2006 Ashes

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I was up listening to the radio till about 2, seems like Harminson is bowling very poorly but I'll have to watch the highlights. Like Barmy I don't know why Monty wasnt picked , it's far from over but things are looking a little desperate already.

 

If Kay Pee can move the ball on this pitch (and he bowled a few snorters) then Monty would have had them wondering which way is up.

Kay Pee shifted the ball more than our 'main' spinner in Gilo. God help us when Warne gets on this wicket after a few days.

We sent completely the wrong message when Jones and Giles were picked ahead of Read and Panesar.

1st innings declaration in the first match... how embarassing.

[ November 24, 2006, 07:03: Message edited by: Barmy Army ]

 

I must say I love watching tailenders bat. That was quite exciting, Stuart Clarke made 6-hitting look easy. Pity about Punter, a double century would have really made my day.
Freddy's bowling well, the ball with which he dismissed Hussy was magic!

Can England avoid the follow on?
atm Lee has contributed more to Englands score than the batsmen - 4 byes.

 

Those 2's job is just to see out the day really. To be honest, Cook is a very slow scorer anyway so he should be perfect... hopefully...

Lee hitting 94mph in his first over. He is rapid!

Strauss out playing a STUPID shot. What on Earth did he try that for?

That's Cook gone as well, a jaffa by McGrath.

Game over now to be honest.

Haha, the Aussies are getting huge slices of luck on day 3 so far. The pitch has turned into an absolute disgrace. Mike Atherton got all 4 fingers down the cracks in the wicket. That's ridiculous. Plus, Pietersen just got out to an appalling LB decision. Then Flintoff got out to a no-ball that the umpire missed. The umpires have been superb so far as well. Ah well, this game was over since day 1 really. Bell has played superbly so far though. He's really dug in and never really looked troubled. He's just not had much support.

I think the draw is still on though.

[ November 25, 2006, 01:56: Message edited by: Barmy Army ]

 

I must say I was quite surprised that ponting decided to bat. Prolly something to do with the TV rights and the sold out ground methinks.
Thats was a pretty good bowling fielding effort from the Aussies, none of the batsmen were able to breathe, let alone score runs. Freddy was unlucky, Brett's foot was completely over the line for that dismissal.
Oh well, lets hope the Adelaide test is a tad closer.

 

Just not good enough. Everything we did was not good enough. Only 1 or 2 players have put their hands up and done a bit of a job. Flintoff with the ball and Bell with the bat. No-one else is bothered.

 

Wow, so the English batsmen actually can bat! I was beginning to wonder after yesterdays dismal performance. No centuries yet, but KP is well on his way. Now the big question: can England spend another day at the crease? I still think we should have made the Poms follow on.

 

We're notoriously slow starters, but at least we've begun to make a fight of it. Minds are on next 4 tests to be honest, we're not going to be able to bat tomorrow out with the batting we have left.

 

I found it interesting that "Ashley Bloody Giles" was Englands second highest run scorer yesterday, Think he can repeat this effort and bring up a half century? Jones did next to nothing with the bat despite being picked for this very ability. These two have been coping an incredible amount of flack from the media as well as the comentators, all of whom tend to confer with your view that Panesar and Read should be there.

 

The 1st innings was a shambles all-round. Better to put it out of mind and move on.

I just don't get the idea that Giles is in there for his batting. The first 6 lads are there for batting, a bowler is there for bowling. Want extra batting ability? Take 4 bowlers instead of five and drop another batsman in. Even Pietersen can move the ball more than Giles. Panesar was our best bowler all last year and took world class wickets such as Tendulkar, Dravid, ul Haq etc. He's a classy spinner, he must be gutted that he isn't there. I can't think what else he could have done.

Here's praying for rain tomorrow, because with the batting we have left we've no chance of batting the day out. Rain is our only chance of a draw. At least we've found our feet in this series though. But we NEED better bowling for the 2nd test. You can't allow teams to rack up 600+ declarations and expect to win test matches.

