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philsgone

some, but not a lot. 3-1 to us, To be reviewed in August sometime.

lou

England 2-1 and it would have been the same with Rhino.

Tony Tea

Despite cutting a swathe through teams in Australia (and the Windies, who barely count), these Aussie bowlers are yet to live up to their reputations overseas. The ones who have actually played overseas, that is. Johnson, crap in England. Hazlewood never played in England. Starc, has he ever played in England? Cummins, the one Test wonder. Lippy the Lyon, seemingly always about to take a bag, but never really able to collar a batting line-up. We need The Rock, Rhyno.

lou

Starc played county cricket for Yorkshire for a season and did extremely well. He played meh for a test or two in the 2013 Ashes over in England. Hopefully, he's improved his red ball cricket. He does love bowling at the tail so that's helpful.

Carrot

I was genuinely impressed with our bowling in the Caribbean lately. Bear in mind that we were bowling against the same side that England did only a few weeks earlier, and had much more success. There shouldn't be any reason to assume that we'll do badly with the ball in this series.

Carrot

PS- I don't think we'll miss Spearmint at all. He looked a bowler on borrowed time against India, and even were he fit for this series, hadn't had much cricket lately anyway. I'm not even sure they would have picked him.

Tony Tea

I meant Test cricket.

Tony Tea

Yes, Rhyno was short of a gallop and probably would have struggled to make a big impact in this series, but I meant we would miss his ability to steady the attack by bowling tight and pinching wickets. Who's going to stead an attack now? Hazlewood, I hope will keep it tight.

Tony Tea

Fancy Haddin overcooking a dive. Klutz.

Soups

Bloody Haddin. Take EVERY ball from all over the shop, high, low & sideways. First edge (straight-forward) and thumbs it to the ground. Watch Root score a hundred.

2BarRiff

We've been bowling a fair bit of rubbish and been lucky to get some wickets with the odd good ball. Need to put the screws on and take our catches, no thanks Klutzy.

Tony Tea

Surely Haddin has dropped more catches than any Test wicket keeper.

Carrot

Johnson showing some Bad Johnson-esque figures, here.

Tony Tea

From what I could see in the pub, we bowled bulk pies.

Tony Tea

And when will Haddin learn not to dive over catches? This will probably be his last series, so it will be a little late for him to correct his footwork and lateral movement AFTER HIS LAST BLOODY TEST!!!!!

Tony Tea

With the Poms taking the juice out of all the pitches we will have to take our chances to retain the Ashes. Wwe can't afford to allow Pommy batsmen off the hook. There's a good chance Haddin has dropped the Ashes.

Carrot

Rrggh, can't get any of my dodgy websites to work! Is anyone who uses them experiencing the same problems?

Don't feel good about this at all at the moment - it seems that we're either toothless or leaking runs. This is where Watson has to earn his keep.

via collins

Jesus, Ballance is petrified. Making less effort than Kyrios at Wimbledon to take a Studsy ball on. Promising.

Carrot

Saw most of the last session in the end, before the feed gave up the ghost with about 5 overs to go. Hope this isn't the pattern for the summer.

Funny day. We didn't bowl particularly well, but still managed seven wickets. We're probably the happier of the two sides - the scoreboard says honours even, but England will be thinking that they should be miles in front and that it's an opportunity wasted. Everyone looked pretty toothless with the ball at times, Johnson in particular, but he didn't really bowl that badly. You can see why they do it, but I hate the way that boards prepare slow pitches to nullify our quicks. If we get them for less than 400 it'll be job done given the conditions, although we'll be hoping for somewhere closer to 350. Any more than 400 and it's advantage England, although to be fair, any more than 400 in the first dig is usually advantage anyone.

lou

Carrot, I gave up on my dodgy stream mid way through the session after lunch. Kept buffering and I'd just about had enough of the Aussie bowling efforts so couldn't be bothered trying again. They were all so inconsistent. I thought Starc was the worst for all he's got three wickets. Johnson at least was troubling Ballance.

Starc still does not appear to have a stock ball. Am I wrong?

Carrot

Starc's stock ball appears to be a full inswinger to the right-hander. Unplayable when it's moving around, rubbish when it's not. He bowled loads of them at Stokes (when they were outswingers because he's a leftie) before he finally got him.

