Cricket

Seems to me the previous day's play gave the Aussies a kick up the bottom and they raised their level.
5-0 beckons unfortunately.

 

Another effing collapse

 

Bt sport loving having this ashes coverage....

 

Bit better today. Vince however is clearly not good enough for this level. You cannot keep wafting your bat at balls delivered in the off stump area. He has gotten out repeatedly to the same type of ball, how does a professional sportsman not adjust his game to counter this? Its ludicrous.

 

I think England are carrying quite a few passengers in their batting lineup. Cooks best days seem long behind him, sadly.

With the start they've given themselves, hopefully they'll be able to get to about 450/500. But going by what we've seen so far this tour - it wouldn't surprise me to see us 370 all out.

 

Feel sad for Cook. Got the big score against West Indies in first test then nothing. A couple of 100s and he'd have moved above the top 10 of all time.

Hope he doesn't retire after this series, I still believe in him and we've only just found someone to open with him

 

We've shot ourselves in the foot once more. Get 500/550 and it would have been hard to lose. However our collapse to 400 means I predict the Aussies will now get about 550, declare and end up beating us by about 8 wickets eventually. Smith looks well set for a big score at the moment.

 

When was the last game we didn't lose at least four wickets cheaply?

 

33 runs out in my morbid prediction. Here's another one - Smith will score a double hundred, and we'll trail by at least 170 after the first innings........

When two of your middle order score centuries and you still only post 400 on a road of a wicket, it's obvious where the problem lies. Yeah the tail was blown away cheaply, but the lack of runs at the top of the order is costing us.

And Moeen Ali's (very brief) batting yesterday...

 

So where can I bet on England totally collapsing when they next come in to bat? Absolutely pathetic, every last one of them.

 

Or maybe less pious responses to harmless things might ensure team morale isn't completely destroyed?

 

Sadly after today's play it actually looks like our batting is our strong point! Anderson and Broad despite fine careers are at least 5-10 MPH too slow to bowl successfully on Aussie wickets, without a varied attack. Malan's part time leg spin looked much better than what Moeen served up! We desperately need a proper full time spinner and a genuinely quick bowler to even get close to taking 20 wickets.

5-0 is looking pretty much inevitable now unless the weather can save us in the next couple of days. If I was Smith I'd declare straight away tomorrow if the weather even looks slightly iffy, they probably have a big enough lead now to put us to the sword again. Unless Smith is eyeing up Lara's 400 record, which I could see him getting if he stuck with it.

 

Depressing. Australia already 240 runs ahead and counting, which is probably more than enough to win.
English batsmen having to fight to save the Ashes will fold pathetically, but will then go out and make centuries in the next two tests when there is no pressure.
I'm sick of supporting bottlers

 

If only I could have found that market.....

 

My initial prediction of 3-1 to the Aussies now looks ridiculously optimistic. Unless they get roaringly drunk over Xmas/NY.

 

Couldn't play well for more than a day. Cricket is about playing the conditions. On pitches where the ball offered no movement, we couldn't break them down.

We were missing our best all rounder and didn't have the quality to get close enough to them. Our chance to retain the ashes was over that stupid night out on the town a month or so ago. It meant our lower order were batting at a level higher than they should have been.

 

I think we'd have got closer with Stokes there, certainly. Not sure we would have won though.

Bowling has been generally disappointing and our two star batsmen have done very little. Think Cook will probably retire after the series.

 

Remember when Stuart Broad could bat?

 

Remember when Stuart Broad could bowl?

When we started bowling at Smith on the day they only lost a wicket, we went 5 on leg side, 1 slip and no gully in an ultra defensive field. The only way we were getting him out was if he got himself out and it meant we had given up trying to force his wicket. Made it so easy and made the likely result very predictable.

 

It's laughable. English cricketers going on about 'playing for pride' now that the Ashes have gone.

Heads up lads, the time for pride was during the last three tests. There isn't any pride in winning when it doesn't matter and no one cares.
They could all make double centuries and I wouldn't give a toss.

I'd love the Aussies to field a schoolgirl's 11 for the last two tests just to underline how pathetic and unworthy the England team is.

 

It's a question of steely determination, good preparation and pride.
We have lacked all three, and have been utterly battered as a result.

If we win the next two tests, it won't mean that we're as good as them - it just proves we can't perform when the chips are really down.

Does anyone really think that Australia's bowlers will bowl with as much venom and pace or their batsmen bat with as much concentration with the series already won? Of course not. They might well want to whitewash us, but there isn't the same motivation in that as actually winning the Ashes - nowhere close.

 

Cook makes a century with the Ashes already gone.

Quelle surprise.

 

What an innings from Cook. Forget the fact the series is over, Australia were desperate to win 5-0, that is an unbelievable effort. Decent chance of winning this now.

 

They weren't desperate to win 5-0. They were desperate to win the Ashes, and it's showed in their drop in overall concentration and demeanour. You can tell they're not really gutted to be losing this one - there 's a real air of ' Ah well' about them.

This is nothing more than a friendly - if this were a chess match they wouldn't even bother playing these two games, that's how much it matters.

We needed Cook to put in this performance at any point in the last three tests when it mattered - when we needed to bat out the last day, when we needed someone to reply to Smith's magnificent effort (that came at a time that actually mattered).

If you look at my previous posts I've predicted exactly this, but it didn't take much crystal balling on my part.

 

Having been on these tours before and having a few Aussie mates I can be pretty sure they wanted desperately to win 5-0. Either way, to bat for that amount of and score that amount of runs is a heck of an effort but I agree with you, we could have done with more of this fight in the others tests

 

Better late than never,another 5-0 would be painful.

 

Yes, 5-0 is nice, but desperate to do it?

Sorry, I just don't buy that in terms of sheer desperation, winning the Ashes and winning the Ashes 5-0 are equal. Of course they aren't.

There is also a huge mental difference between standing at the crease with the huge weight of responsibilty of the Ashes hanging by a thread, and the relative freedom of playing a 'what's the worst that can happen?' knock.

Cook's innings feels more of a good old salt-rubbing than any whitewash.

 

I was listening to Glenn McGrath on Radio 5 yesterday morning. He actually used the word " desperate" when describing how much the Aussies want to get the whitewash. He might not admit that now, or maybe he was making it up.

 

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Lead is only 164. Aussies could quite easily rack up 300 plus by mid-morning on the fifth day and then bowl us out for 120.