< 1 minute readThere is a chance that James Anderson isn’t the nightwatchman, you realise. He might be the new number three. But while the batting may have changed considerably, life’s the same for England in the field. Today’s backdrop for the Brad Haddin counterattack was 97-5. We all know the drill by
Continue readingCategory: Australia
Shuffling bread
2 minute readHave we all made realistic New Year’s resolutions? No more drinking on Wednesdays? One takeaway a week, but you won’t deliberately order enough for breakfast the next morning as well? Or maybe you’ve resolved to stop playing Australia quite so frequently. Vivisection’s tempting, but let’s not reach for the scalpel
Continue readingBeing overtaken in a 10-Test series
2 minute readYou’ve got to pace yourself. Australia started this 10-Test series so woefully that they could only ever improve. In hindsight, that was a masterstroke. It’s tempting to talk about momentum, but we’ll stick to a different M-word – motivation. Nothing keeps you going like knowing that you’re gaining on someone.
Continue readingReverse swing?
< 1 minute readYeah? Maybe? 20-odd overs onwards? Bit of something? Yeah? It’s been a low scoring match; it’s been hard to score; so a bit of movement might make the run chase a bit tense? Yeah? It’s hard to appear entirely positive when you’re using so many question marks.
Continue reading“They started it”
< 1 minute readAre England and Australia ever going to comprehend the concept of hubris? Australia finished day one shushing the Barmy Army. Have they not been paying attention to the way things have worked this year? They finished day two on 164-9. Sportsmen aren’t exactly shot-through with dignity, but the Ashes seems
Continue readingFinding food in an Astramax van
< 1 minute readFor a team whose coach mocks England for having a boring approach to the game, Australia are hypocritically wedded to maidens. As the series wears on, it’s clear that Mitchell Johnson is just a go-faster stripe on an Astramax van. He distracts us, gains our attention, but this bowling attack
Continue readingBen Stokes is a large, brightly-coloured straw
< 1 minute readYou can see him a mile off. Clutch him. CLUTCH HIM! It’s not so much that he scored a hundred on what was actually a fairly even, true pitch between the cracks. It’s more that he looked unruffled. Any idiot can bat, but hardly anyone can bat in the muggy
Continue readingKevin Pietersen and caricatured batting
2 minute readKevin Pietersen can often look a caricature of a batsman. Look at his leave. When he leaves a ball, Jesus Christ it stays left. The ball really knows it hasn’t been hit following KP’s huge, flourishing, circular withdrawal of the bat. Today, Pietersen batted sensibly and in keeping with this
Continue readingBrad Haddin is kind of shameless
2 minute readBowlers win you matches, but batsmen lose them. Is there really much point weighing up day one of the third Test when England’s batsmen might render all that preceded it almost entirely irrelevant? May as well go through the motions, just in case. Five down A growing theme of this
Continue readingEngland’s batting improves a bit
2 minute readLet’s not go overboard. There are two ways to look at England’s second innings. The first is to see it as indicative of an upward curve, which gives hope for the rest of the series. The second is to say that standards are now so low that it would actually
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