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The Ashes 2013

Watson out LBW, who'da thunk it?! :lol:

^^ I always enjoy taking in views from online papers from both sides, to try and get a more balanced take on things. Those 'comments' columns do seem as though they attract the lowest common denominator of fans though. There's rarely much balance (or even coherent intelligent thought for that matter!) in those sections.

Australia's subjugation on the field against England in recent times is in stark contrast to when I was growing up and first starting to follow cricket in the late 80s and through the 90s. I think Australia won something like 8 series in a row? By the time 2005 came around I think the prospects of England winning a series were right up there with the football team winning the football world cup, or a Brit winning Wimbledon!
 
Lunch, Day 4 : AUS 3/48 (Khawaja 8, Clarke 11), need 535 to win.

So we bagan with Joe Root looking for his double ton, but electing to play a ramp shot on 180. Interesting. Bairstow also got himself out with an almost equally terrible shot, and England had wasted 30 minutes for zero gain, other than confirming that Bairstow is a pretty ordinary batsman.

Enter Watson, who, to the shock of absolutely nobody, planted the front foot, playing across the line to Anderson to be out to an LBW so plumb that not even he bothered to review it.

What to do with Watto? His situation (and the rest of this tour) has become an exercise in crisis management. His opening spot appears untenable, but where do we go from here?

Adding to the debacle, Rogers inexplicably decided to shoulder arms to a straight one from Swann. A test to forget for Rogers, who now will be starting to wonder about his spot, like many of his teammates.

At this point, a leader would man up and come in to face Swann, or at the very least, break the sequence of left handers, but once again, Clarke decided to put his average before the interests of the team, and threw Hughes to the lions.

Inevitably, Hughes also fell to Swann, LBW to a ball doing nothing but hitting middle and leg half way up. Electing to review it just for laughs, he was promtly on his way with two runs to his name from his last three innings.

We'll soon see what kind of a coach Boof is. It's going to be quite a feat to get this team up after a performance like this.
 
Tea, Day 4 : AUS 6/136 (Haddin 0, Agar 0) trail by 447.

Australia's best session since Day 1, or at least it would have been had Clarke not had a brain explosion, unnecessarily gliding an innocuous delivery from part-timer Root straight to leg-slip. Perhaps it's the strain, but that was one shocking lapse, given the situation.

As is so often the case, one wicket brought another almost immediately, when Khawaja's watchful and very encouraging 54 off 133 was ended by an unplayable ball from Root, taking advantage of a large, vicious rough spot outside the left hander's off stump.

Alas, that wasn't the end of it, when Smith decided to play an awful woft at Bresnan to be caught behind of a faint edge. Of course, he decided to waste a review on it - so all reviews gone for us.

Frustrating session. Two hours of good work undone in five minutes by some atrocious shots. Australia remain on course to suffer one of the heaviest test defeats of all time.
 
Cricket Australia's pursuit of the almighty dollar via its obsession with hit 'n' giggle rubbish (or 20/20, as everyone else calls it)
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Is that a common view down under? I do wonder what the arguements are for the fall from grace of Aussie Cricket but then again you can't remain number 1 forever. Speaking of 20/20 the popularity of that form of cricket came from England and has coinceded with our test team achievements really, the extra money seemed to have helped us.

We've been 20/20 World Champions, Number 1 test team in the world and even got to a major final with our normally dreadful ODI team not too mention on the verge of our 4th Ashes out of the last 5.
 
It has to, absolutely, have had an impact.

I mean, when club cricketers such as Glenn Maxwell and Dave Warner earn $1m and $.75m for a month of "work" in the IPL - it completely changes your incentives as a cricketer. The most you can earn for playing Shield Cricket (and the attendant, interminable and unwatched 50 over matches) for a WHOLE SEASON is $100,000, after money was diverted from these traditional forms of cricket to our version of the IPL, the "Big Bash".

By Australian standards, $100,000 a year is nice, but, unless you seriously live to play cricket, hardly worth giving up most day jobs for, given the lack of security. So, it is rational to treat longer form cricket as a fall back, concentrating your energies on smashing the ball out of the park against the bowling machine all week, knowing your salary from 20/20 is enough to keep you living well - international selection is just a bonus.

But, Australia's fall from grace has been way too steep to be caused by one thing alone. I think you can trace the dismantling of this side back several years to when Clarke was 'anointed' as successor to Ponting as captain. Since then there has been incident after incident with player after player having a falling out with Clarke. Every time there is an incident of disharmony, Clarke seems to be the common denominator.

