Cricket fred

[Puja]

Putative England squad for the Ashes named, with a fast bowling attack being selected from Mark Wood, Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Byrdon Carse, Josh Tongue, and hopefully Ben Stokes. Chris Woakes is being given the Jimmy Anderson treatment and taken round the back of the barn with a shotgun - he's been a good servant, but realistically, I'd rather have kept Jimmy longer and given him the boot a while ago, so I'm glad he's not being taken to Australia yet again in the hope that he'll suddenly turn into a player capable of playing outside of English conditions.

Pope axed as vice-captain - surely feeling Bethell's breath on the back of his neck. Hell of a lot of pressure for us to be heaping on a 21 year old by promoting him this much though.

Puja

[Galfon]

..Chris Woakes is being given the Jimmy Anderson treatment and taken round the back of the barn with a shotgun - he's been a good servant, but realistically, I'd rather have kept Jimmy longer and given him the boot a while ago, so I'm glad he's not being taken to Australia yet again in the hope that he'll suddenly turn into a player capable of playing outside of English conditions.

Pope axed as vice-captain - surely feeling Bethell's breath on the back of his neck. Hell of a lot of pressure for us to be heaping on a 21 year old by promoting him this much though.

Puja

Woakes is 36, effectively lame post-surgery and has struggled in those conditions previously - i'm sure he would have been astonished to be kept on board.
HB and latterly JB must have convinced them they have qualities needed for the extra responsibilities - taking a chance with the latter tbf.
That mixed bag of quicks look useful but a few are injury prone which could scupper things.
We're handicapped still by not having an elite spinner (yet..), just hope the batsmen can rise to the considerable challenge !

[fivepointer]

Thought Rehan Ahmed might get the nod.

Not surprised Woakes has been left out. Plenty of firepower with our quicks. Can they stay fit, though?

[Puja]

..Chris Woakes is being given the Jimmy Anderson treatment and taken round the back of the barn with a shotgun - he's been a good servant, but realistically, I'd rather have kept Jimmy longer and given him the boot a while ago, so I'm glad he's not being taken to Australia yet again in the hope that he'll suddenly turn into a player capable of playing outside of English conditions.

Pope axed as vice-captain - surely feeling Bethell's breath on the back of his neck. Hell of a lot of pressure for us to be heaping on a 21 year old by promoting him this much though.

Puja

Woakes is 36, effectively lame post-surgery and has struggled in those conditions previously - i'm sure he would have been astonished to be kept on board.
HB and latterly JB must have convinced them they have qualities needed for the extra responsibilities - taking a chance with the latter tbf.
That mixed bag of quicks look useful but a few are injury prone which could scupper things.
We're handicapped still by not having an elite spinner (yet..), just hope the batsmen can rise to the considerable challenge !

Agreed on the spinner, although with the pitches the Aussies tend to prepare, it's entirely possible to get away without a top-level spinner if your quicks are good enough. You're not wrong about the injury-proneness of our bowling attack though - could very realistically see a situation where Wood, Archer, and Stokes are all injured and we're left with Atkinson, Carse and Tongue.

Puja

[Puja]

Australian newspapers having an exeptionally normal one. I think they're actually a touch worried - they're never normally this weird if they're actually confident.

Puja

[Puja]

Perfect example of the virtues of Bazball. A few Australian newspaper writers started the day warming up articles about how "England's attacking approach threw wickets away against a quality attack" only to have to delete a few choice sentences after it became clear that hanging about and waiting for the ball that's got your name on it wasn't a great strategy either. At least England scored a few runs and pushed some pressure back on the Australians with their approach and, barring an extraordinary rearguard action from Doggett and Boland (although let's not rule that out, this is Australian cussedness that we're talking about), should incredibly have a first innings lead from an opening score of 172!

Rumour has it that the pitch is going to even out a bit for tomorrow, so a quick early wicket could see us having the best of the conditions. Here's hoping!

Puja

[Galfon]

Rumour has it that the pitch is going to even out a bit for tomorrow, so a quick early wicket could see us having the best of the conditions. Here's hoping!
Puja

Carse has gone for 22 in his first 2 overs..bit late now.
Aus looks like they have a Head start in this series - the guy's lethal on loose balls.
Losing 4 top-order batsmen for 11 runs is going to make things very difficult - another Eng implode
Need a miracle now..

[fivepointer]

Game moving away from us at quite a rate. Pitch does seem to have flattened out but we've not bowled well in the Aus 2nd innings.

[Which Tyler]

WTF?
It's day 2 and good as done?

[Galfon]

I prefer the 5-day version tbf..
The bowlers would have been gutted to see their D1 efforts p*ssed up the wall & down the drain.
Saying that, they compounded matters a bit D2.
There's still a series to fight out, so need to knuckle down if it's allowed.

[Puja]

Well, that was a bit of fun at the end! Going from 264-9 to 325-9 is the kind of thing that Australia usually do to England, but the way in which is was done was pure Bazball - Archer and Root stepping into the pace attack rather than waiting for it to come to them and throwing them right off their attacking pattern. Drove every fielder out to the boundary and then promptly continued scoring at 6+ per over, but in smartly run 1s and 2s instead of 4s and 6s. Absolutely changed the complexion of the match - if Archer stays in his crease and scratches around trying to block out Starc while Root milks the strike and tries to score in even numbers, then it's 2 or 3 overs and 4-5 runs before Starc pulls out something special and England are all out for >270. Instead, we got up to a good total, infuriated Starc (and possibly gave him a muscle tweak by making him keep bowling longer than he should've in the expectation that the next over would be the last), and changed the feeling of the Test.

