Cricket Thread

An you can shut up as well…

 

Just think, it's been exactly 4000 days since the last time England won a test match in Australia (7 January 2011).

...Although, the way they are playing, it might be a while longer.

 

I’m going to get a job in Tesco’s stacking shelves through the night for the next month….

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/59731908

 

Third test underway, and so far more of the same.

• Another England opener out for a duck. 14 times this year it has happened.
• Burns was dropped for lack of form... replaced by Crawley, who's 2021 average is... 11. Crawley was out for 12.
• Also that was the 50th duck in 2021 - 2nd most all time (4 short of the record, which 1999 England hold)
• Another time Root has come in at less than 2/20
• Another time Root has top scored (so far) only one to reach 50, but not got to triple figures in Australia
• Another time 3 wickets down at lunch, 6 down at tea, and not much in the way of batting left in the sheds.

6/128 at tea.

 

Averages of England batters to debut in men's Test cricket in the last six years:

Foakes: 31.53
Burns: 30.92
Malan: 30.35
Pope: 29.79
Denly: 29.53
Sibley: 28.94
Hales: 28.26
Hameed: 27.80
Crawley: 27.74
Stoneman: 27.68
Lawrence: 27.23
Jennings: 25.19
Vince: 24.90
Westley: 24.12

And Foakes is actually a wicketkeeper - when 30 odd is what you'd expect from a keeper. The rest are supposed to be specialist batsmen.

 

Could be a long hard winter taz lol

 

England all out 185.

Yet another dire batting display from England, and without Root, they would be truly rooted.

Honestly, just really want the game to actually be competitive.

Maybe the Poms can do better with the ball than they did with the bat... but not holding my breathe.

Edit - England also all out for less than 200 for the 13th time in 28 innings in 2021.

 

How good was that last hour? England spent all day fighting back with the ball, the bowlers did fantastic to limit Australia to about an 80 run lead.... and then the Aussie quicks ripped the England top order to shreds and the nightwatchman as well. Amazing bowling from both teams in this test, but there is only one team who'se batsmen are doing the job.

 

That didn't last long overnight btw.

England absolutely blown away in less than 80 minutes to lose by an inning & 14 runs! The Ashes retained by Australia, 3-0 with 2 tests remaining. This one lasted less than 7 sessions of play in total.

 

For taz I don’t think the link will show for you… It’s all doom here mate..


Ashes: Five stages of grief for the England Test team
By Stephan ShemiltChief cricket writer

Last updated on 2 hours ago2 hours ago.From the section Cricket

Highlights: Australia demolish England to win Ashes
In affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which died (again) in Melbourne on 28 December 2021.

Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. RIP.

The body will be cremated and the Ashes will remain in Australia.


OK, so maybe this latest England defeat at the hands of Australia is not being greeted with the dismay of the loss at The Oval in 1882. You have to go back to before World War One to find a time when England regularly won down under, so it is no surprise the tourists have been beaten once more.

However, it is the feeble manner in which Joe Root's side have surrendered that lends itself to a stark sense of mourning for the state of the England Test team.

It was the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who theorised that grief comes in five stages.

To have watched England in recent years is to have experienced them all.

• Australia thrash England to retain Ashes
• England never stood a chance - Agnew
• Ashes defeat 'gut-wrenching' - Root

Stage one: Denial
England have been in decline for the best part of a decade, a mediocre side hiding in plain sight.

Yet, denial has been aided by a long unbeaten home record and the individual brilliance of a few world-class players.

The signs were there. Just two teams - Sri Lanka and South Africa (both twice) - beaten away from home since the beginning of 2013, only Root and Alastair Cook averaging more than 40 with the bat in the past decade, an over-reliance on James Anderson, hot-shotting the gloves from keeper to keeper, mishandling spin, a slip cordon more likely to catch smallpox than an edge.

The cracks have really started to open in the past 12 months. One win in 12 Tests, the worst home summer since 1999, the demise of that proud unbeaten record in the UK. No team has ever lost more matches in a calendar year than England's nine in 2021.

Nothing causes introspection within English cricket quite like an Ashes defeat. It was only a Ben Stokes miracle at Headingley that prevented Australia winning the urn two years ago.

Now it is all laid bare. The denial can continue no longer.

The moment Australia retained Ashes
Stage two: Anger
There are multiple reasons for this Ashes humbling and England's overall slide: a lack of preparation, injuries, Pat Cummins' piercing blue eyes.

However, most of the anger is being directed at a domestic system that is perceived to leave batters ill-equipped to cope with the demands of Test cricket. "The Hundred", "ECB", "county" and "Tests" were all trending on Twitter on Tuesday morning.

And, while it is true that facing Darren Stevens on a sticky dog at Canterbury in April is a different sport from Mitchell Starc shoving the ball up your nostrils at the Gabba, it is not as simple as blaming it all on the county calendar.

