titan_uranus

Also a shout out to Quinten de Kock who, in a three-match ODI series against India, hit three 100s.

NFC North is so hard to read. Detroit should have sewn it up over the last few weeks; the Tampa Bay loss was huge. If Rodgers is back this week, the Packers, only 0.5 behind Detroit, are a chance. I don't rate the Patriots; they can't keep coming back from deficits all the time, especially without Gronkowski. Mind you, I also worry about Denver in the playoffs, they concede way too much even to the lesser sides. So I'm not sure how the AFC is going to go down. I took a fair bit out of us beating Seattle. Obviously we'll have to beat them in Seattle to progress in the playoffs, but now we have a bit of belief that we can in fact do that. Our defence really stood up when it needed to, and we found some ways through on offence. Confidence booster more than anything (also an enormously handy win).

It's a very awkward position for them. They've made Sammy captain, they don't seem to have a suitable replacement, so they can't change that, which means they can't drop him. He's not good enough to bat in the top 6, nor is he a very good bowler, so he shouldn't be playing I don't think.

Wow, interesting to look back on those. I have Cheteshwar Pujara, who's had a great year, plus Ian Bell (enough said) and Shivnarene Chanderpaul, who's also been OK. I got Brad Haddin at bargain-basement prices, for clear rewards, as well. Boult and Herath have been OK this year. However, I also had Dean Brownlie, Steve Finn and Mohammad Hafeez, who have all fallen out of favour with their respective sides. Jackson Bird looked promising in England but would be fifth or sixth in line now. So just so-so from me.

Should be no change for us. Every year going into Perth someone out there says 'let's go with four pacemen' but our current trio plus Lyon are doing a great job of bowling as a unit, and Perth's pitch suits Lyon's bowling anyway. As for them, they need a true batsman at 6, so I'd be replacing Stokes with Bairstow or Ballance. They'll have to drop a spinner, and it will probably be Panesar, with Bresnan coming into that spot. Surely England's bigger issue is their batting, not their bowling? If I were England I'd be far more worried about getting runs out of Cook, Carberry, Pietersen, Prior and whoever bats at 6 (Stokes, Ballance or Bairstow). I'd also be worried about their inability to play long innings and their struggles with pace and bouncers. Their bowlers, though, should still be thereabouts given our batting. It really only takes one batting collapse from us to shake the series up, and we're a side with Rogers, Watson, Smith and Bailey in the top 6, none of whom are in any particular form at the moment.

Wow. First over of the day and Broad pulls straight to deep square leg. Edit: We'll take it.

Clarke is as good a tactical captain as there is in the world right now. Far, far better than Cook. This was no different in the winter, when the team was playing pathetically. He's our best batsman too, as his form shows. Making up some conspiracy theory about his back injury is a sign that you really don't have an argument to defend here. Oh, and how about Haddin's fantastic catch yesterday to get Root out? Great keeping, to go with his great batting too (batting which has put us in winning positions in both Tests). I don't think they want to go with four quicks. That would mean Anderson, Broad, Bresnan (surely) and one other, but the other would be Tremlett, Finn or Rankin, all of whom are out of form and struggling in Australian conditions (and each of whom lengthens the tail compared to Swann). If they keep Stokes at 6 (I don't think they can afford to, but they might be inclined to persist with him), they'll have their fourth seamer anyway.

Crazy, crazy cricket. We still have our work ahead of us taking the remaining 8 wickets, but with 5 sessions to go, there should be enough time. Taking a 2-0 lead is huge, and probably not something anyone expected. We'll need some more of Johnson's firebolts, as clearly England can't play that pace well. England will have to look at dropping Prior and/or Swann for Perth. Panesar outbowled Swann in this Test, so there might be a change-up there. They'll also have to bring Bresnan in, as well as getting another batsman in the side instead of Stokes, who isn't good enough.

Dropped catches and a wicket off a no-ball. Small things can change a series; those kinds of things going against England may just help us. Also, Clarke - what a captain.

And now Bailey too. Four out of five batsmen to get himself in then get himself out. Each should have made more runs than they did, and we're now tracking for a sub-par first innings total on this wicket.

