The Ashes

[smartcooky]

Steve Smith (115) and Brad Haddin (75) save Australia's bacon, again.

Anyone still think Smith isn't the goods at test level?

 

[RoosTah]

Well I think we can pretty confidently state that Australia is heading toward a historic 3rd five zip clear sweep here. Pretty unbelievable really.

 

[Rich Taff]

So, anyone looking forward to this? Personally I think it's a bit bizarre having 2 ashes in 1 year, but will be catching the highlights.

Can't see an England win, even with the apparent media campaign against KP and Broad.

Looks like I was correct in my prediction, but the 'predictive text thingy' on my phone went wrong.....


I think England's (until now) successful policy of 'not losing' has been found out. I'm not sure what the stats are, but I'm pretty sure when Australia were no.1 they did it through 'winning' games and not 'not losing' them.

Australia are a far more attacking side with the bat, and that can demoralise even the best opposition bowling attacks if they fail to get wickets, due to the run rate. Also it gees up the bowlers to try to 'outdo' the batsmen.

 

[Larksea]

the thing about this series and the Aussies in particular is that its actually been really good cricket to watch. test cricket can be painful to watch at times, heck you can get days with 90 overs, maybe a 2-4 wickets and only 200 runs scored. It can be painful to follow.

But the aussies have attacked with bat and ball all the time the while way through. scored runs quickly and used smart attacking bowling and fielding.

Johnson is deserved man of the series, huge haul of wickers with an average under 14 but he has psychologically damaged the english batsman and for many of the wickets being taken by other bowlers a lot of the credit should go to Johnson. Proves more than ever that you bowl in partnerships as much as you bat in them.

Generally the English bowlers almost did enough, they got Aussie into trouble many times but too often allowed haddin & Smith in particular to score a lot of runs but often johnson & Harris as well to make contributions. id love to see AUS & ENG averages for the last 5 wickets.

having Aussie 5 for ~90 then letting them get 320+ is the perfect example of that.

the flips side is that generally the English batsmen were a complete no show. to see Cook fail on such a regular basis when you expect him to score a ton every 2-4 innings hurts, That Carbery dude basically a complete joke through the whole series, not only did he almost completely fail to score runs but the manor of his innings damaged England and fed confidence to the Aussie Bowlers, he would come in and play and miss on a regular basis, have a slow scoring rate and just generally look like he didn't belong on the pitch - what he did was just feed confidence and momentum to Australia at the beginning of every innings. Then if Peterson & Bell fail then England are in the ****. And it happened time and time again.

only bright point for England is their new Kiwi who will obviously become a feature of the time for a long time. Broad also bowled pretty well and deserved better support, from Anderson in particular who obviously in general bowled too short

 

[RoosTah]

I almost wish the series were closer now... the lack of presence on this thread from our many English members has robbed the few Aussies here of any fun ;-) .

 

[Rich Taff]

I almost wish the series were closer now... the lack of presence on this thread from our many English members has robbed the few Aussies here of any fun ;-) .

Remember it's the 'England and Wales Cricket Board', and the team is only 'England' in name (harking back to pre-war).


PS. Before you say 'and S.A etc', everyone does that

 

[smartcooky]

So the Ashes is all done and dusted, 5-0 to the Aussies, but to be honest I think the result speaks to how poor England were more than to how good the Aussies were. I don't think the Aussie batting was very good, and but for rescue innings from Haddin, Smith, and to a lesser extent Johnson, the result could have been different.

The Aussies are off to South Africa in a few weeks time, and I have a message for them.... Morkel, Steyn, Philander. These three are a class above the England quicks, and they're on their home patch!

 

[Rich Taff]

The Aussies are off to South Africa in a few weeks time, and I have a message for them.... Morkel, Steyn, Philander. These three are a class above the England quicks, and they're on their home patch!

12 Months ago, I couldn't disagree with you more, but the England quicks have run out of steam/ideas this tour. Hoping it doesn't permanently affect them though, as they're all still fairly young.

 

[RoosTah]

So the Ashes is all done and dusted, 5-0 to the Aussies, but to be honest I think the result speaks to how poor England were more than to how good the Aussies were. I don't think the Aussie batting was very good, and but for rescue innings from Haddin, Smith, and to a lesser extent Johnson, the result could have been different.

The Aussies are off to South Africa in a few weeks time, and I have a message for them.... Morkel, Steyn, Philander. These three are a class above the England quicks, and they're on their home patch!

It'll be a tough assignment no doubt, and no one in Australia doubts that.

