Rogue

Weather: Today - Possible late shower. Tomorrow - Isolated early showers. Saturday - Partly cloudy. It looks like we should have plenty of time to bowl India out, but Hussey and Clarke are making the pitch look like a dream to bat on. The outfield seems pretty quick and we've hit 650 so far. Do we want to bowl at them tonight? What do we want as a lead? It currently stands at 459.

Any inner D'land smirk when our tail piled on some runs in the morning? I'm pretty sure I've even read quotes from Hilf admitting he had things to work on after he was dropped, and that he went away and improved his bowling.

Good to see some decent batting from our bowlers!

Why they were playing Pro40 or whatever they called it, I have no idea.

Katman returns? Read more: http://www.theage.co...l#ixzz1gcX4FNSU

I'll just put this out there: Given that batting first is common wisdom, teams tend to bowl first only when the pitch is likely to favour bowling on day one. Therefore it's not that surprising to see a decent win/loss ratio when teams bowl first, because it's not the default position - they only do so when they think it's clearly advantageous.

Really, Nasher? More like this: Bob: Johnson adds batting depth to our lineup Demonland: We lose more with the ball than he makes up with the bat. Bob: Okay, forget naming names, our tail is long because none of our bowlers can bat. Demonland: Sure, but so what? You should choose bowlers for their bowling; the batsmen have the responsibility of making the majority of runs.

There's a point to be made about having a long tail but today's situation never would have happened had Johnson been playing. It probably would have been worse. I get where you're coming from, but you can't disentangle his batting from his bowling; if so, we may as well say that it'd be handy having D Hussey coming in at 8.

...and the 15+ extra runs we would have conceded had he been bowling for us? I agree with TU that you shouldn't be picking bowlers because they can bat a bit.

Would he have been handy on the preceding days of the game?

Good question. Given he doesn't miss many games, and they don't win many, I'm guessing it's a very, very long time.

I swear that didn't say maybe when I saw it

We're not there yet!

^ Yeah, Hughes poked at it. Jaques is unfortunate that he's been in a bit of a trough so far this season. The other forgotten opener, Rogers, is probably past it at 34 years old but he's in good form.

I always knew I could be a commentator

Yeah. Siddle's opening the batting next Test.

He really is a Johnson replacement! Well, well, well...

Is the NZ series over yet?

Who would you open with?

Absolutely; Vettori's value with the bat is criminally underrated.

Wow, India were 9 wickets down at the end too!

WYL - Use the media tag: [media]link[/media]

Good to see some fresh faces. Starc should probably carry the drinks.

My reading of Cricinfo's text commentary was that he wasn't batting very well.

I love Test cricket. Australia wins, Cummins lives the dream.