Above that though, there are a couple of people that need a word with themselves. Duckett and Pope get a pass from having to face Starc with a hard pink ball, Crawley probably needs ticking off for throwing his wicket away with such a soft dismissal but probably gets a pass for having scored 76 before he did so, Stokes was unlucky to've been sent back and then to face such an incredible direct hit, and JSmith got an almost unplayable ball second up and couldn't be expected to do much about it as a new batsman. It's Brook and Jacks who really need to look at themselves. The former put such a lazy shot in, almost assuming that Starc was bowling a bad ball that he could throw his arms at it with impunity, rather than the much more likely scenario that he was being suckered by an obvious trap. The ability to concentrate and decision-make will be the difference between him being a solid international cricketer and a great one and I genuinely don't know whether he'll make it anymore, cause he just doesn't seem to be learning.

It feels harsh to criticise Jacks after he came in and steadied the ship after the two wickets in two balls at the start of the afternoon session, and he did bat really well, but the manner of his dismissal was comedy. Starc bowled the same ball that suckered Brook into edging, Jacks chased it in the same fashion, and was amazingly lucky that he failed to get anything on it. The next delivery, Starc bowls the same thing, and Jacks incredibly decides to chase it again! Why on earth have you done that?! You literally saw the last one, where you thought it was there to hit and it moved away from you, got a lucky escape, and then seeing the exact same ball coming towards you, decide to do the same thing again!? What did you expect would happen?! Feels like he's thrown away a 50 there, given that he'd nearly seen off Starc and the rest of the Australian bowling attack looked generally clueless, one ball from Boland notwithstanding.

Still, can't complain with the scoreline at the end of day 1. Even if we come out on day 2 and Root gets out first ball, 325 is still a good total. If they can hang around for another 10-15 runs, then it'll drive the Australians even madder, and start getting towards the mark where it's a great total, especially as the pitch looks like it'll break up over the test.

Puja

[Galfon]

Need to mop up now - good job Aus. not full strength.
Need Archer to be in top fettle.
Alot of mediocre stuff unfortunately.

[Puja]

Need to mop up now - good job Aus. not full strength.
Need Archer to be in top fettle.
Alot of mediocre stuff unfortunately.

Not wrong. Shame that Australia pulled out a phenomenal catch to dismiss Archer early doors - feels like if we could've batted even just another 2-3 overs long this morning, it would've demoralised the Australians a bit and kept the ball harder for when the floodlight came on. As it is, they built good partnerships (and we got a lack of luck/poor catching to help them) and our bowling looked tired and uninspired.

The game revolves around the first hour tomorrow. If we can skittle them for less than 50-odd runs, then the game's still on, subject to us not collapsing ourselves. If they bat half the day and get 100 runs, then we're going to end up very far behind and batting in the worst part of the day. In that case, it won't matter about a wearing pitch and Australia not having a spinner - they'll skittle us too fast for it to matter.

Puja

[fivepointer]

We wasted the new ball, gave Aus a flying start with wayward second rate bowling and then topped it off by spilling catches. Pretty dreadful effort that will be very hard to recover from.

Sometimes doing the basics with bat and ball, showing discipline, concentration and patience, seems beyond some of our players.

[Puja]

We wasted the new ball, gave Aus a flying start with wayward second rate bowling and then topped it off by spilling catches. Pretty dreadful effort that will be very hard to recover from.

Sometimes doing the basics with bat and ball, showing discipline, concentration and patience, seems beyond some of our players.

A lot of our bowling happened while I was allegedly working and I wasn't aware of just how many we'd dropped or how bad they were until I saw this clipshow: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/art ... 2l88q8er0o

Several of those are utterly inexcusable - I'll reluctantly forgive the two Duckett ones as they were both difficult, but JSmith dropping Head on 3 and then failing to move when Carey edged was appalling. It's always going to be the stick to beat him with, but Foakes would've taken both of those and probably scored more than 48 runs across three innings. Add onto that Carse dropping Neser hitting the ball right to him and we could be in a significantly better position if we'd just done the basics.

Puja

[Puja]

The difference has been the catching. If Carey was playing for England, I genuinely think the scoreline would be 0-2 the other way - and that's not (just) slamming JSmith, but noting how incredible his work behind the stumps has been. His ability to stand up to the stumps to fast bowling has taken away our batsmen's ability to come forward to the likes of Neser and disrupt his length and yet he's conceded just 12 byes all game and not let a single chance go by him. Utterly incredible work. He won't get MotM, but he really should.

Puja

[fivepointer]

Carey has been exceptional. Smith is in something of a slump which is a bit concerning.

Overall England just not at the races. Deficient with bat and ball, and then compounded by some inadequacies in the field. No way back now. We're shot as Aus will get better and have the buffer of a 2-0 lead. Can we avoid a whitewash?