I'm consoling myself in the fact that even though it's as bad I've seen us bowl in a long time, we're still well in the game. On the other side of that coin is the worry that if we bowl like that again against a batting line-up that goes that deep, we can't possibly hope to get away with it. The English are probably having exactly the same conversation with themselves mind you, you can't give away soft dismissals the way they did against a bowling attack like ours and expect to win series.

philsgone

So we need to determine the vernacular Bad Mitch1 = Johnson. Bad Mitcvh 2 Starc. Both turned up today. At tea we were staring down 3/350, so a good fightback. Haddin could be dropped by the 3rd test if he doesnt improve. Tho their keeper is also ordinary, and our catching is superior in general. we should still get a lead, so the draw once more is a likelihood

m0nty

Didn't watch a ball of day 1. Croq reminds us that this is pretty much what happened on day 1 of the last Ashes test in Cardiff in 2009, and the Bhaggies went on to spank 6/674 with tons to Katich, Punter, North and Klutzy. So I guess Wood will be the new Monty.

Tony Tea

Not looking forward to Anderson and Maureen Ali hanging on for the draw. (Nor am I looking forward to the flagrant, blatant time wasting cheatery.)

philsgone

as long as someone scores more than Root, then thats a plus

Tony Tea

Ideally, that someone should be Haddin.

lou

Wonder what McDermott is saying to them after yesterday's effort? It was poor. I'm hoping it was nerves and that they will be out of the way now.

TT, that person won't be Haddin. He may slash and burn his way to a 30 but no more.

Cam is Nosferatu

Pretty good bookends to the day by Oz; too bad about Klutzy and Root in the middle. Any chance of Nevill getting a run and being the sole Vic in the team? He had some good form with the bat in the warm up games.

The most horrible aspect to the opening day, besides the Blues doing what we all expected but not *that* badly, was finding out that the Ashes are on GEM only. I pay for Fox but GEM is only on the HD package ffs.

Btw, it was -3 on the Federal Highway yesterday and still the fire danger was "low to moderate". They must have some highly flammable frosts down there. Or it's just another sign of the times: A meaningless metric motivated more by a mania for mindless statements rather than anything ostensibly useful as a guide. Much like "these Ozzies never drop 'em".

Vindicate

Cam, GEM is FTA if you have a regular old TV antenna. Was facing the same conundrum yesterday before turning off the Fox box and switching on FTA for the first time in a couple of years.

GEM = Channel 80

Cam is Nosferatu

Thanks Vindicate. Unfortunately my set-top box on the TV isn't connected to an antenna. My summer TV on the deck has one but by crikey it's cold, lonely and dark out there.

Probably appropriate now that I give it some thought.

Vindicate

A length of coaxial cable might be go.

Cam is Nosferatu

Yes, I have that too. But I grow weary of the cable. One of those things where what you do for a living is the last thing you do at home. Like a master carpenter living in a crumbling house.

I may just bring in the rabbit ears instead as I know Tones lives for my comments, the gentle artful breeze of my summaries , and I aim to please.

Cam is Nosferatu

I used ostensibly incorrectly above, given the intent of my message, much to my undermining.

My sincere apologies all-round.

By way of mea culpa:

Brad Haddin is ostensibly a great keeper.

Bill Shorten works, ostensibly, for the working man.

The ostensible reason for Davey Boy Warner punching Joe Root in the head was anti-rassism.

Tony Tea

Foxtel & Nine at loggerheads.

m0nty

Yep, I'm a victim of that one. At least I am on the TV in the mancave.

Vindicate

With luck like this we're definitely going to need to take all our chances.

That said, bowling so far has been pretty lacklustre.

If there's one bright spot it's that the pitch and conditions seem fairly benign, so should be easy batting when we get our turn.

The Mongrel

Re: Gem on Foxtel.

I have the most standard of standard definition TVs.

Fox runs Gem in SD on channel 209.

All the second-string FTA channels are somewhere. It's a matter of finding them sometimes.

