titan_uranus

Apparently Bollinger's been released from the squad. Outside the Ashes XI, the squad of 14 has Faulkner, Coulter-Nile and Alex Doolan. The speculation is Doolan bats at 3 instead of Watson, with Faulkner replacing Bailey to provide the fifth bowler, and Coulter-Nile to play in Harris' spot if he's not ready by Friday. I'd give Bailey the Sydney test, but if Watson isn't able to play, he might have to make way, as we'll need someone to bat at 3 and Clarke, Smith and Bailey aren't capable of that. I'd also be staying away from Pattinson, Starc and Cummins until they have shown they are fit enough to play prolonged periods of Test cricket.

Rubbish, promoting Agar was awful for the team. For once, jazza is right about something. That was a terrible decision.

San Fran just won the game. Not sure how I feel about that. We're off to Lambeau next week.

KC goes for it on fourth down and it's incomplete...San Diego makes the playoffs!!

What a crazy week. SD currently 3 up in OT, but KC pushing into field goal territory. Lose, and Pittsburgh makes the playoffs (wtf). Green Bay goes the length of the field on a 15-play drive converting three fourth downs, to score the game-winning touchdown with 30 seconds left, making the playoffs. Now, with Green Bay winning, if I'm right the winner of SNF will become the third seed. Which means I want my 49ers to lose their currently tied game against Arizona, to be the sixth seed (and hence avoid the Packers. I don't want to go to Lambeau).

Well done Rogers. Fourth innings hundreds are special no matter what the situation of a match is.

Indeed, if we end up winning by one or two wickets, the 40 he put on with Lyon this morning might end up being key.

Fantastic bowling from Lyon and Johnson (plus some awful batting from England). All out for 179. Just what we needed. Target is 231. The bowlers have done their job. It's now down to our batsmen to do theirs. Plenty of time, so there's no need to take risks. Warner, Watson, Smith and Bailey need to show they can put in long, slow innings. As for psychological advantages - gee, think how they'll be feeling right now.

I don't think Bailey gets to go to South Africa. If he plays and fails in Sydney, there's probably no chance. Of course, he might come good, but I'm not confident that will happen. He also mightn't make it to Sydney, especially if we lose this Test and he doesn't contribute. As for who replaces him - if Watson stays in the side (I'm also not sure that should happen), he might drop to 6, but then we need another number 3. I don't know how I feel about going back to Hughes (or Khawaja for that matter). They've had their chances in the side, each time being dropped, then recalled for strong domestic form, then sucking and being dropped again. So I'm not sure whether that's a good choice. However, we need someone. KP's the big wicket now. Just the very out-of-form tail to come from here, plus the inexperienced Bairstow, and their lead isn't yet 200. Huge session, this.

I think this could be a small blessing in disguise. By sucking in Melbourne, and with Sydney a second dead rubber, we may see changes to the side. Specifically, we may get to see someone in the place of Watson and/or Bailey, the two biggest problem players in our side. Faulkner may get a game at 6, though I'm not sure if his batting is good enough for 6 (and I don't like seeing us push the keeper up to 6). We may also see a new batsman, potentially. Either way, it may well mean we get something more important than we otherwise would have out of Sydney.

I know you would have batted first. You always would. That's the real issue - you're a traditionalist who believes in batting first no matter what, which means that any poor performance is a result of the toss, not of the actual performance. Again, there would not have been any psychological advantage to us batting first and folding as we did for 200.

But none of that applies if we'd done our job with the bat and made, say, 350. Then, we'd have a 100 run lead, we'd have kept their bowlers in the field longer, tiring them out, we'd have rested our bowlers more, and we'd then set out to only have to chase down a target of around 150. In other words, we didn't make enough runs in our first innings.

What was the common thread? We made runs. This time, we've been bowled out for 200, clearly our worst first innings score. If we'd made 300+ like we should have, we'd have a lead in this Test. We put England in on a pitch you agree is not that bad for batting on, and bowled them out for 255. That's a great result for a first innings. We then came out with our tails up and threw our wickets away (see Warner, Watson, Rogers, Smith and Bailey). That's bad batting. Not bad captaincy. Why do you keep insisting that if we'd batted first we'd have made more runs?

But what's the point of bowling in the fourth innings if we don't have a target to defend? On the batting performance we displayed yesterday, we'd have set them something like 200. Not enough. You're right. The pitch is playable. We scored 200 on it. Not enough.

Why would you assume otherwise? Day 1 was the cloudiest, the pitch was the greenest. It was the best day to bowl. They said on radio and TV that Day 2 was better (and that today is better again).

Good work from Haddin (what a star) and Lyon to get us up to 200, but assuming we do our job with the ball as we've done all series and end up with a target of 300-350, we're going to need an enormous improvement with the bat to get close. You'd favour England from here, after that awful batting display. Psychological what? We go first. We made 200 (probably closer to 150 given the conditions on Day 1 were even worse for batting). They come out and make 250. We're then behind. How does England fare worse psychologically? They come out to bowl in the third innings knowing they'd already knocked us over easily in the first dig, and with us 100-odd runs behind. No difference, aside from the order of the innings.

