It was started during the last ashes series. After the ashes decided to retitle it as a place to discuss all sport except football, as the odds were that a group of people that like football are likely to watch and enjoy other sports. Plus not much Ashes chat between series. Gets busy during The Open, Wimbledon, The Olympics etc.
Agreed, you don't get 300+ wickets easily. Just to the uneducated eye (mine) he didn't look threatening. Would prefer to face him in his prime than Bob Willis. Probably wrongly.
Just saw the highlights, and apart from the joy of listening to the Aussie commentator choking on his impetuous earlier 'critical' comments, it was a strange first day of Ashes cricket... Apart from Brook, Pope and arguably Smith, the England batting was immature at best, but credit to Starck who was right on the money. Australia however, didn't learn any lessons and were even more profligate - even with the benefit of a couple of very dodgy umpire / 3rd Umpire calls. I certainly wouldn't want to have splashed out for tickets for the 4th Day, let alone the 5th!!
If Aus get to 50 without loss, which they currently look like doing, then I fear they will scamper home. The pitch is fast and bouncy, but certainly not a minefield and it hasn't had any time to deteriorate. So it will have to be a mental 'collapse' by the home side to lose this now.
The Smith caught behind decision was a joke. The same 3rd umpire refused to overturn a much clearer snick in the Aus first innings, but takes 5 minutes to convince himself that a murmur after the ball has passed the bat is 'conclusive'.
Pathetic from the actual batters today. Can’t be expecting the bowlers to rescue us all the time (although it’s thanks to the bowlers we had some of kind of score to defend!) Massive opportunity wasted here.
