I wonder how many people thought exactly this in 1981 Chilco? I may just waste a few pounds on the ludicrous offchance that Prior and Stokes both hit double tons!
You're right of course. I'm just so used to us needing 500+ to win that I forgot we'd already got half of them!
The Aussies declared at a score that gave us a tiny chance, but secure in the knowledge that we are seriously rubbish at the moment. Stokes and Bell showed that it could just have been achievable if others had shown equal bottle/skill.
Well done to the young man. First England player to get a century, but England abysmal in this series. The batting has been woeful on very good batting pitches. Australia have done excellently though - huge credit to them.
Yea I think that is fair. Broad's bowling has been pretty good to be fair to him. Our first innings batting, in particular, has been the problem.
Wasn't out of sorts - he was just being a selfish dickhead as per usual. No one complains when his big shots come off but when they don't come off he gets ****loads of stick. He isn't going to change.
We were outplayed consistently, but should have put up a better show. Stokes showed that it was possible to bat.
I've never understood this "Pietersen is selfish" thing that gets trotted out so often. I can see how you could argue Boycott or someone scoring 250 very slowly could be described as selfish - the player is accumulating runs himself while possibly reducing the team's chance of winning - but how on earth is it selfish to play poor shots and get low scores? It doesn't serve Pietersen's interests in any way, it doesn't make him look good and it puts huge pressure on him, with some people calling for him to be dropped (good luck finding anyone better by the way). You can question his judgement and shot selection but I don't see how that translates into selfishness. I know people here are likely to be Carberry fans but I'm sorry, he really hasn't been that good. He hasn't been awful and he should keep his place for at least the rest of this series but he's got past 30 on 4 occasions and only reached 50 once. That's poor. In Test cricket you go through patches where you get out cheaply a lot (as Cook is now) so you need to take advantage of your starts. Carberry's currently doing the hard work and then getting out for 30 or 40 when he should be pushing on and converting those starts into really big scores.
It's a fair point, but It think people are being a bit more praiseworthy towards Carberry because it is his first Ashes series. The others don't really have that excuse. For what it's worth, I think Cook has been our worst batsman of the series. Prior has been awful, but he has been poor for a while now and isn't a specialist batsman.
Yeah, I'd agree with that to some extent. Given his lack of Test experience and compared to the others he's done okay. The problem is his age. I would think one advantage of picking a 33-year-old to play is that a 33-year-old has a lot of match experience (even if not at this level) and so they're more likely to come in and perform straight away. The downside of that for Carberry is that there's probably more pressure on him to score big runs than there is for someone like Joe Root, who will be given more time because he's likely to be in the side for another 10-15 years. I think Carberry needs a big score to nail his place down otherwise the selectors may look to someone younger. Cook has been very poor but this has happened to him before (he was terrible for a while before the last Ashes). There's no reason he can't sort himself out again. Prior may need to be pulled out of the firing line. Bairstow can't be any worse at this point.
How Ironic it would be if the very ashes series Glenn Mcgrath does not predict a whitewash , is a whitewash .
