Any chance of a biblical amount of rain in Brisbane tomorrow?
Any chance of a biblical amount of rain in Brisbane tomorrow?
30% chance of rain at the moment.
This will be 5-0. Our batting is toss, we only have two bowlers (at least one of whom will soon be injured) and we approach Test cricket in the wrong way.
Nathan Lyon being the difference is quite a state of affairs, given he spent his first fifty tests under the constant threat of being dropped by whichever shiny young thing caught the selectors' eye. Weirdly, some time with Wade probably went a long way to making him feel comfortable. Might have almost been worth having old irongloves in the team for a while.
What chance of England sending back an SOS for a full-time spinner?
Does Root have a knack for key wickets when he does have a go or is it just that those are the one or two I remember?
We have a full time spinner in the party who, although a fine young talent who will go on to have a great career I'm sure, is a genuinely terrible selection because he's clearly only there for the 'experience' and not to actually play.
Jack Leach is probably there with the Lions but that has Kerrigan written all over it. Poor Kerrigan.
When did the Barmy Army's average age jump to 65? I drove past a few 100 of them before and they all looked weathered.
The longer Ben Stokes doesn't play, the closer he gets to becoming an unholy combination of Dennis Lillee and Adam Gilchrist.
We need him for his batting more than anything.
We need him so that we don't have three rabbits in the tail. Ball must not play again on the tour, we're currently 7 down all out against Starc and co. Overton or even Curran better bets from the current squad.
I see the 'we need to pick quicker bowlers' bus has left the depot already. Sigh. I'll call Fred Trueman, see if he's available.
Hyped for Mark Wood bowling 5 overs at the WACA
It's only a matter of time before someone does a thinkpiece on whether Tymal Mills can do two 3-over spells per day at 180mph or whatever he supposedly bowls.
So Jonny Bairstow greets people by headbuttng them? Is that a Yorkshire thing?
They're sending out press releases (his own side) comparing him to Alan Partridge. Great tour guys, great tour.
As a relative cricketing philistine but a big fan of TMS I like to play the game of 'Has Geoffrey Boycott Finally Descended Into Senility' and last night as he repeated the same rambling anecdote about how England should be bowling I realised he may be there. Agnew especially seemed to be just waiting until he ran out of steam and decided to leave. Apparently he also fell over when he tried to lean against a wall that wasn't there.
Stokes is back to save the day and fuck some Aussie’s up.
my cricket obsessed work colleague just sent me this in response to the news:
It's a pity really. If he managed to sit out the entire series, he'd probably be in contention for Test Player of the Year by the end.
Speaking of franchise formats, look at the state of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T10_League
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/42192294
Why the ACTUAL FUCK did you bring him if in the event of an injured first choice spinner, his chances of playing are as small as 'not out of the question'?If Moeen does not bowl, England would have to decide between leaving the slow bowling to captain Joe Root's part-time off-breaks or giving a Test debut to 20-year-old leg-spinner Mason Crane - an option Root said is "not out of the question".
Was just coming to post about that.
He won, and he bowled.
Bowled.
No idea what to expect from a day-night test against a reasonable side.
Win the toss and bowl in Adelaide?
Abandon ship!
What’s the reasoning behind bowling first please?
Batsmen are shit/scared.
The good news is they'll be batting against the new ball, under lights tomorrow, about 500 down. Innings defeat ahoy (unless we can roll them with the magic power of the lights tonight).
Ding.
Take another and it’s probably justified.
Have a bit of that you kangaroo-lookalike cunt.
We might get away with it, at least in the sense of not losing by an innings and 250. Bowling sounded garbage in the first two sessions though.
Short of a morning miracle we're totally boned in this one. Losing the new ball in the dark was a real kick in the gonads, but we'd probably have been better off batting first, going mad for 2 sessions (aggressive brand etc) before declaring/being all out around 'dinner' and having a full 30 overs at them in the dark (if we were that bothered about 'taking advantage of conditions').
I didn't see any of the bowling (obviously) but it is classic England set-up to win the toss in Adelaide, bowl (which no one has done since forever) and then moan at the bowlers for getting it wrong.
We have to get them out for under 320, and then ourselves score 500. Even then... I'd rather have taken our chances getting 250-400 batting first and staying in the series.
High opinion now going out of their way to defend Root but I just think it's a shit call and you just don't stick Australia in in Australia, unless it's a damp one in Hobart.
This has gone well. I feel a bit for Root as conditions conspired to totally ruin what I suppose was his plan, but it's still a test match. The only control you have over when you bat is if you bat first, and if when you bat is of critical importance (maybe it isn't) then you need to take that chance when you can. 10 overs against the new ball under lights at the end of a day is going to be far preferable to 30 overs against it with fresh bowlers and a big deficit on the scoreboard. England need a big Root hundred.Michael Vaughan on TMS
People can't keep telling me Mark Wood is injured, when he's saying he's fit. He's either injured or he's not. He's here, playing cricket. In a four-man seam attack, you can have that luxury of a fourth seamer that can bowl a 15 over day. There's no question for me that he plays in Perth. Liam Plunkett should also have been in the squad.
Looks like we've already chucked the towel in here.
The bowling isn't really fast enough to be that threatening without sideways movement, or McGrath-like precision. Still, can't judge until both sides have had a go.
Do you guys think of Moeen as a test-quality spinner? Or a solid spinning all-rounder?
Somewhere in between, but he isn't fit at the moment, it would appear.
You'd never pick him just for his bowling, but he's more than a part-time tweaker.
How many down at the close then?
0?
I was glad to wake up and put TMS on and hear we'd taken a whopping three wickets since I turned it on yesterday morning.
England got a little lucky there. That was a nasty spell of bowling.
Yeah, the Adelaide weather rather isn't playing ball with the concept of a tricky session under the lights.
So I, uh, said a lot of nasty things about the selectors before this series. Seems like I was not the one in the right there.
See also: Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Steven Smith.
Were you wrong about the selection or about England, though?
Good to see Stokes getting himself into some form for his triumphant comeback to thwart the whitewash.
Vaughan can/should fuck off and die. Check Plunkett's first class stats this year. Go on, check them.
Vaughan is a clueless retard and worse still, he's a clueless retard with a commercial agenda.
If Glenn McGrath hadn't trod on that rugby ball, Vaughan would be working in Sports Direct now selling trackie bottoms.
Virat Kohli is a bit good, isn’t he? Lordy.