I was in Melbourne just after one Christmas, although the tourists were Pakistan. Had to make do with a one dayer v them and one v Sri Lanka. Not quite the same! I'm hosting Christmas so if our guests haven't buggered off by then I'll have to switch it on. I think Melbourne is a later start than this though as it's further west so not as far ahead? I think!
This, the Aussies are desperately trying to spin a positive light on their batting performance! On a track like that with the overhead conditions and even against our bowlers, a decent batting line up like India and SA would have made over 300 for the loss or 4 or 5 wickets.. In short, day one was ours which exactly what we wanted, put them on the back foot from the off and keep them there. We shouldn't get carried away, still need to remove the last two wickets as soon as possible, then bat long good two days, put them back in start of day 4 and bowl the feckers out!
Yeah think they're usually a 1am start our time because I tend to try get up early and watch the last session rather than staying up until crazy o clock like I did last night Did you sit in Bay 13 at the MCG?
There's always a lot of work to do in a test but in all honesty the fact that they have formed only two partnerships of note on a pitch that comes on nicely, has even bounce and sod all seam movement shows what a performance England put on and (equally) how bad the Aussies batted. To a good line up this is a 500+ pitch batting first. Now can England improve our weakness from the summer? Time will tell but as first days go it was f'ing brilliant for a number of reasons. Watson still looks like he's determined to ruin good starts every time he bats, Clarke can't deal with Broad, Smith is a streaky little **** but even his luck will only get him so far and Bailey was so easily set up that when Cook caught him you could actually hear the slip cordon laughing their heads off Of course a lot of these are issues that the Aussies could iron out and bat better but as knocks to the confidence go this is a decent first blow from England
I did. Although it was pretty much stood throughout! That was against Pakistan, think the crowd was about 75k. Sat in a nice sedate seat way up in the stand for the Sri Lanka one, crowd was only 42k if memory serves. Nice Dean Jones ton to entertain!
you never know til we bat. if we trudge off for 300 then what start is it? If we trot off with 600 cos the pitch really is good then great. I do find it rather funny that you are wildly optimistic about our batting... All i want is one of them to do well! bell won us the ashes. we need someone to stand up here. anyway... 132/6 is a great start but from there you have to admit ending up at 273/8 is slightly disappointing. never mind what you'd take before the game!... from 132/6 i would have hoped to be batting today and annihilating the australians confidence. ah well. 300 odd all out means that unless there is a very very long innings that a result is in the offing. lets hope those batsmen can set a big target and declare.
It was tough work for a while though mate. Don't know how much you listened to but 5 mins before lunch the Aussies were in control and even though the 3 quicks had bowled decent line/length you just couldn't see Warner or Watson getting out then Watson just gifted his wicket. The whole day turned on that really. When the 5th went down I was (almost) gutted that Jimmy had taken it because I was starting to dream about Broad taking all ten
in fairness you cannot beat a 5for to shut them up so yeah great way to give it to them but i think the aussies failed to get the fact that broad is much akin to thier lot, a bit of booing and heckling just served to make him really play. they ought to lick his hole from now on.
Not really Mito because on a pitch like that every partnership has the possibility of making a ton plus. At 71-1 I was wondering how far past 450 they could get. At 132/6 I knew that it had little to do with anything in the pitch and that if any batsman bothered to stay at the crease they'd score decent runs. They could still get to 350 if Harris sticks around with Haddin but even then that's a decent start for us considering it's their home game and they won the toss. Of course it's only a great start if we get a decent batting performance but we can only comment on the first day eh and that first day was a "rippa"
This is the perfect beauty of test match cricket. We could get them out for less than or around 300 and then fail with the bat. However, the law of averages says that it's highly unlikely that all the top order bar Bell will fail again. This is historically the hardest venue for a test in Oz. That's why the locals call it 'The Gabbatoir'. They were perfect batting conditions yesterday, so the overnight score = failure, pure and simple. Day 1 to us. Who knows what day 2 holds in store? ****ing love it
they could at that... but again it'll be tested by what england do with the bat. 132/6 had a very dangerous look to it but haddin and johnson delivered. we'll see how many ton partnerships england deliver before deciding i guess. those last two wickets could cost england tomorrow or we could take them quickly but we'll see.
132/6 was dangerous but it was as much down to them just playing poorly as much as anything else (obviously we did bowl well but still....). There was always a chance that however well we bowled the Aussies could kill any chance of a win for us on the first day. They haven't so that equals a good start....now stop arguing