 

I'm getting my hopes up that we can battle the day out, if Pietersen does'nt do anything stupid like Strauss we might just start to frustrate Warne and stand a chance. To be fair we've lost wickets to appaling umpire decisions and poor strokes. On another day we'd still have an extra wicket or two and look capable of grinding the draw out. If we do manage to Ponting is going to look like a right plonker.

 

Yeah, I don't think England looked like winning at any stage after the third day. I still don't feel completely setled given what happend at Lords last year, but then again the 'Gabba doesn't neccesarily equal an Aussie win, while Lords kinda does (we havn't lost a test there in a redicuosly long time).

What do people think of Australia's decision not to follow on? It worked out fine, but Ponting came under a bit of criticism, mainly because of the forcast storms.

Anderson hasn't really done that much and there have been a few calls to replace him with Mahmood. I havn't really seen him play, is he any good?

 

Mahmood's probably a slightly poorer bowler than Anderson. The calls are because he can hold a bat. If we replace Anderson with Mahmood then maybe Panesar can come in instead of Giles.

Nobody thinks Panesar would win the Ashes for us, but at the end of the day you want your best bowlers out there.

The decision to follow on was a bit strange. Ponting made it closer than it needed to be. But then again, he does only have 4 bowlers and 2 of them are the wrong side of 35. I can understand his decision.

I was more interested in the pitch, TBH. If that was a county pitch over here, the teams would refuse to play on it. It was like a road map! The cracks were ridiculous.

 

Yeah, the pitch did get quite bad, Adelaide should be better (we got the best curator in the sothern hemisphere and the best oval, imho at least)

 

I didn't see the Australian batsmen having the slightest problem with the pitch, so I don't think there was much wrong with it.......

 

They did their batting on day one and two though to be fair. With a 30 over or so spurt for the 2nd innings. The pitch really did deteriorate. I've tried to find pictures to show it, but cricinfo didn't have any.

That's not an excuse anyway as we got thoroughly thrashed. But the pitch did suck. Quite a few balls hit the cracks and went off in all directions!

Anyroad, onwards to the next test. Starts tonight, so that'll be me without much sleep for the next 5 days *groan*.

 

At $251 Shaun Tait is rated a better chance of scoring more runs in Australia's first innings than Glen McGrath ($501) despite not being in the side (he was the thirteenth man on the list after Michel Johnson). In sportstab we trust!
I thought it was a bit of a shame Tait wasn't included in the team, being played in his home state and all. A lot of influential ex-cricketers have advocated for him and he's been likened to Jeff Thomson.
In the paper today it Darren Gough proposed that South Australian captain Darren Lehman should replace Duncan Fletcher as English coach. He said said it was a "It's a very strong rumour in England that Darren (Lehman) could be the next coach. Have you heard anything of it Barmy?

 

Huh? I've never heard anything about that before.
Probably just Goughie trying to wind people up, as he does.

 

Strange line-up again. Many teams would play 2 spinners here. We opt to go in with none.

Hope the batsmen continue where they left off today. We need a huge score, because i can't see our attack posing too many problems on that wicket.

 

That was painfully slow, hopefully things speed up a bit tomorrow. I think the 2 spinners thing is a tad overrated, I'd think Sydney to be a more spinner friendly pitch than Adelaide. Plus I'd rather see another quick (namely Shaun Tait) over Stuart McGill (who incidently has an average of over 40 at Adelaide oval).
As for the English side, would you have Giles in the side instead of any of the available quicks? The almost universal conviction is that Giles should be replaced by Panesar.
Phill Tufnor (sp?) saw the decision to leave the English side unchanged as a action, as it would install confidence in the team that was chosen. When a team plays that badly in a test I would have thought that you'd want to venture as far away from the lineup as possible. Oh well, I guess they kinda won the first day...albeit really slowly.