England still need to be in their first innings past Sunday lunch time really.

Could be a bit nervy if England have to follow on and bat for more than a day. Make the follow on and the match will be drawn, forget getting up to Australia's first innings score, the follow on marker is key here, make the Aussies bat again and it the Ashes will be ours again I feel.

Target the must be reached - 328.

As i said earlier in the thread, the Aussie top order batting has been shaky for a while but Clarke and Hussey have often got them out of trouble. In the Australian innings here they were 120-3 but then Clarke came in and made nearly a double hundred. He had Smith at the other end who had more than his fair share of luck (but then so did england with khawaja) and managed to build a big partnership. This then made it easier for the late order coming in who are decent batsmen anyway. Looking at the world rankings, Clarke is ranked 5th and the next highest is Warner at 36th. The top 7 for England are all in the top 26 apart from Bairstow. The situation recently seems to have been that, rather than them all scoring highly, quite a few go cheaply but one or two go on to make a big score. Hopefully two or three can do that this time, england need them to!

Unfortunately umpiring decisions are in danger of being the main talking point rather than the play. It is difficult for onfield umpires to know exactly whether a ball hit bat or pad so mistakes will be made. The Smith decision when england had no referrals was very bad though, it could have been used as an example of what an LBW looks like. The third umpire decisions have been bad; i dont understand how they manage this when they have so much time to sit there, view the angles, go through the checklist of whether it was out or not and come to a decision. The LBW decisions are generally better in that the system works it out and gives a quick unbiased decision. However, i think the system can be refined a bit. In the australian innings england lost a referral when they referred a not out LBW decision against Smith when he first came in. The video evidence showed it hitting leg stump pretty much full on yet the decision went with the umpire and england lost a referral. Given how accurate Hawkeye is supposed to be this seems a bit unfair, surely the system can be refined a bit so its 'umpire's decision' if it is only clipping leg stump? Before anyone accuses me of sour grapes i have seen the system favour england in this situation - it just seems ridiculous that the referral system shows a clear LBW yet it is given not out and the bowling team penalised!

In the australian first innings, four decisions were referred and none of them were successful. This included Warner given out caught for a ball he seemed sure he had missed yet the evidence showed he had done. I think that Bresnan might have this in mind when he decided not to refer last night.

Never sure what i think of having a night watchman. However, it was early in the innings and Bresnan did bowl 32 overs in the australian innings so maybe that's not the best situation? The batsmen will have been out there fielding but its not the same as bowling.

Yes, given the forecast, if england are all out at the end of play today 190 behind then it will make it difficult for australia to know what score to declare at in their second innings. They have to win this match to have a hope of winning the ashes so they could end up trying to score a quick 140/150 before lunch on sunday and putting england back in. The weather could end up curtailing Sunday and Monday's play a lot. First things first though, england have to bat all day and get to that follow on score.

My take is that he's a very good bowler, one of the top ten England bowlers ever (for number of wickets taken alone). But he's not the best in the world, never has been, and isn't an all-time great. And this is because, when the ball isn't swinging, he struggles to take wickets. The best bowlers, the 'all-time greats', have the ability to take wickets & be a threat even if the conditions aren't to their liking.

And he is gone - 3 down now which will quickly become 4 as KP won't last long before he plays a rash shot and pays for it again.

The same mental deficiencies that have plagued England for years.  

Cook, you nonce

Looks fairly good at the moment but add a wicket or two and an upcoming new ball and things can quickly go wrong.

Bit of a statto thing to mention but Cook, Pietersen and Clarke have got very similar test runs in their career, all around 7500. England's top all-time scorer is Gooch with 8900. Pietersen and/or Cook should beat that at some point in the next few years and go on to 10,000 runs. Bell is close to the top of the next page with about 6300. Obviously team results come first though

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;template=results;type=batting

B*gger. Still 100 runs to save the follow on.

First priority is to bat the rest of today

No certainty we'll avoid the follow-on - and if we don't then the Aussies could still win this despite rain tomorrow/Monday ......