Interesting team selection from England. They've given a cap to Ben Stokes, who bowls a bit of pace, which suggests they're bringing Panesar in for Tremlett (instead of Bresnan, which I expected). That leaves them with only Anderson and Broad for the pace bowling, and Stokes to come on and, I expect, be treated in a similar manner to how we dealt with Woakes at The Oval.

On a related note, why does CA put the Perth test right after the Adelaide test? Surely we learnt from last year and the week off should be between Adelaide and Perth instead of between Brisbane and Adelaide.

I reckon if we're going to rest the fast bowlers, rest them in Perth where the replacements will do fine because of the pitch. If we rest them in Adelaide, we significantly increase our chances of losing. Faulkner and Siddle with the new ball are toothless compared to Harris and Johnson, and the last thing we can afford to do is let them bat themselves into form at Adelaide. I'd rather play a good game in Adelaide, hopefully win it, and then rest in Perth if absolutely necessary. Lyon's bowling very well, so give him good spells in Adelaide, rotating the pace bowlers and using Watson and Smith (even Warner and/or Clarke too if possible) to keep the pressure off. We need to keep the pressure on. The longer it takes them to square the ledger in the series, the more likely they are to keep making mistakes and playing poor cricket.

Marcus North scored another tonne too, he now has three from four Shield games. Cameron White is also unbeaten overnight on 110, adding to his three 50s in the Shield, plus his five 50s in six innings in the Ryobi Cup. For once, there is form in our domestic batting.

It goes further for England, 18 consecutive innings without reaching 400. It's all about Cook and Bell for them - if they get out, England doesn't make runs (Pietersen will always end up getting himself out). Whilst England might be inclined to play Panesar, I don't think they can. They'd be down to two pacemen if they drop Tremlett, leaving Broad and Anderson with too much workload on a short break going into Perth. That means they'd have to drop a batsman to play an all-rounder, but the closest thing they have to an all-rounder in their squad is Ben Stokes, who batted at 8 in the recent ODI series we just played against England (they left Woakes at home). Would be an enormous risk to bat him in the top six on debut in Test cricket, I think, whilst I think Trott could get his form back on an Adelaide deck that probably won't cause him as much trouble on the pull as Brisbane did. So I think England's stuck with just the one spinner, though Swann will bowl better at Adelaide than in Brisbane. It's going to be a massive test in Adelaide - keeping Harris, Siddle and Johnson fit and ready to go for Perth is vital, whilst getting some runs into Rogers, Watson, Smith and Bailey is also crucial - Johnson's not going to bail us out from 8 every test, nor is he going to bowl as well as he did in Brisbane.

Well I guess I was right. Getting Cook out has led to 4 wickets in 4 overs, the innings falling apart. Getting a 1-0 lead is huge.

Now that both Bell and Cook are gone, it's a lot easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was always going to be a miracle for England, but they've defied the odds before. Lyon's bowling very well, much better than Swann has in this Test. Good to see us put our faith in him and that he's helped us immensely in this Test. He and Siddle don't need to take bags of wickets to show their worth. Edit: And Lyon gets Prior now too! Wow, he's in shocking form. Who'd have thought we have the better keeper and the better spinner?

Only one wicket that session. Bell and Cook are the biggest obstacles, we really need to get one of them out sooner rather than later, expose Root and Prior who are woefully out of form. England has a habit of being insipid for the first three innings of Tests but batting out a draw (Cardiff 2009, Durban 2009, Auckland 2013). If it rains a bit here and there, cuts out a few hours, you never know.

The most important thing is that it was all great bowling. Johnson and Lyon in tandem worked a treat. Tight bowling from Lyon built the pressure when Pietersen and Carberry were in, and then Johnson's fire plus two bouncy gems from Lyon dealt the blows.

4/87, with Johnson and Harris alternating in aggressive bowling. Smart captaincy/bowling to get Carberry out, moving Johnson to around the wicket and bowling short. Lyon bowling from the other end has figures of 4-3-2-0. Nice and tidy, can't get him away, building pressure. Things going OK for us right now. Edit: Lyon now gets Bell! Huge moment in this Test. Edit: And Prior first ball! Amazing! Now on a hat-trick... Wow. 8/91/ An Australian-eque collapse. And the difference between this and our collapse is that this is much more wicket-taking rather than the batsmen getting themselves out.

