Australia / England

Australia fight with their last breath having misused all previous lung work

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It’s probably not quite right to say that Australia again fought to the final wicket. It’s more that they fought for the final wicket, which isn’t quite so impressive. We’ve also got a suspicion that England are deliberately manufacturing embarrassing 10th wicket partnership statistics with which the Aussie batsmen can be beaten. A kind of: “See – batting should be easy.”

The failures are most damning for their predictability.

Shane Watson twice got past 20, didn’t get past 30 and was dismissed LBW in both innings. In all, 24 of Watson’s 77 Test dismissals have been LBW and if anything, he seems keen to add to his tally.

Phil Hughes scored one and one.

Steve Smith scored two and one.

You would bet on each of those things happening more often than not and that is half the Australian batting order accounted for. It really is quite disgraceful. And also magic.

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14 comments

  1. And yet, England haven’t been at their best. We were 30-3 in both innings and ended up winning by 347 runs.

  2. Jeez that was close. That was very nearly the Aussies’ Cardiff. Three balls to spare! THREE BALLS! I don’t think I can take much more of this. Ashes cricket is just too stressful to cope with.

    (Come on, we have to try something to make it seem like a proper Ashes match.)

    1. Look at it from our point of view, Bert.

      Daisy and I were sitting on Day 5 tickets at £30 a pop.

      I’m not a gambling man, but I basically had £60 riding on England taking a wicket in those last four balls, having studiously failed to take that wicket in the preceding 85 balls.

      The odds did not seem good. The omens did not seem good. Then the winning delivery.

      Agony turned to ecstasy.

      Daisy and I are now looking forward to our complete day off tomorrow.

      I might even write a Day 5 match report if the mood takes me.

  3. Why, oh why will none of the sky analysts just point out the obvious.

    The Australian batsmen are just mediocre.

    Oh no, cue hours of discussion on what they need to do to, to improve. Concentrate on this, practice that. Pray to Odin. Replace your forearm muscles with hydraulics. Re-animate Don Bradman and claim this shambling zombie is David Warner with food poisoning.

    Dross, drekk, clatt. Unworthy to be playing. They will still be giving Phil Hughes chances well into his 60’s. “He’ll come good soon!”. What on earth do CA see that the rest off us don’t? Does he have a photo of their chairman going full pelt with a tranny?

    Of course I could be more annoyed, but seeing as I watched the whole test on a illegal live stream, it doesn’t really give me leg to stand on.

    2. This thing is, if you look at the “Australia A” team, who just got bowled out in 60 and then 50 overs against a Zimbabwe XI, who in that collection of guys with first class averages in the 30s can you honestly say is likely to do a better job than Phil Hughes? Hughes might be cod ordinary, but he is better than the rest which kind of means you have to keep him in the team.

  4. Clarke looks done in already. He has the same look the Vaughan and Hussain had shortly before the end of their respective captaincies. Look, he seems like a decen guy and look, he’s a world class player. But aw, look, he might be on his last legs as a skipper already.

    1. Look, that’s a really good appeal? It really made me laugh? Yeah, look, we all just need to work harder and bear down and we’ll make the same sort of appeals?

  6. I had to look up the word tranny, as I was wondering why anyone would be concerned about the chairman going full pelt with a transistor radio. Isn’t that what all of us do during a test match, when we don’t have access to the television but do have time to follow the game.

    But it transpires that tranny is an extremely offensive term for a transvestite or transexual person. So now I understand.

    But I also understand Micko’s point. We went through this for years. Some very good batsmen (Mark Ramprakash and Robin Smith are two that come to mind) never felt secure in the team because a losing team had to try something different. But at that time we didn’t have anyone better at batting than those guys. We’d have done better at times sticking with them.

    And the thing that the ECB should have done in the mid 1980s or at the latest the early 1990s – fundamentally rethinking the contracts and restructuring the county game, was delayed 10 to 15 years while they moved those pointless deckchairs around the sun deck of the Titanic that was English cricket at that time.

    The Aussies seem to have learnt nothing from that and are repeating similar mistakes now. Tinker away, fellas, it won’t make a jot of difference.

  7. Well aplogies to anyone offended by my ‘tranny’ remark, gender reassigned or otherwise.

    I always assumed it was a simple shortning of the the full word. After looking it up on Google, it seems the Americans have decided using the word is on a par with donning a white hood and burning a cross.

    I consider myself open minded, so this is quite embarrasing.

    Of course, I’m often casually racist against the Aussies. Double standard?

  8. I think the problem is that England are too good.

    We should drop to the top five and replace them with the Sky, TMS and Channel 5 commentary team.

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