England V Australia 2015

Just a final word on Watto.

I think ordinarily that the cricket loving Aussie public and the selectors would have cut him some slack for one more test.

But I think his shortcomings were so glaringly obvious and concentrated. When added to his seeming inability to correct it, there was no other option than to cast him adrift.

On the up side, 1 for 300+ could turn the series, and finally Rogers gets a ton after 7 or 8 very good starts. They need to pile on runs in a hurry on day 2 so they don't have to bat twice. I can see it is going to take some time to bowl England out twice on this lifeless deck.

Well they batted twice but still piled on the runs.
Whilst luck always plays some part in it, and the Aussie batters had their share, they did look in control for the most part.

Smith looks like the ball comes at him in slow motion , the time he seems to have to play a shot. And I don't know why he bothers taking guard. He is all over the place on the crease. That must be difficult to bowl against and probably does go some way toward his effectiveness. But I've never seen a bloke since Derek Randall in the 70s fidget and prod and poke himself so much between balls.

Rogers was good, but his dizziness leading to retiring hurt, was a bit perplexing. Should get himself checked out to rule out concussion from the 1st innings knock to the head.

Warner seemed to become more comfortable the longer he batted.

And Mitch Marsh did enough with both bat and ball to earn himself another gig.

But on what was supposedly such a lifeless deck, the Aussie bowlers just looked outright dangerous in comparison to the Anderson, Broad, Stokes and Wood.

That one was thew big difference for mine.

It will be interesting how Edgebaston pans out.

A form reversal in the 2nd test
8/566 dec Australia[Smith 215 wow]
312 England [after being 4/30 so a good fightback]
2/254 dec Australia
103 England

A whopping 405 run win
Rogers 173 +49 retired hurt
Had a dizzy spell
Will he play the 3rd test ?
Need him as we rely to much on Smith and Warner otherwise

norMAL transmission has returned

Some comments made about the the Lords Pitch[2nd Test]

Alistair Cook :
" It was not an English pitch."

Darren Lehmann
" Its in London isint it ?"

Classic Boof !

Haha. Love your work Boof.

Gary Ballance has been replaced by John Bairstow


BALLANCE TEST BATTING
1194 runs
47.76 average
4 test hundreds in 27 innings
The 3rd fastest English batsman to get to 1000 test runs

BAIRSTOW TEST BATTING
593 runs
26.95 runs
No test hundreds

Gary Ballance might feel a bit hard done by ?

A Scrappyism.

I am happy to be(BAIR)stow that sort of bal(L)ance upon the English team.

The ballance of power has seemingly shifted
But cant write off the Englishmen yet

Playing in their backyard
Perhaps winning the toss
Conditions to suit
Keep Smith and Warner quiet as they did in the first test
Perhaps they can turn it around

The attack of Anderson, Broad, Wood, Stokes would be a handful if conditions suit

2nd Test.

Nice to see a 'keeper catching on front of slip with tow gloves, standing upright.

Australia 6/30 after 8 overs. WTF?
All caught in slips.
What does that tell you?

Aussie batters not showing any mettle to grind out in ideal bowling conditions.

Now 9/47 with 8 caught in slips.
Weak as p!ss effort as I've ever seen on a cricket field

win the toss & win the match.....i said at work when it was 3/10 they should just declare & try & get them out for 60-80 runs & get back into the match, for those that are critical of Australian roads, well at least the matches usually last the distance

Regardless of the pitch, it was an atrocious effort.

That was painful to watch

Am I the only one who thinks the reaction to Australia losing the Ashes is a bit over the top?

Yes it is extremely disappointing. Yes the performance in this test in particular was nothing short of disgraceful.

BUT

Australia have been in fantastic form generally over the past 2 - 3 years. From memory (and please correct me if I'm wrong) in that time they've regained the Ashes at home, beat South Africa in South Africa, hammered the supposedly world number 1 India last summer, won the World Cup, retained the Sir Frank Worrell trophy in the West Indies.

To me we're hardly in 'disarray' as some people are suggesting. It's just a series loss, predominantly due to the fact that the Australian batsmen (once again) tried to be too aggressive in English conditions. It been the same story on the last 3 tours.

Our top 3 are batsmen are good IMO (Rogers is old, but still performing I think). Our bowling attack is also of decent quality, with talent that can and will improve with time. It's just our middle order that needs a refurbishment I reckon.

Interested to know others thoughts...

Disarray is perhaps a bit strong.

But their are some fundamental issues, that have not been addressed in a long time.

I read that we can adapt when the pace of the game is up there. But we struggle when it is a grind or slower pace. I would agree with this.

We are generally able to counter the opposition even if they score at around 4 an over. But when an opposition slow things down (either in batting or bowling rate), we don't seem to adapt very well.

I have noted that in England we don't bat to their conditions and that has been our downfall this time. Like it was more or less last time.

Eg: I watched Warner a few times in the 2nd dig and over the series, he is playing these straight pitching balls that seam or swing from a backlift at 45 degrees. When you bring the bat down it necessarily has to swing laterally to connect with the ball. That's ok if it's straight, but if it seams, correcting the stroke from that is nearly impossible. If he had a straight backlift it would be easier to correct. How is it that Marsh / Lehmann haven't brought this to his attention?

