Perhaps it's all part of masterplan to give the crap convict batting line up some runs, so the convict selectors keep faith instead of ringing the changes, and we go Down Under to comfortably retain our ashes.

Hoorah!

 

 

 

Or perhaps not

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Surely there is an arguement for looking at players to see if they can cope with an ashes test, especially as the result doesn't really matter

 

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Yes, that's it! [sn_appr]
















Isn't it? 🤔

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Jim Maxwell has been on TMS Ashes Series' for years. As I've said many times on here, he is the best radio cricket pundit and commentator by a country mile. Never biased and always calls it as it is. Top bloke 👍

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Can't see it, Kev. This has England defeat written all over it for me, since they lost the toss and selected this pathetic bowling lineup.

Convicts rack up 500+ tomorrow, roll England over for around 300 after another top order failure, convicts bat again giving England something like 550 to win or bat out 5 sessions on a wearing pitch.

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Aggers is more liberal and placid than Devonian (Hey Pete) taking the diplomatic angle in any UIA topic of choice, so with that in mind, what he's doing here is insinuating that the selectors are a bunch of ****s


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/23786507 

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In the opening hour or two Beefy and I think Gower were singing the praises of the selectors.......when things were going well. The way I see it is what do people want in the future....... do we want a long transition phase similar to what Australia are going through now or do we want to try and spread the test experience around and try and nurture new players in to the team at specific points in time. No different with our football teams when they throw a young lad in from time to time, sometimes that young lad plays a blinder and sometimes it is a disaster.

People are too shortermist at times, like all of those people bitching on about what a waste of money / time London getting the Olympics was. I kind of understand what it is the selectors  are trying to do longer term, the next 4 days to 10 years will tell if they got it right or wrong.

Neither can I to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if they lose.

Why they picked Kerrigan I have no idea, I can see why they picked Woakes as a similiar replacement for Bresnan but why didnt they pick Tremlett? Why didn't they pick James Taylor as replacement for Bairstow and keep to the 4 bowler line up?

Why hasn't Joe Root bowled more?

They could have picked Tremlett and used Root to bowl more spin if they wanted to .

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Go me, great shout that, never seen a young man freeze so much, probably ruined him for a long time.

In fairness to me (and the selectors) he had taken a bucket full of wickets in the county game

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Second division though isn't it? Even if it was first, as Tuffnell, Vaughan and a few others pointed out yesterday, this is massively different to county cricket.

I disagree with Jon that this is the right stage to blood new talent. Ok, you could point to KP and Trott as examples where it has worked, but we were in the gutter then. We hadn't won the ashes forever and needed to do something radical. For me an Ashes series isn't the time for daft experiments, whether its 3-0 or not when you have back to back series'. If we weren't playing them for a couple of years now then ok, but what we are in danger of doing here is handing them the initiative and boosting their confidence for the winter.

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Don't forget the Convicts are touting this at home as a 10 match series. Obviously there's some mind games and attempts to pacify the weary home supporters in there, but they are probably daft enough to buy it. Don't even give them a sniff - grind them into the dirt, exactly as the great convicts side of 90's and 00's would have done.

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Fully agree with all that Matty and your view of Woakes, but this is always a '2 spinner' pitch (or has been in recent memory) and I just thought that with Monty getting in a little 'hot water' the door was open for eithe Kerrigan or Borthwick, in hindsight the latter might have been a better choice.

Bresnan was out with his injury so one change was needed, but Woakes is the new Bopara for me, let's hope we dont take as long to learn about him.

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Fair enough, I don't agree with the selctions as such, some good points made above about alternatives to those selected in this test. 

In Australia England will have to play consistently well, they won't get away with the shite they have been playing in this series I suspect. That may have made the selectors try something a bit different in this test.

When management make a change and it works you look like a genious, if it goes tits up you look like a total twat, nothing in between.

If England had won the toss yesterday it could have been so different.

Indeed. I made the point yesterday that the only times the convicts have looked capable of even holding a bat is when they have won the best two tosses to win in the series and batted first. In a way I think test cricket is being devalued by this seeming obsession with creating these immaculate, hard, blemish-free wickets that are often a batting paradise for the first couple of days, thereby handing huge advantage to the team winning the toss.

Agree with you about us needing to hit our straps in Aus. We have been woefully off form as a team in this series at times. Also agree with Ian re Woakes.

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I don't think its the wickets, its the bowlers. Anderson is great when the ball is swinging, but is usually ineffective if it isn't. Only Broad is capable and rapid enough of being threatening with the short ball and he blows hot and cold from test match to test match.....

After those two, who else is there? The rest are good honest plodders (bar Tremlett and Finn) that are hardly going to scare the batsmen.

Fact is, when you compare the world class quick bowlers of the 80s and 90s to the world class bowler these days, only Steyn and Anderson (in the right conditions) are up there. There is a dearth of quick bowling talent, or at least its being mishandled.

I personally think (assuming there is no damp conditions first up) that a 400-450 first innings score is about right for a test match wicket.

Crucial first hour. If Broad and Anderson can get a good start then hopefully we can still get them out for under 400. A poor start and it could be a long day, with the possibility of an england win disappearing out of the window. Just hope that the standard 30-3 doesnt make a reappearance when england bat. Any idea how well Woakes can bat? He's got a decent first class average but that could be from smashing around a few county attacks.

Been raining at times over the last few hours and the radar suggests there may be some rain again soon although the cloud base is quite high at the moment. Lets hope the moisture can get some swing going

Looks like a good old Thames streamer at the moment...

I can understand bringing in players to have an experience, and I think they are worried about Finn after his bowling earlier in the series. If we are honest our attack of Anderson/Broad/Swann is 3/4 of what we have relied on for the last 2-3 years, so its not that weak in this match. Matty is right in that the Aussies have got lucky twice with the toss on the two batting wickets. I've argued for a long time that there should be a change to the toss to either - 1) Toss for the first game then alternate between the sides who get to choose or 2) Toss for the first game then losing side (or if after a draw the side who didn't choose at the last game) get to choose. I think that would be fairer. The toss shouldn't determine the course of the game - the players should.

 

Worth pointing out yet another diabolical forecast and even nowcast from the MetO. Alex on 5Live said at 9am this morning that the rain was gone. Maybe an outside chance of a shower later in the afternoon.

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I'm just giving up on the Meto/BBC/industrial/military complex... Carol's shot of saturday has led to a colleague assuming there will be no cricket on the 4th day - I told him not to trust that, but he won't listen. Other models don't really reflect that screenshot.