They lost them yesterday.
ASHES - 2015!
- Thread starter Ryan
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They're obviously at war with each other behind the scenes. The way this series has gone so far is a reflection of that. Keep it up, fellas.
Really looking forward to today. A nice 400 lead would be good. 😀
A couple of early wickets. Wood did well I thought. 27 from a nightwatchman is perfectly fine.
Great declaration. Those overs before the break will have them suffering waking nightmares for the next half hour.
Australia have done extremely well here, getting some confidence & morale back.
Ooh. Fuck that's tight.
That's gotta be millimetres.
I'm not convinced it was a definite no ball, I'd like to see a cgi line where it's faded to confirm.
Phew didn't cost too much though
perhaps not now!
I was thinking that - He looks bang average with a bit of movement, nip and seam. Failed again today - Horribly as well.
Clarke gone. In more ways than one, methinks.
A rotten technique but he is getting found out now. Lara used to shuffle to off in a similar fashion but he was a far superior player!
This is a terrific spell from Wood. Nevill trying very hard to get himself out.
Well that was a really good day. I'm so impressed by Stokes. Boycott has been singing his praises for ages and I was looking for proof. He certainly delivered today. Australia are a shower and in desperate need for an overhaul. Clarke.....? Smith? This is the poorest Oz team I think I've ever seen.
Stokes was excellent swinging it both ways, but we have a team on the up with loads of young talent, I never got the doom and gloom when the Pietersen thing blew up again. I do however think we might be in for a rude awakening this winter though - a real test against Pakistan and SA.
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Australia really are in a pickle, their middle order is the weakest I've ever seen, the back ups, Khawaja, Doolan, Burns etc aren't much kop either.They also need a new opener and a better keeper. Thats five new players ! Amazing considering how they were going to smash us.5-0. Mental disintegration how the tables have turned.
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Australia really are in a pickle, their middle order is the weakest I've ever seen, the back ups, Khawaja, Doolan, Burns etc aren't much kop either.They also need a new opener and a better keeper. Thats five new players ! Amazing considering how they were going to smash us.5-0. Mental disintegration how the tables have turned.
Boycott sums things up beautifully here - he is loving them having their hubris shoved up their arses by the sound of it just as much as us !
I cannot believe that before this series started I picked Australia to win 2-1. If I had seen how badly Australia bat against the moving ball I would have been running to the bookies to put money on England.
They are so bad it is unbelievable. They do not learn. When I went to Australia to play I knew it would be on hard bouncy pitches so I practised in the nets to replicate the challenge. I had people bowling off 20 yards, banging it in hard with a Chingford ball that zipped through and bounced.
Australia should have done homework on the lateral movement you get in England from good seam bowlers such as Stuart Broad and James Anderson.
It is not as if Australia do not know that it will seam and swing in England. Bob Massie bowled us out at Lord’s in 1972 with 16 wickets. That fella Terry Alderman took buckets full of wickets here down the years.
Glenn McGrath was lethal with the Duke ball on English pitches, so they should have known what to expect and prepared for it.
You cannot just turn up in England and expect pitches to be exactly like Australia, hope The Lying Rag is going to shine at 90 degrees and you will bat under blue skies. That does not happen.
There are times in England when you have to graft and work hard for your runs. You do not have long periods where you can cream the ball to all parts. I have no sympathy for them. They came here cock-a-hoop and gloating after beating us 5-0. They derided England and some of their players slagged us off whenever they could in the newspapers.
But the last laugh is on them. They have been so poor in batting that maybe we should play four or five of our second-teamers at the Oval so we can give them some experience and see how they go against this second-class Australian team. Obviously England will not do that, but this lot are so bad I think we would still win if they did.
Just look at how they have performed away from the flat pitch of Lord’s.
Australia’s most prolific batsman over the last 12 months, Steve Smith, has played like a novice. He is a flat-track bully on easy batting pitches but in six innings on the three Test-match pitches where the ball has moved laterally he has had a bad technique and he has shown poor shot selection and an inability to graft or work for runs. In those six innings he has scored 92 runs. Pathetic.
His second-innings dismissal here was unbelievably stupid. He was caught at cover-point trying to smash a good-length ball on the up having just come to the crease following a failure in the first innings and with his team trying to battle for credibility.
As the vice-captain and the next leader of the team what sort of message does that send to your team-mates?
Michael Clarke has moved down to No 5 because of a lack of runs and the fact that the short ball is playing tricks with his mind. There is no doubt that the shot he played to get out in the second innings was because he just had a bouncer the ball before and had played it badly.
You cannot play Test cricket thinking all the time about the next short ball that is going to be aimed at your head. I question whether he is ever going to come back from this. He looks shot mentally.
Then we have Shaun Marsh. He made a mistake going hard at the ball in the first innings. That is human. It happens.
But to make the same mistake going hard at the ball in the second innings is brainless. He has played 15 Test matches, had 28 innings and scored eight ducks. No wonder. Playing like that shows that he is not smart or a good learner.
