titan_uranus

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.

My comment was based on the present - right now Lyon's bowling better than Ahmed. So I'm not particularly phased by Ahmed's history. Ahmed had that 6-for a few matches back, and has since been impotent. Lyon's been consistent; he's never been a big turner, but unlike Ahmed he's learnt to get rid of the bad balls and be consistent through matches. His economy rate in the Shield is 1.3 runs better than Ahmed's. Australian cricket continually throws out good-to-average performers in search of the next big thing. Ahmed is a leg spinner, so people see him as the next big thing. He is capable of taking a bag of wickets, yes, but he's just as likely to be 0/100 in his debut innings. Think Bryce McGain and Jason Krejza - capable of taking wickets, incapable of stemming the flow of runs. We will not win this Ashes series if their batsmen are able to get off the hook, and that's what Ahmed will do, without being sufficiently better than Lyon to warrant his selection. We need to put some faith in Lyon, who bowls well on Australian pitches with extra bounce. If Ahmed can improve his economy rate in the current Shield season, getting rid of the bad balls, he'll be a more selectable proposition. This thread was so much more interesting/pleasant before you appeared in it.

Lyon > Ahmed, so if we play a spinner it's Lyon. That much is undebatable, Ahmed's simply nowhere near good enough right now. I'd play Lyon over Faulkner, four quicks is a recipe for disaster I think. Storms forecast for every day of the Test. Don't be surprised if it's 0-0 going to Adelaide.

I think that penalty against us was for a horsecollar tackle; I think he got a piece of Brees' collar as he dragged him down. We should have won that game, and the fact that we didn't hurts us immensely. Kaepernick is really struggling at the moment, couldn't get us any yards on our last offensive drive when we needed to burn some clock and give Lee the best chance to pin them back on their end zone. But worse still was Osgoode's incredulous penalty for touching the punt returner on a fair catch, gifting Brees a free 15 yards, as if he needed it.

I've got my evidence - most dismissals in an Ashes series. If you can find evidence to back up your dropped catches theory, bring it. If you can't, shove it.

Yes, figures. Statistics. Evidence. That kind of thing.

Meanwhile - http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/story/689523.html Awks for Wade.

You're arguing that Haddin's keeping is not good. The statistic is that he just broke the record for Ashes dismissals. Your conclusion is that catching the ball has nothing to do with keeping. My conclusion is you have no idea what you're talking about.

As for the Ashes, there is a little, faint bit of pressure on our batsmen. Marcus North's Shield season so far has read 45, 118*, 50, 37, 110 and 84*. Very much in form. Phil Hughes just cracked a double century, Rob Quiney's in good form too, as is Cameron White, as is Alex Doolan. Chris Lynn is also a promising younger option too. None of those names jump out as amazing selections, especially given four of them have failed at Test level before, but at least this series if we're struggling to make runs we won't be forced to stick with the underperformers.

At the moment, as a keeper Paine is well in front of Wade. Wade's main problem is his awful keeping, and until he fixes that, his run-making (made a tonne in the Shield game) and captaincy (we won today's match despite nearly a day of rain) won't be enough.

Would be fantastic to see Tendulkar get a tonne in his final Test. He hasn't reached 100 since January 2011, which makes you wonder, if he wasn't Tendulkar, would have have kept his spot this long?

I should have entered! FWIW, I'd go with the Colts, Jets and Cardinals

I quite like the NFL site, if you can avoid some of the trash there are some decent analyses and videos, behind the scenes stuff (I always love the Sound FX clips they do, hearing coaches and players on game day is quite a novel insight), statistics are pretty good. Leaves the AFL site for dead.

Arrow's covered it, pretty much. This analysis on the NFL website also goes through the problems. Essentially, if you take the read out, he has to revert back to more 'conventional' QB play and he isn't that good at being an in-the-pocket QB. The NFL article shows how defences are taking out the read, and it leaves him with very few options, the less so if either Davis gets shut down when he gets on a downfield route. Boldin's been inconsistent this year, and until this week we've lacked both Manningham and Crabtree (who is Kaepernick's best friend on that offence). NFL defences play us better than they did last year which is messing with his formula. He's one of those players, when he's on he's unstoppable but when he's off he's toothless. Manningham and Crabtree will give him more options down the field which hopefully gets him more confident in his throwing, which I think is a key.

The NFC WC battle is heating up. Our loss to Carolina hurts us; that head-to-head result means the Panthers get in over us should we end the year on the same W-L record. But now we have to add Arizona to the list - SF, Carolina, Detroit/Chicago/GB, and now Arizona too. Technically, with Philadelphia and Dallas on 5 wins, they're somewhat around the mark too, but I can't see an NFC East team making the playoffs outside of winning that division.

Kap had one of his Kap days. Awful passing. 11/22 for 91 yards, and the INT late in the fourth sealed the game. Carolina deserves to be considered legit. If the Saints lose to the Cowboys, they'll be leading NFC South I think. Green Bay won't make the playoffs this year without Rodgers. Detroit for NFC North? Indy got very lucky this week, with Tennessee losing Jake Locker and thus losing to Jacksonville (which shouldn't have happened even without Locker). That loss to St Louis shows the hole in the offence Reggie Wayne's injury has left. Ravens and Steelers close the gap in the AFC North. Bengals not playing well enough to close that division out. Pittsburgh is awful but they're only three back. Same deal with the Giants, who will only be two back in the NFC East if Dallas loses. Denver did what it had to do, with the Chargers cooked in the AFC I think. Now having to deal with Baltimore for that wild card as well as the Jets and the Titans.

Agreed, it's a huge week. Denver are the big favourites against SD, but if you look closer, of SD's four losses, three have been right at the death, meaning they've pushed all their opponents, and have beaten the Colts. Rivers is putting up elite numbers too. Denver's only win over a team with a winning record is Dallas, and their defence has let a fair amount of points through (I mean, they conceded 19 points to Jacksonville). The offence usually gets the job done, but the last few weeks Peyton hasn't been at the same level. Denver still should win it, but I don't think it's a fait accompli. Baltimore have to win, but I don't think they will. Same for Atlanta. I think this week is the end of the road for those two sides. The last thing SF needs is a loss to Carolina. That would put us on the same win-loss ratio battling for the same wild card position. Beating them puts us two in front, helping us push for the first wild card on our own. I think we'll be right, our team's just coming together and our offence is really starting to click (Manningham, Crabtree coming back), plus Aldon Smith is due back some time on defence (hopefully).

If he can't make it back, then you absolutely have to win the next three. Get those on the board, move to 8-3, and then try your best to win one of those last three road games to help push you up. Assuming Wallace is good enough to beat Philly, NYG and Minnesota (questionable, but we'll assume it), the game at Detroit is season-defining (for both sides).

Australia A finally batting down in Hobart. Doolan 31 off 35, poor guy didn't get a proper chance to do anything of merit. Khawaja just 3, rule a line through him. Shaun Marsh currently 26 off 58, but there isn't enough time in the match for him to make a proper innings to push his case. Good to see Rogers make 88 and 117 in the Shield. White's good form continues, backing up his 48 with a 70*. Ahmed struggled again, whilst Nathan Lyon didn't do too much (got Rogers out both times though), but had good economy (another reason to take Lyon over Ahmed). Bailey only made 41 in the second dig in Queensland, not ideal from him. Chris Lynn might be one to watch though, with an 81 and 72*. None at all. He's been around the Aussie team though, hasn't he? I'm sure we'll hear his name during the summer.