General Cricket Thread (It's Come Home)

I'm not all that surprised Ponting has the stance he has, although to be fair given the nature of teams I don't doubt the way Haddin has had to not play will probably weigh on the teams mind. Having said that whatever it is I don't agree that it should drastically effect the teams performance, as there is precedent for Australia being able to perform under emotional stress.

It can go one of two ways really, mental stress can make someone buckle, but it can also make them scrappy and ready to fight. Given the Australian tradition of digging in and fighting in times of trouble I'm more inclined to look on the positives here than the negatives.

Balladeer wrote:

Today's prediction, then: the team that wins the toss will win the match.

Good match, Athrun.  1-1 with everything to play for.  Well done Australia!

Comment from the BBC: "I have it on good authority from someone on the inside of the Aussie changing room that Shane Watson reviewed the decision to drop him.  He apparently looked bewildered when the decision was upheld."


10 overs in, and I'm being proved dead right so far.

Uh-oh, I see Smith has got over 60 runs.  Well, I guess this time we'll see how England do under pressure.

Well.  I figured this would happen when England decided to try and neuter our bowling attack with their choice of wickets.  What can I say, making pitches that hate fast bowling is going to backfire when your bowling attack is largely a pace attack with one spinner.  

Still, despite being a Australian supporter I'm not going to gloat about this.  What goes around tends to come around in sport, and until England have lost twenty wickets I won't feel comfortable, if our batting attack has done this then there is no reason England can't give Australia just as much trouble.  Perhaps not in a single pair of batsmen, but as a team unit?  It's only 337 runs, if the rest of the team falls for 100 odd runs it doesn't make all that much difference in the end, and Australia does so love to have its batting collapses.

Australia has one of the most dominating first days a person can even dream of and I still look on the dark side. I'm a real ray of sunshine aren't I?   

F***in' hell, you're not wrong. Was that what Mick Hunt really had in mind? Did he get his orders from the top? If so, England (not the players necessarily, but the organisation backing them) deserve everything they get.

I think that, short of something really impressive happening, I shall only comment on the rest of this particular Test... in reaction .gifs!

I'm a prophet!  The collapse has begun on the ordained day, this is far from over.  Although it was only Clarke so I guess the loss of the wicket isn't that big of a deal.


Heh heh heh, Looks like I was a wee bit preemptive about proclaiming a collapse.  :shrink:


Wow, England are in really bad straights according to the scores.  Three wickets and they didn't even reach 30 yet?  Clearly the wicket has either started to get more pace friendly or England is playing abysmally.  And I'm probably going to regret every one of those words come next test.


Wait, they got another one?  That's kinda, just, wow.  I hope that pitch really turned, because that is one impressive collapse right there. And I see one of them is Root, fair trade for Smith not doing anything last match? I think so.

A pretty accurate summery of yesterday for the English right there.  

Now to sit back and enjoy seeing England snatch a history making draw from the fangs of Australia!  

On an aside, seriously hoping Rogers is okay, only just heard what happened I can only hope it's nothing serious or long lasting.


I hear the English media can be fairly savage, wonder what it's going to say tomorrow.  Still, rather than gloat I'm going to instead point to Australia's performance and explain that this is why I was so angry after last match.  

Also while I was typing that Machokes just got run out fairly spectacularly for not having his bat on the ground.  5 for 52, this is, well, I suspect the English press is going to have quite the fun day tomorrow.  I know I said I wasn't going to gloat, but this is spectacular even for England.  To be fair Australia's in full cry with the ball and fielding right now, but still on this pitch 5 for 56 is just, well, it's not good.

I'm sorry, I can't contain myself any more, this is just hilarious, they're falling like ninepins and are helpless to stop the Australian bowling attack.  Can Australia get them all out for less than a century?  Given they're currently averaging less than a dozen runs per wicket it could be on the cards!!  

Oh god my sides, the australian commentary: "Good job they took the pace out of the pitch!"

"Bad news for Stuart Broad, it's gone for four which means he has to face the next one."