The wicketkeeper Peter Nevill stays on the crease poking around without good footwork. If we had held our catches and not bowled no-balls it would have been over much quicker. But Australia’s terrible cricket should not take away from the performances of Broad and Ben Stokes.
Broad has bowled fantastically well. Before lunch David Warner played and missed at four balls in an over that could have brought Broad four wickets.
The way he is bowling at the moment reminds me of Brian Statham. Brian used to continually ask questions around off stump, but probably bowled a bit quicker than Stuart. Brian did not try to swing the ball. He bowled seam-up and if it swung occasionally it was just by pure chance.
Every batsman knows that when you face a tall man with a high action you will have problems playing him if he bowls it around off stump at pace. It just needs a little lateral movement with a bit of bounce and you are in trouble. You do not know which ball will bounce awkwardly. It is a guessing game sometimes.
If Broad keeps bowling this well he will take 500 Test wickets – he is only 29. But if England want to be the best Test-match team in the world they have to think seriously of taking Broad and Anderson out of one-day cricket. They did not play earlier in the summer against New Zealand. They were rested. Look how fresh and good they have been ever since.
Yes, Anderson is injured now. But that happens and who knows whether all that one-day cricket in Australia last winter caught up with him eventually. He does not need to play at the Oval in the fifth Test and risk hurting himself again. Wait and come back in the United Arab Emirates against Pakistan.
Mark Wood has good energy and pace. He is a good young bowler who can get swing and lift from a short, explosive run-up. If he can harness all that with patience and discipline he will give international batsmen fewer balls to score off and that will put them under more pressure, making him a better and more dangerous bowler. At the moment he is trying too many different deliveries.
He needs to have a ‘go-to’ ball that he can deliver and repeat at will around off stump. By trying to vary every delivery he loses control and becomes too expensive, going at seven an over. He needs to create the pressure that leads to wickets.
In the afternoon Steven Finn saw the ball swing and got sucked in to trying to pitch it up and get nicks. But he was floating balls up at 82 miles per hour that were easily hittable. He is best suited to hitting the deck on a length at as close to 90mph as possible.
When Finn bowled much quicker after tea he started to look dangerous again.
At 6ft 7in the ball will occasionally bounce high from a good length and that becomes disconcerting for a batsman. He should not sacrifice his pace for swing. Never do that. When it is quicker he is more dangerous.
We saw in the afternoon there were periods of play where we needed a top-class spinner. Graeme Swann in his pomp would have bowled at one end and the seamers alternated in short spells at the other. England have to find somebody.
There will be pitches in the future, probably in the UAE in October, where Moeen Ali’s bowling will not be good enough. He has batted wonderfully well all series and we can get away with his occasional spin bowling at home because the ball moves around in England.
That might not happen in places such as the UAE, India and Sri Lanka. The runs he scores will not offset the lack of quality spin but against Australia that has not mattered because they cannot bat against a seaming ball.
I cannot believe that before this series started I picked Australia to win 2-1. If I had seen how badly Australia bat against the moving ball I would have been running to the bookies to put money on England.
They are so bad it is unbelievable. They do not learn. When I went to Australia to play I knew it would be on hard bouncy pitches so I practised in the nets to replicate the challenge. I had people bowling off 20 yards, banging it in hard with a Chingford ball that zipped through and bounced.
Australia should have done homework on the lateral movement you get in England from good seam bowlers such as Stuart Broad and James Anderson.
It is not as if Australia do not know that it will seam and swing in England. Bob Massie bowled us out at Lord’s in 1972 with 16 wickets. That fella Terry Alderman took buckets full of wickets here down the years.
Glenn McGrath was lethal with the Duke ball on English pitches, so they should have known what to expect and prepared for it.
You cannot just turn up in England and expect pitches to be exactly like Australia, hope The Lying Rag is going to shine at 90 degrees and you will bat under blue skies. That does not happen.
There are times in England when you have to graft and work hard for your runs. You do not have long periods where you can cream the ball to all parts. I have no sympathy for them. They came here cock-a-hoop and gloating after beating us 5-0. They derided England and some of their players slagged us off whenever they could in the newspapers.
But the last laugh is on them. They have been so poor in batting that maybe we should play four or five of our second-teamers at the Oval so we can give them some experience and see how they go against this second-class Australian team. Obviously England will not do that, but this lot are so bad I think we would still win if they did.
Just look at how they have performed away from the flat pitch of Lord’s.
Australia’s most prolific batsman over the last 12 months, Steve Smith, has played like a novice. He is a flat-track bully on easy batting pitches but in six innings on the three Test-match pitches where the ball has moved laterally he has had a bad technique and he has shown poor shot selection and an inability to graft or work for runs. In those six innings he has scored 92 runs. Pathetic.
His second-innings dismissal here was unbelievably stupid. He was caught at cover-point trying to smash a good-length ball on the up having just come to the crease following a failure in the first innings and with his team trying to battle for credibility.
As the vice-captain and the next leader of the team what sort of message does that send to your team-mates?
