The cricket thread

Heartfeltdawn

Teetonetal said:

You would hope that out of 22 batsmen at least one would make a score... odds now heavily in favor of that one being english... still if the ball is moving around alot then I wouldn't bet against oz being back in by close..

TMS seem to suggest the ball is not moving as much as last test and it's just poor batting.

Stuart Broad, does seem to have this in him though. Imagine if he could harness this for double the amount of time, he'd be up there as one of the greats.

The Australians are playing the moving ball very badly. The bat angles have been wrong in many cases. Steve Smith is unorthodox and gets away with it on wickets that offer little to the seamer. On this track, he's made to look very ugly indeed and his dismissal was utterly horrible. Bat coming across the ball, body moving across outside of off stump, totally turned around wide outside of off stump... 

http://i.imgur.com/krcG5SY.jpg

crunchman

Not sure I've ever seen extras as highest scorer before.

How well will England bat?  Nasty 10 mins or so before lunch.

Teetonetal

So, all gone. Now the moment of truth for England.. 

lloyd

crunchman said:

Not sure I've ever seen extras as highest scorer before.

How well will England bat?  Nasty 10 mins or so before lunch.

Never happened in Ashes history-extras being high scorer that is.

It's brightening up a bit so that should help them, they'll be well up for this, like you say keep your heads and no silly stuff for the opening inevitable hard stuff and should be looking at a significant lead by the end of batting.

axisus

Just looked at the score and I was genuinely laughing out loud! Mrs A wanted to know what was going on! Absolutely bloody unbelievable! Utterly gobsmacked! GO ENGLAND!

axisus

Broad 8 -15, unbelievable figures against the Aussies in particular. Must be the best day of his life!

scrumhalf

Experience tells me to hold fire until England have batted.

I wouldn't be surprised if we were bowling again for the last half-hour, but then if that's the case I wouldn't be surprised if Broady got a 10-wicket match in a day.

Heartfeltdawn

At lunch we now have over 20% of the Australian score. We have 13. Mental

A big two fingers to two Cricinfo journalists who dismissed Broad as being finished after the World Cup. I have a long running thing going with both of them and edited a book for one of them. Bowlers need overs, Broad wasn't 'bowling fit' for the World Cup, and every game since the start of the Windies tour he has been getting better. In an increasingly batsman-centric game, it's fabulous to see a bowler showing up batsmen. There were shots in that innings, Clarke's in particular, that would have embarrassed the Bangladesh team a decade ago. 

scrumhalf

Heartfeltdawn said:

At lunch we now have over 20% of the Australian score. We have 13. Mental

A big two fingers to two Cricinfo journalists who dismissed Broad as being finished after the World Cup. I have a long running thing going with both of them and edited a book for one of them. Bowlers need overs, Broad wasn't 'bowling fit' for the World Cup, and every game since the start of the Windies tour he has been getting better. In an increasingly batsman-centric game, it's fabulous to see a bowler showing up batsmen. There were shots in that innings, Clarke's in particular, that would have embarrassed the Bangladesh team a decade ago. 

To be fair, Broad was bowling short-pitched rubbish as the team's "enforcer". He's now bowling properly, and reaping the rewards.

scrumhalf

Oh, and Clarke needs to score big runs in the second innings, his shot to get out was utterly inappropriate.

FX_Munkee

This was a good one on the BBC twitter:-
"Time for Cook to go. No adventure at all. Should have declared and put the Aussies back in."

Heartfeltdawn

scrumhalf said:

To be fair, Broad was bowling short-pitched rubbish as the team's "enforcer". He's now bowling properly, and reaping the rewards.

It was the intimation of the journalists that he was finished because he was down on pace and not because of the stupid enforcer policy (which they recognised was a team policy rather than Broad bowling toss). Any bowler who has fairly major surgery needs time to get back into the rhythm of bowling. In the World Cup, his rhtyhm stank. Come the Windies series, you could see with each game that it was getting better and better. It's exactly the same as Mitchell Johnson when he came to England for the Champions Trophy. The rhythm looked so much better than it had been: that winter he killed us. 

Teetonetal

willing Adam Lyth to get a good score here....

lloyd

We've avoided the follow on, which is nice.

SimonRF

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha.

lloyd

Seen this earlier Aussie innings in one tweet:

@tregs100: 04W24W0W04100000W40000110W020000401000W000000000101000011W0011200010040040000W1W30000000000000400000000000001004W

minimoog

Find your Australian batsman name by adding 'b Broad' to your surname.

Heartfeltdawn

Bairstow time. Very interesting time. 

Teetonetal

Again hoping he makes a good score... Now or never for him, he wont ever have a better cc season behind him

axisus

scrumhalf said:

Oh, and Clarke needs to score big runs in the second innings, his shot to get out was utterly inappropriate.

He didn't do that one where he swings the bat between his legs shouting "it's my penis"?