titan_uranus

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.

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.