Michael Clarke has moved down to No 5 because of a lack of runs and the fact that the short ball is playing tricks with his mind. There is no doubt that the shot he played to get out in the second innings was because he just had a bouncer the ball before and had played it badly.
You cannot play Test cricket thinking all the time about the next short ball that is going to be aimed at your head. I question whether he is ever going to come back from this. He looks shot mentally.
Then we have Shaun Marsh. He made a mistake going hard at the ball in the first innings. That is human. It happens.
But to make the same mistake going hard at the ball in the second innings is brainless. He has played 15 Test matches, had 28 innings and scored eight ducks. No wonder. Playing like that shows that he is not smart or a good learner.
The wicketkeeper Peter Nevill stays on the crease poking around without good footwork. If we had held our catches and not bowled no-balls it would have been over much quicker. But Australia’s terrible cricket should not take away from the performances of Broad and Ben Stokes.
Broad has bowled fantastically well. Before lunch David Warner played and missed at four balls in an over that could have brought Broad four wickets.
The way he is bowling at the moment reminds me of Brian Statham. Brian used to continually ask questions around off stump, but probably bowled a bit quicker than Stuart. Brian did not try to swing the ball. He bowled seam-up and if it swung occasionally it was just by pure chance.
Every batsman knows that when you face a tall man with a high action you will have problems playing him if he bowls it around off stump at pace. It just needs a little lateral movement with a bit of bounce and you are in trouble. You do not know which ball will bounce awkwardly. It is a guessing game sometimes.
If Broad keeps bowling this well he will take 500 Test wickets – he is only 29. But if England want to be the best Test-match team in the world they have to think seriously of taking Broad and Anderson out of one-day cricket. They did not play earlier in the summer against New Zealand. They were rested. Look how fresh and good they have been ever since.
Yes, Anderson is injured now. But that happens and who knows whether all that one-day cricket in Australia last winter caught up with him eventually. He does not need to play at the Oval in the fifth Test and risk hurting himself again. Wait and come back in the United Arab Emirates against Pakistan.
Mark Wood has good energy and pace. He is a good young bowler who can get swing and lift from a short, explosive run-up. If he can harness all that with patience and discipline he will give international batsmen fewer balls to score off and that will put them under more pressure, making him a better and more dangerous bowler. At the moment he is trying too many different deliveries.
He needs to have a ‘go-to’ ball that he can deliver and repeat at will around off stump. By trying to vary every delivery he loses control and becomes too expensive, going at seven an over. He needs to create the pressure that leads to wickets.
In the afternoon Steven Finn saw the ball swing and got sucked in to trying to pitch it up and get nicks. But he was floating balls up at 82 miles per hour that were easily hittable. He is best suited to hitting the deck on a length at as close to 90mph as possible.
When Finn bowled much quicker after tea he started to look dangerous again.
At 6ft 7in the ball will occasionally bounce high from a good length and that becomes disconcerting for a batsman. He should not sacrifice his pace for swing. Never do that. When it is quicker he is more dangerous.
We saw in the afternoon there were periods of play where we needed a top-class spinner. Graeme Swann in his pomp would have bowled at one end and the seamers alternated in short spells at the other. England have to find somebody.
There will be pitches in the future, probably in the UAE in October, where Moeen Ali’s bowling will not be good enough. He has batted wonderfully well all series and we can get away with his occasional spin bowling at home because the ball moves around in England.
That might not happen in places such as the UAE, India and Sri Lanka. The runs he scores will not offset the lack of quality spin but against Australia that has not mattered because they cannot bat against a seaming ball.
I like to see sportsmen who were absolute dicks in their playing days turn out to be really good pundits. McEnroe's another - tennis has bored the pants off me for years now but I do perk up and listen when McEnroe's on.
I really like Boycott - He might be harsh but he's often spot on. His obvious glee at our position and disdain for the Aussies technique against the moving ball is palpable. It's funny listening to Boycott and Jim Maxwell commentate together!
It makes a refreshing change to the faux support offered for rival teams, or the bigoted stereotyping criticism done during European or national matches from footy pundits, that's for sure.
Today is going to be fun. I for one am going to be merciless with the gloating. After the whitewash last year I got so much stick from my Aussie family and friends - Payback time! Oh and @Ryan can expect some as well. Bloody right!
I will spare Mrs Astaire though - A wise move all things considered! 😎
I will spare Mrs Astaire though - A wise move all things considered! 😎
One thing he doesn't mention in that article is the influence of the IPL - ALL their team have played in the IPL except Rodgers Nevill and Lyon. When you look at the Indians over here last year and the Aussies this year we have seen many many poor strokes geting batsmen out. Take Smith yersterday for example ridiculous shot under the circumstances. There is a clamour to allow our players to go to India but I hope the ECB resists, the way we played against NZ in the one dayers shows we have nothing much to learn and we mustn't risk spoiling our technique for the long game
I had a great chat with an Aussie at Edgbaston who reckons the IPL has ruined Australian cricket. He pointed to Hussey as a case in point. I can't say I know to much about Aussie cricket to comment.
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