Tony Tea

If you all get sick of wrasslin' with your televisions and cricket, check out Glitch on ABC iView. It was on tonight at 8.30. Goes very nicely. Presuming you feel like watching a tweak on zombie shows.

m0nty

209 is unavailable on Foxtel satellite boxes.

geebo

Glitch sounded like a French thing called Revenants (or something) which was interesting enough to keep me watching but not interesting enough for me to recommend it to anyone.

Cam is Nosferatu

If only the mp3 could this justice:

For all the apologists at work: get fucked.

For all the distributors checking up on me: get fucked

For all the English watching the day:

Cam is Nosferatu

Nah, I tried to connect my rabbit ears but too many PS3 and Xbox things fell from the porte manteau.

Cam is Nosferatu

I simply cannot attempt to connect my rabbit ears for fear of destroying the TV.

I resile myself to the radio

Tony Tea

The twist about Glitch is that the revenants come back normal. At least until they turn into dust.

Cam is Nosferatu

Cook has been a midships, according to Maxwell, wherever that is.

The radio commentary is sycophantic.

m0nty

Bloody England, always seem to recruit from the colonies instead of home soil. This bloke Maquood must be from Pakistan. Or at least Birmingham, which is apparently the same thing.

Vindicate

We can't give them too much shit about the Ashes being Australia vs. The rest if the World anymore as their yarpy contingent has finally buggered off.
Also didn't we fast track some bloke from pakistan(?)s visa just so he'd be eligible to play cricket for us? I last heard something about it twelve months ago or so, but I don't watch or listen to the news so am blissfully ignorant of current happenings around the place.

m0nty

Fawad is languishing in the dressing rooms, having failed to impress in tour matches.

Carrot

England are about as English as I think we've seen them in awhile. Stokes was born in NZ and Ballance is/was Zimbabwean, but that's it. Where a player is born is really beside the point, mind you - my beef with the some of the players of a few years ago was that various of them were actually pretty well-established first-class players in other countries before they played for England and therefore not really products of the English game. You couldn't say that about any of these guys - Ballance is the closest to it, I think he played under-17s and maybe under 19s for Zimbabwe, but he was already in England by then and made it very clear that that's where he saw his future. A lot of their coaching staff are international, but in terms of onfield players I can't see any reason to resent England on the "International XI" stakes at the moment.

m0nty

Said it before and I'll say it again: for being such a gun player of spin, Flasheart sure seems to get out a lot to spin.

lou

Flasheart 1 and 2 got out to Moeen's spun thoughtfulness.

Flasheart 1 isn't travelling that well seems to me. The falling over to the side is getting worse and is gunna get even worser.

It's a mile long stream of steaming horse ordure that we are now dependent upon the fraudster IPCoS to rescue us. As he doesn't do rescue.

Vindicate

Haddin owes us a ton, so there's that to consider.

Hey, stranger things haven't happened!

m0nty

If Dizzy can get a double ton, anything's possible.

philsgone

Lippy has 50 written all over him - at least in how old he looks. Papercut - could he actually come to the rescue in our moment of need?

Carrot

Is Flasheart 1 Clarke? If so I agree - he doesn't look that fit. I doubt he'll last the year.

The way the games progressing - i.e. at 4 and over - I think we might get closer to their total than you'd think. If Lyon gets even 20-odd the complexion could change completely. England will get a pretty decent lead whatever happens, but it won't be easy for them to take another ten wickets on this deck, particularly with rain around on Sunday.

m0nty

Clarke was never Flasheart.

Carrot

Eurgh - "game's". With an apostrophe.

PS - the way Haddin's been batting lately, I'll run nude through the streets of Düsseldorf if he gets a ton. SURELY he's only keeping (geddit??) Nevill's seat warm at the moment.

Tony Tea

I went to bed at 0 for 40, with the scoring rate slow enough to point to batsmen getting themselves out when set. So, did the batsmen get themselves out when set? It looks suspiciously like it.

Tony Tea

Jeez. The Düsseldorks are only just getting over the war.

Vindicate

I've moved to WA so viewing times are 6pm-1:30am, which is quite respectable. Not sure I could stay up till 3:30am if I was still in the eastern states.

The deck was pretty good and the Poms bowling was nothing special. Rogers got to 95 and just went to water and got out to a shit shot, you could see it coming a mile away too - he looked like he'd just gone in to bat once into the nervous nineties.

