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One of our greatest attributes is being annoying. One of the ways in which we achieve this is by inserting words ending in -ation into the Record Breakers theme tune instead of ‘dedication’. You can read the title again now, if you want – although we advise against it.
Jonathan Trott scored at five an over. Does that mean something? Probably not in itself, but it did contrast with approach of most of his team-mates.
Leading by example
Alastair Cook grafts at the best of times. This is not the best of times. You can’t fault him for just hanging in there, defying inevitability in the vain hope that everything might work itself out at any moment. However, you can fault the person who said to England’s other batsmen: “That’s it. That’s the approach. Do what Alastair did, ONLY MORE SO.”
At least we presume that’s what happened. It seems like most of the middle order has emigrated to the polarised land of block or heave. What happened to rotating the strike? Paul Collingwood would have been turning in his seat in the stands if that wouldn’t have resulted in a spilt beverage.
Nathan Lyon…
Did a job. We’re not sure it’s a job the world needs, but he did it anyway. If you’re going to bowl slow-medium and nothing more than that, at least put the ball in the right place. Lyon did.
All of Australia’s bowlers put the ball in the right place, actually. Batsmen short of confidence and unsure of what’s going on tend to buckle in the face of such arid bowling.
Clever old England. They do amaze sometimes with their attention to detail, realising that to hold the urn for more than a couple of months, it’s the next series that matters, not this one.
2-2 in the series, Australia congratulating themselves on levelling the series. They’ll go home happy, relatively speaking. Then one night, about three weeks later, Michael Clarke will wake up at 2am in a cold sweat, having realised what it is that’s been troubling him these last few weeks. He’ll phone Darren Lehman first thing the next morning.
“Darren, you know what? England are absolutely fucking shit. They bat like they’ve never played test cricket before. Not one of the top seven has the first clue how to construct a test innings. Their bowling is somewhere between ordinary and lacklustre, and in the field they’re as sharp as an airline knife. And we couldn’t beat them! They’ve still got the fucking Ashes! How bad does that make us? Mate, we’re at a new low. This is worse than when England couldn’t win in Zimbabwe.”
They’ll never recover from that.
To paraphrase John Emburey, farkin’ hell.
What’s going on?
What a terrible advert for Test Cricket that day was
Kind of weird that Bell came out after tea and played a 20/20 arsewipe of a shot against Lyon. Wasn’t he given the full picture of how the day was to pan out?
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. England were indulging in a bit of role-playing where Trott batted like Pietersen, Bairstow batted like Trott, and Bell batted like an idiot.
And Australia still wouldn’t win this.
I want to smash some things.
Starting with Ronald’s stubbly face.
Well, I, for one, am not jealous of Ged having to spend three days watching this.
It’s Ged, he’s the reason. Rogers scoring a century while Ged is in attendance. Coincidence? I think not.