Romo confirmed out for the Cowboys, meaning Kyle Orton to start. Shaping up as a third consecutive year the Cowboys will play for a playoff spot in Week 17 on Sunday Night Football, lose, and finish 8-8.

If we'd batted well in our innings, put on 300+, the word 'gutless' could have been substituted for 'smart'. Bowl first, in the best conditions, knock them over while there is a bit for the bowlers, then bat as we needed to, strongly, and put runs on the board, with 10 wickets already in the bag. Where were these magical 'RUNS ON THE BOARD' going to come from? You just saw us bat on this pitch in conditions better for batting than on Day 1, and we stunk. Why would batting first have changed that? If anything, we'd have done worse, not better. The key here is our batting, not the toss. Yep, 7 batsmen. I'd take that over England's 6, especially when their keeper was dropped for poor keeping. Haddin is arguably man of the series. Has dropped nothing. Also bailed us out twice, and, hopefully today, a third time. Your continued criticism of him is ridiculous, baseless, and belies your lack of understanding and fairness in cricket analysis. You have still failed to answer my question - based on this batting performance, how would batting first have made a difference?

That's incredible. Of all the games to get, we got Jacksonville-Indy, almost entirely irrelevant, and Denver-Oakland, similarly irrelevant. I don't know who makes these decisions, or when, but in no way can I see how those games could be considered good to show.

That's right - the pitch was better for batting today than it was yesterday. And yet we still blew it with the bat. We would only have done worse by batting first. How? How would they have kept them under the hammer with a sub-200 score? This pitch is slow. On Day 1 the conditions suited the bowling, especially Anderson's bowling. We showed today that with good English bowling, we're still a weak batting side. Why would batting on Day 1 have changed that? Once again - we are losing this Test because of our batting. 100% because of our batting. Choosing to bowl first has no relevance except for the order in which we batted.

Big day tomorrow. If England bat well, the Test will be gone. Unless Lyon can stick around to help Haddin whittle the deficit, we'll be around 80 runs behind. We'll need to bowl them out for no more than 270 if we want to win, so we'll really need to do another good job with the ball. The way we've bowled and they've batted this series, that is certainly not out of the question. Nonetheless, if we're chasing 400, 350, even 250, our batting has to improve or it won't matter. Only Clarke and Harris were actually beaten by their deliveries. The rest weren't patient or couldn't deal with the pressure and got out to bad shots (Rogers, Warner, Watson, Smith, Bailey, Johnson, Siddle). What difference would batting first have made? We're batting ineptly in this Test, batting first wouldn't have changed it, and if anything, we'd have done worse given the conditions were better for bowling yesterday. The simple fact of the matter is that, if we lose this Test, it will be on the back of bad batting, not bad bowling, and not the fact we bowled first. The bowlers did their job. The batsmen didn't.

So you agree the batting conditions today are better than yesterday, yet you think we made the wrong decision? The issue in this Test is our batting. It's not good enough. If we'd batted first, we'd have been bowled out by stumps yesterday (at the rate we're going, having just lost Johnson) for a crap score (currently 151), giving England momentum and confidence. The way this Test is going, we'll be 50-100 behind on first innings, probably bowl them out for around 250-300 again, will have to chase something between 300 and 400, which will be too much for us unless we can rectify our awful batting. But that's the issue - our batting. Bowling a team out in the first innings for 255 is fine. Being bowled out for less than 200 afterwards is not. Edit: Having said that, Harris, Siddle and Lyon can all bat, and if one of them can stick around with Haddin, we can chip off a lot of this deficit. Harris does have a 50 in this series already.

Disagree. See above - this is the third time in four first innings this series we've been 5 or 6 down for not much.

Typical response from you. This has nothing to do with bowling first. In fact, today's conditions are more suited to batting than yesterday's were. The problem is not the bowling, or the fact that they made 255 (sub-par). Our batting has been iffy all series, and this is another instance of that. In our first innings we've been 6/132, 4/174 and 5/143. In each of those, Haddin and some others (e.g. Johnson, Smith) have made runs as the innings has gone on, to keep us either in the game or well ahead. If Johnson and Haddin can put on 100, we're still well in the game here, but that doesn't change the fact that our batting is just not good enough to get us where we want to be (number 1). Watson's not good enough, his Perth century notwithstanding. Rogers probably isn't good enough, he seems to be in every innings but can't get to 100. Bailey definitely isn't good enough and shouldn't be on the plane to South Africa (maybe shouldn't even play in Sydney). Smith and Warner need to develop consistency, whilst Clarke hasn't batted well since the first innings in Adelaide.

5/112. Rogers caught at mid-off. Doesn't help his career, and doesn't help our chances of winning this Test. England's using the same tactics we've used all summer - disciplined, tight bowling, building pressure and leading to bad shots. Smith and Rogers both got out through attacking shots when they've been defending all day. Of course, it doesn't help when Warner and Watson throw their wickets away (as per usual).