No chance Cook or otherwise, if the thing shoots along the deck as it did in that last session you could have a thousand goes at it and probably not succeed once.
Most other Test teams wouldn't have got anywhere near day five to be honest. Australia would have gone in three days.
South Africa love a blockathon. Australia would have gone for the win and been bowled out in 30 overs.
Should move Duckett down the order tomorrow.
Swap him with Ansari in one last blaze of glory for the latter's Test career.
Yeah, Duckett to get an effortless 150 with every run coming from clearing his front foot out of the way and lofting Ashwin over the covers.
Need to keep getting the rub of the green with the umpires/reviews to have any chance.
I await the SMH take on England's efforts.
Watching the 'CSA T20 Slam' or whatever this is called, it strikes me that concerns about the standard of our own T20 are somewhat misguided.
Bangladesh Premier League is on Sky channel 793 or something. Samit Patel was bossing it with bat and ball when I was watching the other day.
It's fairly low rent and poor quality as you would expect but it is definitely better than the South African edition.
All the players sound like regens. Patrick Kruger. Patrick Botha. Colin Ackermann, who's signed for Leicester actually and is currently hurling down some genuinely club level off spin.
JJ Smuts which I genuinely think was Graeme Smith was called on Brian Lara International Cricket.
Maybe would be a bit harsh to drop Duckett after four tests but the lad has absolutely no idea against the off spin.
I like him but Christ he is all at sea against Ashwin..Originally Posted by Max Power
Almost as bad as that out decision..... you could have got another ball between bat and ball then!
We just have to last long enough for the umpires to become tired of their shit and start ignoring appeals.
Tucker has somehow had a worse game than Dharmasena.
Oh well. Back to bed then.
Duckett.
How can you become a highly regarded professional cricketer and have no idea against off spin?
If you play in div 2 where the leading off spinner last season was Rob Keogh.
Buttler will get a game now and be just as shit.
Not giving Kohli man of the match is fairly lol.
Off to practice your toss winning Al.
Wait, what did they just give to Ashwin? Do they have two man of the matches?
Ashwin was Player of the Match, Kohli was Man of the Match. Do keep up.
Kohli slated us afterwards for not showing 'intent' with the bat. Fucking moron.
This mintgate/shovegate/whingegate is in danger of moving up the scale of cricket controversy.
Level 1: lol
Level 2: gate
Level 3: fiasco
Level 4: affair
Level 5: somebody gets accused of racism
Level 6: Basil d'Oliveira
It seems to be hovering somewhere between levels 2 and 3 at the moment. I'm not convinced it has full 'affair' potential but they're making a proper go of it.
I'm still struggling with this.
And then we have the tracer bullet challenge. Maybe these are the end times.
Shastri's commentary has actually been cracking me up rather than annoying me in this series. It's Laxman Seethe-aramakrishnan who winds me up more.
There was a great bit during the Cook/Hameed endurance where they were chatting among themselves about how if India did this in South Africa it would be seen as a wery, wery bad thing for cricket. Then they made Atherton do the challenge. Then Ravi assured us that "no one has more wise cracks than *LS*, they just all come off camera".
Id never speak to the Australian media again if I were Faf.
I honestly can't wait until England smash them down under next year. We have the ideal set of players to do so as well. Woakesy in the Bressie Lad role
Cook
Hameed (this opening partnership will wind the Aussies up as well, not aggressive enough maaaate)
Root
whoever
Moeen
Stokes
Bairstow
Woakes
Broad
Anderson if he makes it that far
That leaves one spot for a luxury bowler, I think Curran jr will have got into the side by then actually, probably batting in the Woakes area to start with.
Oh, god, Faf is appealing. Approaching full on 'affair' now. I've never liked South Africa this much.
Have to say all the players posing with sweets and mints and stuff in that warm up was top, top, top banter.
It's absolute garbage. Have they really fined him 100% of his match fee for sucking a mint on the pitch?
Ravi Bopara tampers with the ball in literally every match he plays (fairly convinced he owes a lot of his ODI caps to this) but you don't see him getting pulled up.
Meh. Fiddling the ball is verboten. Everyone goes into a match knowing it, and I'm totally on board with the penalty. They all know what happens if they get caught.
Just because your lot are accomplished masters at it, doesn't mean it's alright to do.
EDIT: Or at least what should happen if they get caught. Bopara should face the same stick as anyone else.
EDIT II: I don't think it needs to be an "affair" or anything like it. Find him guilty (if he is, and it looks like he is), punish him appropriately, move on.
You should see how Jesse Ryder magically turns into a world beating bowler when he plays for Essex. It's mesmerising stuff.
The problem with that is that the Australian media have had a moral purity complex going since 1932-33 and they're damned if they're going to abandon it now.
They fined him for polishing the ball while eating a mint?
Is it possible to explain that one without sound utterly ridiculous?
Putting sweat or saliva on it is legit in the rules but SUGARY saliva - no.
Those Saffer Polos must be brutal.
He probably deserves some sort of recognition for undertaking the Sisyphean task of tampering with a Kookaburra ball, although, considering the similarity between biltong and leather, it's surprising he didn't just take a bite out of it.
Don't blame our media for this. The sugary-saliva ball tampering goes back way further than us. It's a well-known trick for shining up one side of the ball, and people have been caught doing it before. Dravid got done for it in 2004, and that's just the first one that springs to mind. Marcus Trescothick said you guys were at it throughtout the 2005 Ashes, too.
So fine, tamper with the ball. But if you get caught, suck it up and move on.
They only got Al Capone on the tic tacs.
My favourite part about the Cook effort was the back story that we built into it. You see, he doesn't sweat . . .
No farts either.
Everyone else's failure to spot the great Essex ball-tampering dynasty is one of the bigger disappointments of my investigative career. Apparently Sussex have a crack squad as well, with Matt 'Cheese' Prior bringing some great knowledge to his England sides from the school by the sea, but nothing compares to the boys from the bear pit.
Of course, the genesis of all these great centres of learning can always be traced back to some sort of Pakistani passing through town in years past.
Oi, dickhead, that's Big Cheese.
I enjoyed the tales of Waqar Younis at Glamorgan always enthusiastically volunteering to fetch the ball when it got smashed into a field/car park/whatever. When it was retrieved it would inevitably start hooping.
I've heard both Robert Croft and Tony Cottey tell that very tale at after-dinner speeches in the last 3 years (I go to the best dinners).
Word is we're doing this in Mohali:
Cook
Hameed
Root
Moeen Ali
Buttler
Stokes
Bairstow
Woakes
Rashid
GAZ BATTS
Anderson
South Africa declared at 259/9. Probably smart. Thoughts?
EDIT: There is a very real chance that they declared because they knew Warner wouldn't be able to come out if they did.
I've been really impressed with Rabada. And the rest of South Africa's bowling, but I hadn't really had a chance to see Rabada yet.
Faf protecting his average like the good saffa boy he is.
Declaring on the first day of a test?
Fuck off.
It's the right brand of cricket. It's what the paying punters (Punters?) want to see. Being prepared to lose, to win.
The matey banter on BT is a bit cringey but Swann describing Paul Adams actions as 'trying to change a wheel on a moving car" earned a laugh
Fucking hell, Karl Ebbett is so good. He doesn't let up. McGrath-like
Looks like a doozy of a toss to lose, so we'll either win it and be skittled for not many or be batted out of existence again.
Win the toss and bat
Gaz Batts is in.
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