Never was it in the script for us to play back to back Ashes series without at least two of Katich, Hussey and Ponting in the side, however, for whatever reason they all had disagreements with Clarke, and, in an extraordinary coincidence, none of them are playing.

Back to the cricket, and, while I tend to go easy on umpires having stood in plenty of games (at a much lower level!) myself, the decision to overturn Agar's not out decision in the second innings was utterly baffling. The ICC should investigate the decision process behind this decision, offer an explanation, or stand the video umpire down. There appeared not to be a shred of evidence - audio, deviation, or hot spot to see Agar be given out - truly baffling.
 
There's nothing inherently wrong with DRS, but the application of it across the first two tests has been questionable at best. For a system that's supposed to remove howlers, there have been howlers given out when they shouldn't have been, and not outs given when they should. Can't really blame the technology, just the incredible ineptitude of those trying to fathom its proper usage.

Like video evidence in rugby union, or like hawkeye in the tennis, it's supposed to remove the controversy of wrong decisions, yet in these tests so far, the most controversial aspects of the game have been the legitimacy of certain decisions.

Of course that shouldn't mask the deficiencies of the Australian team, but then, I doubt it will.
 
The ICC should investigate the decision process behind this decision, offer an explanation, or stand the video umpire down. There appeared not to be a shred of evidence - audio, deviation, or hot spot to see Agar be given out - truly baffling.
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In the 1st test? what what I saw on Sky Sports there was sound and a slight but non the less small hotspot. Smallest edge I've ever seen but along with the sound he looked out to me.
 
No, earlier today off Bresnan's bowling. Agar was given not out, and England went upstairs. No hotspot, no noise, no deviation, and Agar was given out by the video umpire.

In the interests of transparency, this one has to be explained.
 
So Swann knocks over Pattinson (who played a fighting knock) with a couple of balls to spare on Day 4, mercifully avoiding a fifth day.

An utter humiliation. Completely outplayed by a far superior all round team.
 
Botany Bay said:
No, earlier today off Bresnan's bowling. Agar was given not out, and England went upstairs. No hotspot, no noise, no deviation, and Agar was given out by the video umpire.

In the interests of transparency, this one has to be explained.
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Ah not seen any of todays play, will watch highlights later.
 
It was a strange dismissal. There didn't seem to be any evidence at all. I saw something on the BBC website saying that the Umpire had apparently given the decision based on a 'sighted' deflection and a noise as the ball passed the bat.

Speaking of Umpires, there's not a great of wiggle-room for selection is there when 8 of the 12 elite panel are either English or Australian.

2-0 up with 3 to play, I can't see Australia turning it around, not barring seeing something that hasn't been seen so far. What Australia desperately need to do is to not completely cave in and gift England a huge psychological advantage heading into the series later in the year.
 
Predictable result in the end. Well done England, although we were so poor it's hard to imagine they'd derive any satisfaction whatever from the win if it was anyone other than Australia they were playing.

News today that Pattinson has a stress fracture and is out of the tour. That may explain his rather ordinary performances to date. I wonder if the batsmen who've consistently failed and greatly increased his workload will feel any remorse whatever. Somehow, I doubt it very much.

Back to the earlier discussion for a moment: The hit 'n' giggle rubbish isn't the entire reason for our decline. Nor is the so-called "anointing" of Clarke and the real or alleged bust-ups he's (supposedly) had with pretty much everyone (if the gossip is to be believed); I've never been in the Clarke-hating group and don't put much store in gossip so I won't say any more about that. Administrators at state and national level seemed to believe the production line of world-class players we routinely produced in the 90s and 00s would continue unabated, without any input from anyone. The stupidity of such a belief should have been obvious to anyone, but all concerned seemed to remain oblivious to reality. This article sums up my views on both those topics quite neatly.

Another issue is the fact that potential cricketers (tennis players / track and field athletes / you name it) seem to prefer the "soft" option of AFL. There are six first-class cricket teams in Australia; there are 18 AFL sides. It doesn't need rocket science to work out that there's a lot more places potentially available in AFL than cricket, and better money for those starting out. I've read about blokes who reckon they can always go back to cricket if their AFL careers don't work out, another viewpoint whose stupidity should be obvious. This is another issue that isn't going to go away any time soon.

I'd like to believe we're not going to end up the sort of basket case that West Indies cricket devolved into after their golden era, but the similarities are there. Whether there's anyone in this country with the imagination to address the issues is another matter entirely.
 
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Here's a test for Lehmann. Will he send this self-centred, overrated prat back to Sydney on the first available flight, or send him into the side for Old Trafford?

