Ashes 2019

According to Warne it was “brilliant bowling, hostile, good energy, nipping it back...”

Looked like a straight ball at average pace that did absolutely nothing, to me.

 

The English batsmen get the fundamentals wrong especially when under pressure. Just play bloody straight and if its wide of off stump let it go. We've lost this match but id like to see us keep the Aussies out there as long as possible, make them work hard for their win, one of their bowlers might get a niggle in the process. It's a long series

 

I thought Burns' technique was flawed. Atherton picked up on it too. Don't try and defend balls outside your off stump. Either leave them or put them away through cover.

When he twigged that himself he looked assured first innings until he started defending balls he should have been leaving from Lyon then you could pick holes in his technique again.

These are top class cricketers. They aren't bad players. It has to be pressure.

 

When you say long.. what, 10-12 minutes more?

It’s ok... we have Moeen to save the day!

 

Pressure is part of cricket, always has been. Now Cook has retired, I don’t think we’ve any batsmen with intelligence to read a situation and adapt. We struggle to often bat a full day, let alone 2. Without Broad and Anderson, we’re rarely going to bowl teams out cheaply.

Huge rebuilding job for the next coach

 

Roy should be dropped for his ODI stupidity in getting out. No time in the test game for those with bad temprement and no patience, especially in this situation.

 

I’ve no issue with 2 hitters in the top 7, if you’ve some technically good batsmen around them you can carry them if they don’t come off. Problem is, our entire top order is an odi top order.

Really don’t know where we go from here.

 

England collapse to 136-9, so unlike us.

 

Five minutes for the last wicket to come in and you will be bang on time!!!

 

136-9 Lyon's got 6.........just saying!

 

I'd pick Roy for the rest of the series and tell him so. He's talented just let him play. Don't see a cricketer in Burns, but there are very few candidates lining up to replace him.

 

Not sure if its already been pointed out but Moeen Ali 3 wickets in total and four runs from 2 innings aint form test cricket.
Surely we have someone playing county cricket can do better

 

Aside from him being utter toilet, he's always had a fragility to his mindset. I suspect just being around Australians again has tipped him back into the mindset he was down under 2 years ago. He even suggested as he's not getting runs he thinks he now deserves to be classed as a bowler (he always said he was a high order batsmen and not a front line bowler... to the point we had to select a 2nd spinner at times to not put too much pressure on him!). Yet on a pitch where Root and Denly looked dangerous, he often didn't.

For his own sake I think he has to be taken out of the mix now.

No guarantee Archer is fit enough yet either. So I've no idea what the bowling unit will look like with Wood also ruled out. Lords is a pitch often suited for accuracy to use the slope. Sam Curran offers a bit of grit, so I'd hope he'd be brought back.

It sounds radical, but I'd be tempted to ask Bayliss to clear his locker out and move on now. Get a new coach in place and get a completely new broom to sweep through.

Addendum. Having seen Roots interview where he seemed to think they'd played well... if that's the view he's sharing with the team, then he needs to drop down to batsmen and be stripped of the captaincy.

He's not a captain, certainly nowhere near as good as Cook was. He needs to focus on converting 50s to 100s and becoming our best batsmen once more, and not just by default.

 

Agree about Roy, however burns has over 1000 runs in first class cricket for the last 5 seasons. He’s rightfully been picked at last and deserves his chance

Moeen is a strange one, over 45 wickets in the last 10 tests but looked in this test like he’d never played before, I think they will drop him for leech next week

 

It sounds a bit sensationalist to be fair, we’ve lost 1 test, albeit quite easily. Let’s not forget they were 122 for 8 at one stage and we batted quite well for the most part in the first knock

 

It would be sensationalist if this were a blip. but it's really not is it? We've not batted well for a very long time. Moeen Ali has had repeated issues of fragility when expectation has come his way, and the bowling unit has had to be the thing that won us tests. If they didn't bowl a team cheaply, we'd draw or lose.

Our test ranking is 4th but at a rate of 105, which is well below what good teams generally are (125-130 usually gets you top ranking).

 

Let celebrate our bowlers then! I think our stated aim has been to win the one day World Cup, that done it’s time to look towards the test team a little more, the trouble with that however is batsmen are growing up wanting to whack sixes not block all day... It’s far more profitable for them for starters!

take Steve Smith who’s a genius and the best batsman the world has seen since bradman and out of this test and the result would have been very different. We aren’t a million miles away if we pick the right 11 and they are all in form, unfortunately we didn’t get that this week, we might do next week

 

Very disappointing and just goes to prove the folly of saying what you are going to do,
to the opposition in deference to actually being able to do it.

During the build up to this first Test, I repeatedly read in my daily paper claims by both
Stokes and Root as to how poor the Aussies were, with both predicting that we had the
upper hand and could well reclaim the Ashes with a Test to spare.

The so called experts are now citing the injury to Anderson as a major factor in our embarrassing
defeat. It certainly didn't help, but as in football, one man doesn't make a team and in readiness for
the second test, drastic surgery is now needed.


Archer and Leach in for Anderson and Ali and probably Curran to replace Denly.? Who knows, they
might find also a place for Sibley, Hain or Foakes who surely couldn't do any worse.

Just seen a comment that Bairstow could well lose his place if he doesn't score at least 150 in the next Test.
He seems to have lost confidence and it might be prudent to take him out of the firing line and give the
keepers gloves to Buttler.

Whatever the final outcome, we have to hope that our players can restore some pride and at least, if the
Aussies do in fact retain the Urn, we at least make them fight very hard for it.

 

The only problem is we can't take Steve Smith out. He's a problem the England bowlers have to work out otherwise he could singlehandedly win every test .

 

We lost to the West Indies in the winter, West Indies have won 3 test series since England last best then in 2017, they are Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and England. It was at this point I put some money on the Aussies.