Eng did well to make 353 in the end, Ind on 160/5 Bashir taking 4 of them. India paying for preparing a crap pitch?
Shambolic performance by England. Our best bowler and main wicket taker was a lad who was playing club cricket this time last year. Then we opened the bowling after tea last night defending 190 runs and needing 10 wickets and Stokes gave the new ball to Joe Root FFS, he's a fecking batsman! Ben Stokes and his bazball has had its share of success but in this Test and the last one we have looked like a pub team.
the batting has been disappointing. every decent total has been on the back of one random player and mostly nobody has taken that role.
It’s a tough place to win, especially when we go there with such an inexperienced spin department. To be fair, despite Leach and then Ahmed having to come home early, this department have competed well vs Ashwin, Jadega and Yadav. Batting was not consistent enough, at key times. I’m a massive Bairstow fan, but he needs to score big in the last test if he wants to continue his test career, with Brook coming back.
australia just set a record in the 4th innings of the latest test against nz. they needed 279 to win and found themselves 43/4 and 80/5. at this point mitchell marsh (80) and alec carey (98no) added 140 before two wickets fell at 220 (both players called mitchell). then cummings arrived and added 61 more with carey for a win by three wickets. anyway, the players from number 6 onwards scored 210 runs between them, which is the most for a side successfully chasing in tests. the previous best was 190 by sri lanka. australia's previous best was 182 in 1907.