I know which I'd rather happened. I also know which is infinitely more likely.
 
England unchanged, but Aust went for three. Warner in for Hughes, Lion for Agar and Starc for Pattinson, with the last the only forced change if I heard the commentators correctly.

Aust 3/200 at the moment. Missed Watson and Khawaja's wickets. Heard that Khawaja might have been dudded by the third umpire, which is unfortunate. Saw Rogers get lbw and surprised he didn't walk immediately and thought they would waste a DRS, but Clarke sent him on his way thankfully. Where Khawaja might be unlucky with the DRS, Smith hasn't been. He survived two close calls and got rid of the English team's referrals and then benefited again when the on field umpire missed a pretty plump lbw and thanks to having no referrals got to play on.

Glad to see Clarke going well and if there is any chances of making a decent game of this test he has to lead by example and build a reasonable score in this first innings. Need a couple of others to stand up and Rogers had a decent innings, now for Smith and co to chime in as well hopefully.
 
I don't want to harp on about the DRS lest it come across as sour grapes or something, but good grief - that was as poor a decision as I've seen, perhaps ever but certainly in recent times. I was always under the impression that one had to actually hit the ball to be given out caught, but perhaps there's been a rule change of late that I'm not aware of. I don't particularly rate Khawaja but he was completely dudded on this occasion.

Both sides have received some really poor decisions in this series. I've never been a fan of the neutral umpire idea and the fact all but four of the so-called "elite" umpires are either Australian or English almost makes rubbish decisions inevitable.

Anyway, enough harping. Looks like we put together three decent sessions for the first time...this year, basically. Good to see Clarke give it to the doubters yet again and Smith made another good contribution. The revelation for me was Rogers' innings. I'd always thought of him as an accumulator type but that innings was almost spectacular at times.

I suppose at least Watson wasn't out lbw for once.

I hope we'll go on from here and post a really big score to finally give the bowlers something to work with. Another collapse wouldn't surprise, unfortunately.
 
No collapse for once - just more arrogance and stupidity in the use of the DRS, this time from Warner who seems to become a more complete dickhead with every passing day. Pity Smith threw away a century (almost literally) but the batting worked reasonably well for a change; at some point it would be pleasant if someone other than Clarke would stand up and take the lead role. A couple of bonus wickets at the end but we'll need to do a lot better than that tonight, the earlier the better.

Apparently weather is supposed to intervene (at Manchester? Imagine that), and of course England need do no more than draw the remaining games so they remain very much in the box seat. But it's nice to see us display some improvement after the second Test abomination.
 
Good start. 3 gone with Pietersen just getting out and we have another DRS controversy with it. England also have no reviews left and Aust still have one after they went for a very close appear earlier in the day. Lets hope the weather stays away and there a positive result after a very tough week and a half for Australian cricket.

Edit: Went off for an early lunch due to the rain and never came back with the match abandoned. England retain the Ashes in an underwhelming way thanks to the weather. While they will be glad that their main aim was accomplished I'm sure they would have preferred it on the field surrounded by stands full of supporters. It takes some of the magic out of it of the spectacle, but that's cricket.

Anyway, England will now look towards keeping Australia winless and Australia will look towards squaring the series.
 
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Disappointing, if unsurprising, end to the Test - I've an idea I read somewhere once that more days of Test cricket have been washed out at Manchester than anywhere else (even Melbourne). It was great to see us fight back so well after the abomination that was the previous Test, and it would have been good to see if we'd have been able to sustain the effort long enough to force the win.

Oh, well. There are bigger issues in life than winning / losing a few games of cricket.

England have been the better side and the result of the series reflects that. However, I reckon they're not quite as good as some people appear to believe. Vaughan's claim that they can "dominate their era" seems rather comical given their struggles against the might of New Zealand earlier this year, both away and at home. (The fact we failed to match NZ in the "make England battle" stakes is still another indictment on the current state of the game here.) Their batting isn't the force it was a couple of years ago and a few of their bowlers seem to struggle a bit when conditions don't entirely suit. But they retain the Ashes and they won't much care about the hows and whys of it all. They remain a very, very good side and have deservedly retained the urn.

Still much to play for in the next couple of Tests, for both sides. We need to sustain the renewed effort seen at Old Trafford. England will want, at the very least, to paper over some of the minor but not insignificant cracks that have appeared in the series to date. Bring it on.
 
I had a suspicion that the Aussies will improve. Even still, they may still square the series, but I expect England to win overall. Probably 2-1 again, as per 2005.
 
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