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.
The apparent lack of traditional discipline in the batting will bring spectacular rewards occasionally, particularly in ODI's and T20's, , but will never produced a dominant, all-conquering force at Test level. Somehow they have to find a happy medium in the long form game. It's somewhat ironic that one of the only players to apply himself with the bat in both innings of this Test was Ollie Pope, who most commentators were consigning to the scrapheap.
I get the attitude of positivity, play how you feel and never say anything negative that stokes and mccullum try to promote but surely has to occasionally be some kind of accountability and the odd rollicking handed out. This defeat is humiliating , Aussies won’t care as they won but I think everyone involved on and off the field when a test lasts less than 2 days has to take a look at themselves! Sadly that’s probably series over though as well which makes it even worse.
Freak test I think. Head wins by playing BazBall , bowlers knackered, pitch going to sleep. Australia confident for next test, let’s see. Is this the start of a draining weekend?
