Toss up between his and Steve Finn's diving 'Jonty Rhodes' effort at mid on. Both 'worldies' - can they be bettered in this series?
And so to Old Trafford, for the decider in what has been a tremendous series. England 0-2 down, all over bar the shouting and now look how the momentum has shifted. I do hope Manchester's rocking tomorrow
Forecast looks ok for a full day's play Be a real shame if such a closely fought contest were to be decided by ****worth-Lewis. Or a "super-over" Or god forbid, the toss of a coin
I think the coin toss will be pretty key this morning anyway. It would be fantastic if we could the summer rolling over the hmp Australia team in all forms of the game and maybe beat them in the rugby as well.
Utter disaster yesterday,but overall a good Summer for us. The 50 over team will allways have the odd poor score,it's the way they play,but they will win more than they loose playing attacking cricket.
Right, I know it's not the Ashes, but it's still test match cricket. Under the cosh.com at the moment in Abu Dhabi, where Pakistan are 479-4 Adil Rashid, who many of us were championing to get a slot in this summer's Ashes now has the worst ever bowling figures for a test match debutant, 33-0-160-0
New opener. He has opened in the one-day format previously but I believe that this is his first ever first class match opening the batting. In fairness every time he has batted with Cook they have had a minimum 50 partnership so there is some logic there, also his key weakness against quick short-pitched bowling is somewhat mitigated by the dead pitches in the Emirates. I don't see him reprising the role in South Africa as I imagine he will revert to 8, Rashid will go and we will play a specialist opener. By using Ali as an opener we get to play a second "front-line" spinner plus Joe Root's tweakers whilst retaining four quicks to rotate as the conditions over there mean that the fast bowlers are not going to be able to put in many overs in either a spell or a day as it is hotter than a double strength chilli masala over there. That said our spin attack went 0-300+ in the first innings although you'd have to blame Bell for a couple of shocking drops and Broad for a stupid overstep giving the key Pakistani batters lives. I think Bell is currently running a personal deficit in excess of 200 runs which his drops have cost the team so smart money is on him making a single figure score tomorrow.
Bell gets to 60 and flashes one to Point. Now where have I heard that before? To be fair he's not in good touch, so he managed to scrap well to bat for most of the day and help his team out.
Cook completes the longest innings by an England player, 34 Minutes longer than Sir Lens when he got the record 364.
Was it the longest or did it just feel like it? We surely cannot play another series in these conditions. The crowds are bigger at Colchester.
