English cricket thread

Abraxas said:
You would have thought Anderson was worth an over or two no matter how he's bowled.
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Agreed

It was the right decision to give Robinson the new ball, but he has been poor this spell. Should've gone to Anderson last over
 
This has been a great test match. I think England should leave it feeling quite confident for the rest of the series.
 
I think Ollie Robinson needs to be dropped if only for providing so much motivation to this Aussie side.

Gavinb33 said:
We can all talk about the declaration but every single one of you would have taken a 40 run lead needing 2 wickets on the last day, if you were offered it before the game
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Yep, that's why I have no issues with the declaration. Until the last Root over, the draw was still on the cards.
 
50-50 series before it started for me. So, I'm not surprised that it's a 50-50 game. I expect smith to struggle for the rest of the series. The Aussie batting line up is still so so at best.
 
So many missed opportunities for England.

Poor tactical decision to declare in a first innings with a par total and a batsman smashing it on 100 odd. Should never, ever happen - don't care what "brand" you're playing, that is illogical and there's no defence for doing that. Completely getting carried away with style over making the right decision with that one.

Dropped catches galore.

Taking wickets on no balls.

It feels like England have made the running, created all the opportunities to win and haven't quite got it done due to tactics and execution at the last moment. Credit to Australia for battling and great calmness at the end.
 
Well for all the talk before the game in here, England couldn’t take 20 wickets and didn’t have enough pace to seriously trouble the tailenders at the end :lol:
 
Really good match.

Excellent partnership at the end, played with patience but looked to attack when given the opportunity.

Don't think England should be too worried. Was a very close game. Hopefully the remaining games are as competitive.
 
Oh well. Good game by both teams. Khawaja man of the match for holding both Aussie innings together. Knuckle biting right to the end.
 
Khawaja has basically just played the match of his life. The key wicket in both aussie innings
 
There’s nothing in sport that can compare to the ebb and flow of a test match
 
Gavinb33 said:
We can all talk about the declaration but every single one of you would have taken a 40 run lead needing 2 wickets on the last day, if you were offered it before the game
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This is a weird argument. We’d have taken that but if we’d been offered 80 ahead with them needing 2 we’d have taken that instead. Basically your argument means you can excuse any bad decision as long as it looks like it might work out in the end. You can learn things from wins as well as losses.
 
Gavinb33 said:
We can all talk about the declaration but every single one of you would have taken a 40 run lead needing 2 wickets on the last day, if you were offered it before the game
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Agreed. You would almost always back the bowling team in that situation. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and say that a player powered through and finished the job like Cummins did. No shame in that. That was a fantastic match from both teams right to the end.
 
Gavinb33 said:
If anything the biggest issue was the pitch, unsure how you take away England's biggest home strength and produce such an inert pitch
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Can't be that much wrong with it, we created plenty of chances to take the game away from Australia. Not really the pitches fault if we don't take the chances that present themselves and declare before we've made a good score. Weather probably plays a part in the way the pitches will come out as well to be fair to the groundsmen.

We also didn't have a quality spinner which is completely our fault and not the pitches fault, the assistance was there. That would have won us the game. If we had Lyon we win that game.
 
Also it helps that I largely find this Australia team, and Cummins in particular, far more likeable than the Aussies of years gone by.
 
Frustrating and a missed opportunity for England. But Cummins is a top player. Khawaja will rightly get MOM but Cummins deserves a shout
 
slyadams said:
This is a weird argument. We’d have taken that but if we’d been offered 80 ahead with them needing 2 we’d have taken that instead. Basically your argument means you can excuse any bad decision as long as it looks like it might work out in the end. You can learn things from wins as well as losses.
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Shouldn't need a lead of 80 to bowl out the tail, in nearly every scenario the bowling team has the edge in the situation we just watched it didn't work this time
 
Had England not declared when they did there's an argument to say that they wouldn't have been in a position to actually win the game.
And yes a draw would obviously be better than a loss, but this England team seem intent on going for the win no matter what.

Personally I feel that declaration made for an even more exciting test match.
 
Great game overall. It’s not the declaration on day 1 that cost England. It was the missed chances. They should consider having YJB as a specialist bat and drop Moeen and bring in Woakes in the next test.
 
I really don't get the need for so much criticism after such a brilliant and even test match. such fine margins and everything that we tried was for the express purpose of trying to win this game, not to be negative.

Baffles my head.

I'm out.
 
Abraxas said:
Can't be that much wrong with it, we created plenty of chances to take the game away from Australia. Not really the pitches fault if we don't take the chances that present themselves and declare before we've made a good score. Weather probably plays a part in the way the pitches will come out as well to be fair to the groundsmen.

We also didn't have a quality spinner which is completely our fault and not the pitches fault, the assistance was there. That would have won us the game. If we had Lyon we win that game.
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Yeah we created chances but it was a dead pitch, when your bowlers are low 80 mph bowlers you need some movement with a bit of seam at least, you could see at the end why they didn't want the new ball
 
iKnowNothing said:
Great game overall. It’s not the declaration on day 1 that cost England. It was the missed chances. They should consider having YJB as a specialist bat and drop Moeen and bring in Woakes in the next test.
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Still think you need a spinner and the answer isn't Joe Root/
 
If you’re going to moan after watching 5 days of that, you need some joy in your life. Aussie’s did incredible to win that, Cummins especially, hats off to him.

So many positives for England going forwards.
 
iKnowNothing said:
Great game overall. It’s not the declaration on day 1 that cost England. It was the missed chances. They should consider having YJB as a specialist bat and drop Moeen and bring in Woakes in the next test.
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Was wondering where Woakes was just assumed he was injured.
 
I barely watch any cricket these days, but looks like I'll be watching a lot of this series. Great game, that.

Just out of curiosity, what is an Ollie Robinson for? I see a big lad amble in and chuck it in a straight line at 78 mph for five days... then I look up his record and he's got dozens of test wickets at an average of 21. Maybe I just don't understand cricket anymore. :(
 
Gavinb33 said:
We can all talk about the declaration but every single one of you would have taken a 40 run lead needing 2 wickets on the last day, if you were offered it before the game
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True but why not take new ball straight away
 
Champ said:
Had England not declared when they did there's an argument to say that they wouldn't have been in a position to actually win the game.
And yes a draw would obviously be better than a loss, but this England team seem intent on going for the win no matter what.

Personally I feel that declaration made for an even more exciting test match.
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How do you work that one out?

That decision didn't work. At all. All we did was declare, leave runs on the table, and nothing came of it tactically by getting Australia in. So we didn't even use that time to any effect.

If we don't do that and allow Root to smash runs which he was already starting to do by lofting the spinner, we have more runs to play with, Australia would have been under even more pressure throughout the game and especially at the end there.

Call a spade a spade. It was a terrible call. But we can move on. No problem playing aggressively but it doesn't justify every poor decision. They're going to happen and hopefully we learn from them.
 
Gutted... Think our bowling wasn't good enough at the end. Cummings felt rashy comfortable, as for Lyon...the biggest chance was the dropped wonder catch from Stokes, which says a lot

Great test, great start to the series. We'll win the next one.
 
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