That said, the amount of confidence Australia has taken from this series will help them an awful lot in South Africa. Lets also not forget that even when the Australian team was at a low ebb in their 2012-13 home series against the boks, they were hardly hammered; they simply failed to take wickets, which resulted in two draws of three tests.

 

[Darwin]

Steve Smith (115) and Brad Haddin (75) save Australia's bacon, again.

Anyone still think Smith isn't the goods at test level?

Whether Smith has the goods or not at test level is still yet to be seen - at this stage I would still consider him unproven. Smith had his best series yet: 9 innings, 327 runs @ 40.87, with 2 100's. These are very respectable figures (and his centuries were scored at crucial times), but they are hardly outstanding figures - outside of his two centuries his next highest score was 31.

He had certainly locked in his spot in the Australian middle order for the test series in South Africa, but with a test batting average of only 36 if he fails to fire in this series he won't last that long. As I mentioned before he needs to get a bit more consistency in his game and get his batting average well up into the 40's before he will be considered anything more than a mediocre test batsman.....

 

[RoosTah]

Soooo... Anyone catch that last ODI? I turned it off when we still had 60 runs to score, believing we were definitely gone. All I can say is WOW! Lucky I recorded haha.

 

[InsaneAsylum]

Soooo... Anyone catch that last ODI? I turned it off when we still had 60 runs to score, believing we were definitely gone. All I can say is WOW! Lucky I recorded haha.

i turned over at the same time and saw the score.. thought we had no chance... nek minnit!

 

[Rich Taff]

Darn, was hoping nobody had noticed that game

 

[smartcooky]

Soooo... Anyone catch that last ODI? I turned it off when we still had 60 runs to score, believing we were definitely gone. All I can say is WOW! Lucky I recorded haha.

Yep. An extraordinary finish from James Faulkner, who managed the run chase almost flawlessly turning down essential runs when they (and the remaining balls to score them off were in short supply) in order to keep the strike for the crucial overs of the game. Just how well he did that can be shown in the partnership figures for the 10th wicket. 57 off 33 balls; Faulkner got 55 of those of 24 balls, while his partner McKay faced only 9 balls for his 2 runs.

It has to be said though, that Cook's field settings left a lot to be desired, and even when he got it right, the bowlers did not bowl to it.

The sign of a quality side is that they will often find a way to win when the odds are heavily stacked against them. When they have been in trouble, one or more individuals have fronted up to steer them out of it, either with bat or ball. An even greater strength is that is has not always been the same individuals.

 

[TRF_Cymro]

Cook's ideology and the short comings of the likes of Bresnan were the issues why England lost the last ODI. Time to bring in Alex Hales / Michael Lumb at the top of the order and give others a chance with the ball. Some of the players are clearly lacking form, and should be dropped.

 

[RoosTah]

It'll be interesting to see how today's game pans out. I still can't work out how we won that - Faulkner was truly sublime, but you also got the sense that England and Cook were beginning to panic as the score closed in. You have to wonder what the psychological impact of a result like that would be; after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory after a series of pummellings, will the English have had their backs broken or will they see it as a sign they're closing in?

Across Tests and ODIs Australia have now won 8 matches in a row against England if you include the last ODI of the England series. They've said they want to win all their games across all forms in this series. If they manage to do it, it must go down as one of the most incredible series dominations in an Ashes of all time. It already, given that it's only the 3rd ever white-wash, but dominating every form of the game would really be the icing on the cake.

 

[RoosTah]

Interesting how England's ODI team takes one foreign leading Batsman out in Pieterson and replaces him with another in an Irishman like Morgan. Bit of an invitational 11, this England-Wales team, isn't it?

 

[Rich Taff]

What I dont understand is on one channel you have England getting thumped by the Ozzies, failing miserably with the bat. Then on the other channel you have Luke Wright and Kieswetter smashing the ball all over the place in 'the Big Bash'. Do the selectors not look outside central contracts?

 

[RoosTah]

It'll be interesting to see how today's game pans out. I still can't work out how we won that - Faulkner was truly sublime, but you also got the sense that England and Cook were beginning to panic as the score closed in. You have to wonder what the psychological impact of a result like that would be; after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory after a series of pummellings, will the English have had their backs broken or will they see it as a sign they're closing in?

And we have our answer; it's the former pretty clearly. That was one of the more demoralising run chases I've seen. Australia were comfortably around the 6 an over region for their whole innings and Cricket's British and Irish Lions (which they will hence forth be known if Morgan gets the captaincy) seemed to have no answers.