Smith took on Ali a few times and looked pretty comfortable doing it, Ali set him a trap that blind freddy could have seen, Smith took him on and fell for it.

Clarke, as above.

Voges apparently decided the tempo needed increasing with six overs to go and slapped one to cover instead of doing the intelligent thing and putting up the shutters for the night.

Vindicate

Fucking Healy, SHUT UP.

Fucking twice hes mozzed us now, was gushing how good Smith was taking on spin yesterday about thirty seconds before Flasheart bunted a dolly to silly mid off.

SaggyGreen

It was folly and I knew it.
Pure folly to hang so my as an iota of
my happiness this evening on the performance of P. Cut.

Carrot

We're toast.

Arse.

m0nty

Not watching, but it sounds like Klutzy is batting for red ink to save his career.

Tony Tea

The red ink just just ran dry.

Tony Tea

Jaysus, the Crooky blokes writes some nonsense: "England have shone a torch under the bed and exposed the boogeyman... Haddin marches off, bat tucked under his arm, Australia firmly in trouble."

m0nty

150 off England's last five wickets. 50 off our last four so far. That's the difference.

Tony Tea

This truly is becoming Fucken Cardiff.

Carrot

Well, at least I've saved myself a court appearance.

m0nty

Cardiff Fvcken.

Carrot

Jaysus, that first ball from Starc to Ballance was unbelievable!

.... and as I type he does it again!

Tony Tea

Save the sight of hundreds of Düsseldorks, too.

Carrot

According to Google, there's a 70% chance of showers in Cardiff on Sunday, starting at 10am and decreasing during the day. It'd be freakin' hilarious if they had us on the rack and weather came to our rescue. We'd rather have played well here and be in with a chance of winning ourselves, but can you imagine the frustration if we were in another situation like 2009. I'd much rather hand that frustration over to England, thanks very much.

It's always pretty hollow feeling to be bailed out of anything, mind you. Sometimes I'd rather lose honourably. We have said "B-b-b-b-but the weather in Cardiff!!!!" every time anyone brings up the 2009 Ashes, we can only expect the same if it happens in reverse. Someone could go on to win the series convincingly from here, of course - in which case it won't make any difference.

Tony Tea

Fvcken Cardiff 2009 owes right of reply in 2015.

Carrot

The ghost of Richie Benaud pops up to say hello! Well bowled, Josh Hazlewood.

Tony Tea

Here's a radical idea. If Hawk shows the ball hitting the stumps, it's out.

Carrot

That wasn't quite as disastrous a day as it could have been. We stuck to our task, and didn't let the boundaries get to us too much. There was certainly enough there to show that there's a lot of life in this series from our perspective with the ball even if we lose here. 411 is a lot of runs and a big ask, but on this deck and in the middle of a bit of a Golden Age of attacking cricket anything is possible. The worry will be if we lose badly, but if we give the chase a bit of a shake and still lose it will set the series up nicely. If Haddin comes in any more than 100 runs away from the target, we're toast, mind you.

Tomorrow should be a good day, though - I think the English did us all a favour by getting bowled out, I can't imagine that Cook would have declared anytime soon if he had the choice.

lou

It's not possible Carrot. Not by the Aussies. When do they chase successfully? It would be one of the best chases in history and we've only five batsmen.

Well, five if you count Warner who has been on what appears to be a very successful self-mind-fvck programme with all his recent nonsense about not wanting to be an enforcer and changing his attitude. It's bad when eejits start to try and think, it's hurts their brain and everything else goes to shit till they stop.

I wish I was wrong.

Carrot

I'm sure you're right, Lou. I think if we make a decent fist of it it will set the series up nicely, though. It would be terrible if we got bowled out for less than 200 or something, though.

PS- I make it four, with the omission of Twatto.

lou

I'd already omitted Watson... haven't considered him a batsman for a couple of years.

Tony Tea

If - okay, when - we lose, it will be be by the 134 runs Haddin gifted to Root.

Vindicate

Every time we play nice we lose. Fuck nice - play to win!

