like "blah blah blah" to me.

Entire team undercooked and our star player completely raw.

Poor team selection

Batting unit as bad as anything I've ever seen turn out for England (Root excepted).

Spinners who realize nobody has any confidence in them who get targeted by the opposition.

5-0 it shall be, unless Covid ends the tour early.

This is very bad for the Ashes "Brand". Since the turn of the century the results down under have been 4-1, 5-0, 1-3. 5-0, 4-0 and soon to be 2-0 possibly going 5-0 to Australia. There are many Aussie Cricket Tragics and Cricket Australia suits who while wanting an Aussie win are desperate for England to show some fight in this series because Broadcasters will not pay millions of pounds or dollars for one sided contests.

If your wondering why SKY SPORTS which has the Big Bash League (with a lot of English players) did not bid for the Ashes and were content for BT to have it, it was not just because of the low viewing figures overnight the tests would get but also because they were savvy enough to realise only the die-hards like myself would still be watching with others going for the off-switch with each English batting collapse 

You cannot pick the players you do not have. Yes you can change the team on this tour but its like shuffling deckchairs on the titanic, As discussed, we do not produce spinners or pacemen because of the quality of pitches in the early and late half of the season and their ludicrous workload but we also have batters who cannot cope with high quality fast bowling and pitches that turn because they do not see them in county cricket. If you have technical flaws in your game playing at a higher level exposes them.

When Rory Burns was being ignored by the selectors, his Director of Cricket, Alec Stewart came out with the stroke that Rory had been one of the highest and most consistent run scorers in county cricket and if he could not get into the England line up what did it say about county cricket. Now he is in the side, that has proved to be true Al but not in the way you envisioned it.

That's why we have the strategy of banking on the pink ball swinging in day- night matches on juiced up pitches as a way of closing the gap. England are going to lose to an Australian "A" attack this test and with Cummins and Hazlewood due to return more carnage is imminent.

I am almost at the point of issuing a Private Eye style apology along the lines of I am truly sorry for having misled readers that England could be a competitive cricket team.

What will happen post series is, a media storm, "something must be done" comes the cry but of course the pundits well remunerated by SKY and the BBC to promoted Harrisons folly will not state the obvious in public at least even if privately, as Vic Marks will attest, their views ar quite different.

The only thing that will change are the broadcasting fees in a downwasrd direction somnething that will hit the ECB and County nomenklatura where it really hurts in their wallets..

Its a mystery to me how Buttler has lasted as a test player … great white ball player , barely played red ball cricket and is a test side fixture . The game totally screws him up , he’s no idea how to apporoach it with the bat and isn’t good enough with the gloves . And really i doubt  he even wants to be there . He’s just one , we could go on . So many parts of the side , and system its generated from , are substandard and broken

10 hours ago, DavidM said:

Its a mystery to me how Buttler has lasted as a test player … great white ball player , barely played red ball cricket and is a test side fixture . The game totally screws him up , he’s no idea how to apporoach it with the bat and isn’t good enough with the gloves . And really i doubt  he even wants to be there . He’s just one , we could go on . So many parts of the side , and system its generated from , are substandard and broken

I keep saying it because it just seems to be more and more true but everything about this tour (the whole set up but this tour brings it into focus) is like the 1990s all over again.

Comedy preparation, bizarre selections, weird captaincy but, through it all, a set up that seems designed to crush the life out of players and put their every error under the microscope without the support to withstand that.

And, to repeat, compare how worried and nervy the red ball team is with how confident and assured, even when making errors, the white ball teams are. That's not necessarily funding and priorities but how what you have is delivered. This is, to use a phrase we like, a systemic failure.

Root is out in the final over of the day. So, despite going to an unexpected fifth day, this match is toast.