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.