It is certainly not a problem unique to England for batters in the national team to play little or no red-ball cricket outside the Test arena.

And the first-class game has still provided opportunities for players to put together a decent body of work in order to earn a Test call-up.

Dom Sibley made nine hundreds across two years before his England selection, Rory Burns had five successive seasons of making more than 1,000 runs and Ollie Pope has taken advantage of batting at The Oval for most of his career by possessing a first-class average in excess of 51.

At best, all three have stood still since being called up by England. At worst, it is hard to argue that they have not regressed.

Further back, Keaton Jennings, Sam Robson, Adam Lyth and Nick Compton all made hundreds early in their Test careers before fading away.

The county structure is far from perfect but wouldn't need much tweaking to improve. Is it not a bigger concern that England, with an army of backroom staff, are not making players better?

Stage three: Bargaining
This latest embarrassing episode in English cricket history can be compared with another chastening moment down under, the first-round exit from the 2015 World Cup. Root himself has noted the parallels.

In response, England took one-day cricket seriously, set their stall out to win the 2019 tournament and did just that.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch and the bargain for that success has been a knock-on detriment to the Test team, either in the shape of the tank-sized gap between Jonny Bairstow's bat and pad, or the pursuit of a World Cup double which saw players left out of Tests but kept fresh for a T20 tournament England did not win.

That is not to say red-ball and white-ball success cannot be achieved simultaneously. Australia have won the T20 World Cup and Ashes in the space of six weeks, while New Zealand are world Test champions having made each of the last 50-over and 20-over World Cup finals.

England have also had to make choices during a Covid era in which they have played more than any other team.

The bargain for keeping the show on the road in a time of bubbles, isolation and quarantine has been to rotate players, which Root admitted was to the "detriment" of performances in India, when results really started to unravel.

The Ashes: Australia's Scott Boland claims six wickets in Ashes debut
Stage four: Depression
Past, present or future, England can give cause for depression.

The past? In their past 29 Tests away to India, Australia and New Zealand - the world's top three teams - England have won only once and suffered 21 defeats. In the past five years alone, they have been bowled out in a single session on five occasions, one of which was by Ireland.

The present is trying to stay awake on the dark, winter nights, only to have your dreams stalked by Cummins, Starc and co. The rattle of Burns' leg stump, Jos Buttler's iron gloves, yet another Australian fast bowler plucked from nowhere to deliver homing missiles at the edge of English bats.

The future? Try not to think about Jofra Archer's elbow, or the paucity of options to relieve Root of the captaincy.

And whatever you do, don't contemplate what life will be like when Anderson retires.

Stage five: Acceptance
Perhaps the best way to deal with this is accept the fact that England are not very good at Test cricket and that more pain is on the way before things are likely to get better.

Anything other than defeat in the final two Tests in Australia would feel like a good result, after which England could be looking for a new captain, coach and the majority of a team.

How many of the current line-up are nailed on to face West Indies in the spring? Root, Stokes, Ollie Robinson, Mark Wood and probably Dawid Malan. Anderson and Stuart Broad will be in the mix if they want to be, but England must see every series they remain available as a bonus.

After that come a home series against New Zealand and the rearranged fifth Test against India, both of whom were better than England last summer, before the visit of an improving South Africa, which looks far from a gimme.

Next winter includes Test series in Pakistan and New Zealand - England will not start as favourites in either - before the next Ashes in the UK in 2023.

By that time, England will not have lost a home series to Australia in 22 years. As of now, that record would appear to be in huge jeopardy.

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Good to see the Poms putting up more of a fight in this last Sydney test. Nailbiting end there, to hold on for a draw with just 1 wicket to spare.

Considerign the rain as well as a bit of a conservative declaration by Australia played it's part as well, but made for an exciting conclusion. Wasn't exactly a contest for most of the test, but at least there has been more fight on display in this match than there has been in any other, apart from maybe the end of the Adelaide Test.

 

They are celebrating a draw Taz like theyv'e won the Ash'es on BBC news .

 

Yep, celebrating the fact that they cannot now be whitewashed 5-0. Even if they get done in the fifth test in Hobart starting later this week, it will still be a 4-0 hammering and came within 1 wicket of being whitewashed, lol. But yeah, they did put in much more of a fight in this one, but that 5th day Sydney surface is not the terror that 5th day surfaces are at other venues, thats for sure also.

 

And the Poms collapse once more. Australia retain the Ashes after another comprehensive win in Hobart!

Australia win the series 4-0... and were only 1 wicket away from winning the series, 5-0!

Really, it's a shame that the series has been so one sided, and England really have never been in the running throughout and only momentarily seemed to even be in the contest. Feel for the bowlers, who put the hard work in, only to see so many catches dropped throughout the series, and even in each inning finally able to put thri feet up after finally knocking the Australian batting, only to see the English batsmen getting skittled for nix and then the biwlers having to go back out there again, just not good enough.