Carrot

We're playing nice-ish. There were a few funny moments yesterday with some gamesmanship from Lyon and Warner to Stokes. Stokes has this weird habit of dragging his bat around the crease in a semi-circle at the end of every over before he does some gardening - some sort of superstition. Lyon and Warner noticed, and as soon as the last ball was bowled in an over would make a point of running to the popping crease and standing there in Stokes' way having a chat or doing up their shoelaces. It's obviously a pretty important part of Stokes' routine because he stood there waiting every time! Quite funny.

Carrot

And here it is -

https://streamable.com/44vw

lou

That is funny.

Carrot

I don't have a good feeling about this. This has the look of 3/30 within twenty minutes and the game effectively being over.

Vindicate

Respect to Warner for gutsing through the tough start and not chucking it away, that's what I want to see more of this series, batsmen putting a price on their wicket and grinding out a Steve Waugh-esque ton.

A pity he had to get out in Clarke time but it's a start, more of that please!

m0nty

Flasheart and Lemming are going to have to get the vast majority of these themselves, because the tail starts with the next wicket.

Carrot

A wicket right on the stroke of lunch. Good, good. We can't have a situation where I actually believe that we can knock these off - belief is a horrible, horrible thing in these situations, it always leads to disappointment.

My bold prediction: we'll be 7/300 or so at stumps, with everyone looking skyward tomorrow. The first session will be washed out, and we'll be on and off the field in the second. England will win by 50-odd, which will really whet appetites for the rest of the series.

Carrot

Think you're doing Voges a bit of a dis-service there, Mont. Surely as solid a number 5 as we've had for awhile, particularly given that Watson was the last incumbant.

m0nty

Voges untested at this level in this situation.

m0nty

Right, I'm off to bed.

Carrot

Well, it was 3/100 instead of 3/30, but the result is the same. Three wickets is just too many to lose at this stage. Cue plucky partnerships that flirt with giving us hope, with us always being two wickets behind the game at all times.

..... Or a wholesale collapse and lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It might actually do us a favour, we'd have to drop Watson and/or Haddin then.

Carrot

Shit shot, Clarke. Bloody hell.

Carrot

Well, on the brighter side, we've got every reason to drop Haddin, now.

Carrot

And Watson.

Carrot

They say that Moeen Ali has a pretty cover drive for a number 8, but it can't be any better than Johnson's. I'm sure Johnson could have become a very good specialist batsman had he been injured in his teens or something, à la Michael Bevan.

lou

Johnson makes a speciality of embarrassing our own batsmen from time to time.

Watson averages 26 at 6 which is what Johnson has averaged for the past 2 years. So why is Watson picked I hear you ask? NFI is the answer.

How shit are our batsmen when having to bat for time or pride or whatever? I mean really, HOW SHIT ARE THEY?

I agree about Warner getting out just before lunch that was a very big letdown but made all the rest of the bloody shower just that easier to take as I knew for sure once Warner got out, that we wouldn't make end of play.

I'm feeling terribly sweary, it's always like that when the Ashes are on in England.

Carrot

Let's hope Watson's played his last Test, at least for this series anyway. The thinking behind picking him ahead of Marsh was that his economy with the ball gave him the edge, but given that he only bowled 13 overs in the match and didn't score many runs, that can't honestly be a factor anymore. Marsh has scored bucketloads of runs lately, and frankly we need runs more than we need change options with the ball. 13 wicketless overs is nothing in the scheme of an entire Test match, and I'm sure Marsh can give us that anyway.

I'd really like them to make the tough decision and drop Haddin as well. He kept badly, let through byes and didn't score any runs - you could also argue that he might have lost us the match when it came to the Root drop. I can't see them doing it, though - they'll probably give him at least one more Test. WIth a first-class average of 44 and having made runs already on the tour, you could make an argument for Nevill playing as a specialist batsman. With the gloves, he would allow us to have genuine batsmen down to seven though, and we would have a real middle-order again. If we're insisting on having an attacking all-rounder at 6 then we have to have a keeper who can actually bat. The way things have gone lately, if Smith doesn't score a ton a game like he has, we're really vulnerable, and we can't honestly hope to win a 5 Test series on the back of one relatively inexperienced but talented player.

lou

Depends if Starc bowls. If he's out, they may not change anything apart from the enforced change. I just can't bring myself to believe that Watson is gone. There have been so many false dawns with that fraudster.

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