I'm no going to lie, that was a pretty appalling showing from the English side there. I can't actually think of a word that I feel describes that match, slaughter, domination, obliteration, they all feel like they undersell it after that last innings.

Still, if we've learned anything from the last two Ashes series and first two matches of this one, anything can change between tests and England still have more than a good shot at winning this. Provided they don't let this crushing defeat get them down they can still come back, and for the sake of a good show I certainly wish to see them come back.

Still, as far as thumpings go this match was definitely up there in how spectacular it was. I can't even draw a comparison to the Cardiff test after that last innings.

England's turn to play musical chairs (and the music is something by John Cage). Gary Ballance out, Jonathan Bairstow in.

I'm not particularly happy about this. England's 1, 3, and 4 haven't exactly covered themselves with glory, but Gaz Baz haz had a brilliant start to his career until this year in Blighty, whereas Bell has not only disappointed with the bat, but can't field either. That also means Bell up to 3, where he can get out against the new ball even earlier!

On the other hand, Bairstow definitely deserves his chance. Seems to have come of age, averaging over 100 in county cricket this season.

If Bell's form has been consistently poor for a while now while Bairstow's been averaging 100 I wonder why he wasn't part of the batting lineup to begin with.  Seems like the Aussie selectors aren't the only ones that have trouble figuring out when dropping a player or keeping them is warranted.  

Still happy to see some form of productive changes are being made, hopefully next match is a good close one. I'll admit I get bored when they're one sided stompings, even when my favoured team is doing the stomping. I like my team to win, but I want a good show to watch more than I want the win.

Memories of two Ashes back, hope that a classy batsman will regain form... I presume.

A couple of things that have been pointed out to me: without Bell, it would be a very green batting line-up; and Ballance has ample time to bounce back from being dropped, whereas Bell doesn't. Still can't help thinking that Lyth would be better in the slip cordon.

It's also been pointed out that perhaps England's naturally non-aggressive top order (Cook, Bell, Ballance-as-was) have been seduced by New Zealand and the grumblings of Shane Warne and the like into thinking that they need to play every Test like a T20. Bayliss himself said that the batsmen need to leave more. Hopefully they come back with a bang (but a bang with good defensive technique) after a week's rest.

There's another Ashes series going on at the same time, you know. Proving that it's not just Mitchell Starc who can do a good "fast bowler rage face", here's England's Katherine Brunt.

Looks like Braddin is gone!

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Gonna sound really spiteful

but this is kind of how I felt hearing the news:

What can I say, I'm still a bit mad over that first test.

No matter who wins or loses, this is a good result! Shame it took a near-death experience to his daughter to do it, but I'll definitely take this.  Biggest **** on either side out of the team!

The question is, who takes that mantle now?  I'm guessing it's a head-to-head between Davey Warner and Stu Broad.

Welcome back to Ashes cricket Finny! More of the same please.

I'll reserve my blasting for when Australia suck proverbial booty with the ball like they inevitably will. The pitch clearly allows for bowlers to actually bowl batsmen out unlike a certain other horrendous wicket so I'll keep my rant for if Australia fail to perform with the ball.

This is now the second-highest partnership in the match.  Another three runs and it'll be firmly into "annoying" territory.

...Nope, never mind. When it's Jimmy's day on a swinging pitch, everything else is an irrelevance.

Not going to lie, that scorecard is horrendous. Still, sometimes a bowler just gets in to that sort of form and becomes borderline unplayable, and unless the pitch is broken there's not much one can do about it. I'm not going to dismiss Anderson's stunning performance with the ball today by saying it's all Australia's fault, because much as I would actually like the excuse to lash in to them a bit it's more the result of Anderson's stunning bowling rather than criminally bad batting.

I think it's a lot about the pitch and conditions as well.  Full of swing.  Lyth is sounding like he's really labouring here.  

Starc not doing that well at the moment.  Get Johnson on!  Bring Starc back when there's a righty around.

Lyth, you're terrible.



EDIT: Can we get Adam Voges' stomach on as a substitute fielder please?