These sorts of things are where we are not firing on all cylinders and haven't been for a while. Others like Watson similarly have technique flaws that just haven't been addressed. And conditions like England put this under the microscope.

The obsession with T20 is not helping this because there is hardly any room for practising these things in match type conditions eg guys playing Shield / County cricket. Added to this they don't even play enough preliminary lead-up County / League games before the tests commence because there isn't time.

Alan Border mentioned this and he is right. The balance in cricket in terms of preparation is all wrong.

England just seems to expose these flaws in very clear terms.

Until they can tackle this problem properly, we are always going to struggle abroad, no matter where unless the opposition is weak or the conditions are "Australia-like".

This is not about shuffling the deck chairs, but more refurbishing the entire ship.

EG lead 3-1
The tour match v Northampshire
396 NORTH
9/312 AUST

Aussies were 8/180
Cummins 82 and Lyon 41 saved the innings late
Mitchell Marsh the only top order batsman to impact
Smith 0 another failuire

BATTLE OF THE ALLROUNDERS
Watson 0/54 + 20
M Marsh 4/56 + 68
This may shock a few but Shane Watson was out LBW

Cummins 3/64 + 82
Will he play in the 5th Test ?

Mitchell Marsh must play in front of his brother Shaun or Adam Voges ?

Gingernuts wrote:Am I the only one who thinks the reaction to Australia losing the Ashes is a bit over the top?

Yes it is extremely disappointing. Yes the performance in this test in particular was nothing short of disgraceful.

BUT

Australia have been in fantastic form generally over the past 2 - 3 years. From memory (and please correct me if I'm wrong) in that time they've regained the Ashes at home, beat South Africa in South Africa, hammered the supposedly world number 1 India last summer, won the World Cup, retained the Sir Frank Worrell trophy in the West Indies.

To me we're hardly in 'disarray' as some people are suggesting. It's just a series loss, predominantly due to the fact that the Australian batsmen (once again) tried to be too aggressive in English conditions. It been the same story on the last 3 tours.

Our top 3 are batsmen are good IMO (Rogers is old, but still performing I think). Our bowling attack is also of decent quality, with talent that can and will improve with time. It's just our middle order that needs a refurbishment I reckon.

Interested to know others thoughts...

Yes I think there is a degree of over reaction

THE TRIANGLE
Australia
England
India

This is a general rule of acceptance , for the batting , in this century
Australia struggle against swing in England
Australia struggle against spin in India
England struggles against bounce in Australia
India struggles against bounce in Australia

Its more to do with home team conditions than any thing else

Yea that's what I think as well Scrappy.

Away series wins have always been like gold. I think it's even harder now as the cricket calendar is so crammed, and there's not the time for as many tour matches.

Scrappy wrote:EG lead 3-1
The tour match v Northampshire

BATTLE OF THE ALLROUNDERS
Watson 0/54 + 20
M Marsh 4/56 + 68
This may shock a few but Shane Watson was out LBW

Mitchell Marsh must play in front of his brother Shaun or Adam Voges ?

I think to lighten himself up for running between wickets, Watson may as well go out there without a bat.
He really doesn't need the pretence of trying to hit it whilst he seems so insistent on letting his pads do the talking,

I reckon I would go with Mitch Marsh.
The other 2 seem well out of sorts.

And Smith needs to put a bit of lead in his boots to keep him still. He's like a jack rabbit at the crease at the moment. He wasn't doing that in Australia last summer.

Scrappy wrote:
THE TRIANGLE
Australia
England
India

This is a general rule of acceptance , for the batting , in this century
Australia struggle against swing in England
Australia struggle against spin in India
England struggles against bounce in Australia
India struggles against bounce in Australia

Its more to do with home team conditions than any thing else

You would think that with the technology that goes into pitch preparation that they could develop some practice wickets in Australia that emulate the Indian / English conditions. Maybe they do, but even if not, it is more about the shift in mindset how you go about preparing yourself to those conditions and the discipline required to concentrate to build an innings.

What has been on display is that if Australia can't play their aggressive, front-running brand of cricket, they are very brittle mentally.
England should have sensed that by now and look like they are exploiting it with their bowling tactics.

Having watched every test so far, their bowlers have largely put away their bouncers and concentrated on a good length outside off stump and let the pitch / conditions allow the ball to do its stuff. Could their Aussie coach be telling them some home truths about the way the Australians like to play? Reckon so.

A lot of people are pinning that aggressive mindset on 20/20 cricket, but I reckon it goes back to the Steve Waugh era personally.

Back then Australia could do as it pleased because it's batting order was one of the best ever (possibly THE best ever).

Since that era has passed I think Australian cricket has really struggled to roll back this mindset. The coaches/selectors/powerbrokers still want us to be the dominant bullyboys of international cricket - but we just don't have the skill level in our batting line up to do that any more, and may never have ever again for that matter.

Much better application. Why couldn't they take this attitude into the last 2 tests.
Only Clarke didn't get amongst the runs.

All the things we humble peasants have been saying seem to have been considered and addressed by the coaching group.
- Smith didn't wander about the crease quite as much
- Tubby commented several times about Warner's angled bat issues having been corrected somewhat
- They didn't rush things, particularly the first session, but still managed a reasonable clip

This stuff ain't rocket science.

Chambo Off To Work We Go wrote:This stuff ain't rocket science.

No it isn't is it?

I knew there was a reason they called it test cricket.