Warner, Rogers, Clarke and Bailey were all disappointing yesterday but we've kept ourselves in the Test with the lower order batting. Bowling so far has been average at best; both Harris and Johnson have been too straight.

I disagree entirely - I'd play Ahmed in the shorter formats but not the longer ones. We're not going to ever beat England, India or South Africa in Tests when our spinner leaks runs. It releases the pressure we can build with our fast bowlers, which, no matter which spinner we pick, is our strength right now. As for Ahmed, his wickets in the Tasmania game were all number 8 or worse, so again I'm not that phased by him. I don't think he's had any terribly bad games, but he hasn't had any good games either, and for a spinner whose appeal is supposed to be his wicket-taking ability, he's not there yet.

OK, you want to keep going, we'll keep going. Apologies to everyone else on this thread. You called Haddin a backstop. When it was pointed out that he'd just broken the record for most Ashes dismissals you said 'but it's the dropped catches that count'. But you haven't provided any evidence to suggest he's dropping catches. You keep referring to him as 'the backstop' instead of by his name, attempting to denigrate him. That's not 'discussion' about whether he's a good keeper, it's stubborn rudeness. I don't consider it discussion when, when challenged by RR, you responded with 'get your hand off it mate'. The irony of you attempting to say that I don't like other views is pertinent when your posts are always your statements of opinion (e.g. 'the best keeper by a mile is Tim Ludeman'. No evidence, not even a single reason why Ludeman is any good). In the context of a keepr who has just broken the record for Ashes dismissals, you have no coherent argument to be writing Haddin off. You have no figures to suggest he's dropping the ball at an alarming rate, you have no evidence to suggest any other keeper is doing a better job, or would do at Test level, and you have not once even tried to explain exactly what it is about Ludeman or any other keeper that puts him in front of Haddin, other than dropped catches, which, once again, you have no evidence of. Now, as for the TD situation, his statistics were historical, showing that over their First Class careers Ahmed has performed better than Lyon. My argument is that Lyon is better than Ahmed right now, which mean that the relevance of what Ahmed did 10 years ago isn't that strong. Ahmed's figures for this Shield are distorted somewhat by his 6-for against WA, which he hasn't backed up at all, whilst leaking runs (economy rate this Shield season of 1.5 or so worse than Lyon). Lyon's focus this season has been to stop bowling bad balls, to learn to tie and end up, so that we can bowl him from one and and attack at the other. Ahmed is the opposite kind of bowler, and isn't yet good enough to be an attacking spinner. He's not bowling well right now, save for that one innings. As you'll note, whilst I disagreed with the statistics TD provided, I've engaged in actual discussion by talking about what it is about Lyon and Ahmed that I like/don't like, and why I prefer Lyon. TD can then respond with his view, whatever that is. Your line about discussion and not private ideas is classic hypocrisy, given you won't listen to any argument in favour of Haddin. So instead of having a go at me for not 'discussing' things, why don't you actually engage in the debate for once? Otherwise, stop altogether, so that the rest of us can actually talk about cricket.

The irony of those two sentences is delicious.

I love discussion, where did I say otherwise? If you're referring to my post directed at you, that is further evidence - saying 'ahhh figures' is not contributing to discussion, nor is calling Haddin a 'backstop'. I didn't dismiss TD's figures, I explained why I don't think they make Ahmed a better bowler. In terms of Haddin, I provided a figure for dismissals: if you didn't like that, you could have provided a figure for dropped catches, or some other evidence, to explain why you don't think that the record for number of Ashes dismissals makes Haddin a good keeper. The fact you think Agar making runs makes him a threatening bowler whilst taking 3-fors (which, by the way, he's not even doing, having not taken any more than 2 wickets in an innings this Shield season so far) is a sign of your understanding of cricket, unfortunately. His bowling in the Shield this season has been toothless. He's a nothing bowler right now. But that's OK, because he's young and there is plenty of time for him to learn. His batting shows he has talent as a cricketer, it may well be as an all-rounder (even a batsman), but right now he's a long way off.