Without getting high marks, Root (as a batsman) gets a pass mark, if you combined Malan in the first 2 tests and Bairstow in the 3rd and 4th, they would, but aside from that, not so much. The core of the bowlers, Broad, Wood, Anderson & Robinson also deserve credit, but wayyy too many passengers aside from that, with pretty much everything else, from preparation to selection, even to Root's captaincy have been fails, the openers fails, the middle order fails, really, not using the best wicketkeeper etc, its such a mess.

Even someone like Stokes who played all 5 tests, averaged 71 with the ball and 23 with the bat is far from being upto scratch fpr a player of his stature but those contributions seem massive compared with Hameefd, average 10, Pope, averaged 11 and Burns averaging 12.

 

Not a cricket fan…

…. but hearing about England getting pumped in any sport is more than satisfying… especially when it’s one they invented.

 

Scotland get battered, everywhere they go.........

 

For taz again lol..


Ashes: 'This has to be our rock bottom' - pundits despair at England's capitulation

Last updated on 6 hours ago6 hours ago.From the section Cricket

The Ashes: Australia complete Ashes win as England collapse again - highlights
"That has to be our rock bottom."

Those were the words of former England captain Sir Alastair Cook after the tourists' Ashes misery finally came to an end in a familiar fashion.

Set 271 to win on the third day of the fifth Test in Hobart, England reached 68-0.

With an England opening pair who, at long last, looked settled at the crease, that glimmer of hope started to shine a little more brightly.

There was an opportunity to end the series on a high, prove some doubters wrong and head home with a smidgen of respect.

But then England lost all 10 wickets for just 56 more runs. The Test was over inside three days, the series lost 4-0.

"Feeble", said former England bowler Steven Finn. "Appalling" and "ghastly" said Mark Butcher, the former England batter.

• The Ashes: England crushed by Australia in final Test
• Root wants to stay as England captain

Blame for the collapse can firmly be placed on shot selection and judgement.

To name just a few: Ben Stokes played a wholly unnecessary pull and was caught on the boundary, Sam Billings tamely chipped to mid-on and Ollie Pope got into an almighty tangle as he moved across his stumps and was bowled.

Speaking on BT, two-time Ashes winning captain Cook did not hold back.

"It is a batting line-up devoid of all confidence and belief. Nobody seems to be able to step up and stop that slide once or two wickets are lost," he said.

"That has to be our rock bottom. Until people grab this team by the scruff of the neck I can't see them changing."

'Enough is enough'
'A huge step towards victory' - Stokes falls for five
It was one of the worst collapses of all time. Only once since 1908 have England lost all 10 wickets for fewer than 56 against Australia, at The Oval in 1948.

But as an indication of their flurry of recent collapses, it is the fifth time in four years England have lost all 10 wickets for less than 65.

"Enough is enough. This is the line in the sand," BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew said.

"We can't keep going back after a hammering in Australia and say things need to change, and then nothing happens."

As Cummins lifted the Ashes urn, a deflated England camp looked on. Finn had some sympathy for the losers.

"It's a watershed moment for the England players," he said on TMS.

"You have green and gold confetti over the pitch, Australia spraying champagne, and you just wish it was you."

Change needed?
Robinson out to 'ghastly' dismissal as Australia wrap up 4-0 Ashes win
England's next assignment in red-ball cricket is a three-Test series against West Indies in the Caribbean.

Despite Joe Root saying he wants to continue as captain, Cook is expecting some changes to the team and coaching set-up.

"I will be very surprised if England go to the West Indies with the same structure in place," he said.

"I'm not saying Joe Root won't be captain but we've had the same set-up for 18 months now and I've not seen any improvement.

"You have to ask questions of Graham Thorpe, the batting coach, and the others. If they lose in the West Indies their positions will be untenable and there has to be change."

Finn says the manner of England's latest defeat is likely to influence change.

"Had England won [in Hobart], there would have been three or four people who would have put in significant performances in this game and there would be something to cling on to going to the the West Indies," he said.

"But it now feels like there will be some degree of change."

England will host the next Ashes in 2023, and have not lost a series against Australia on home soil since 2001.

But having lost 5-0, 4-0 and 4-0 in the past three Ashes series down under, a huge amount of work needs to be done to compete in Australia again in 2025-26.

But Finn says England would be "fools to start thinking that far ahead".

He added: "You have to think short term and find those players capable of being there in four years. Plus it's disrespectful to the other teams you're playing in between."

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Came across that article earlier, and the comments that were being made on TMS etc. Thx @Forestbhoy66

 

What a couple of great finishes today.

First the stunning finale to the women's Ashes test, where going into the last 3 overs after 4 days play, all 4 results - win, loss, draw and tie - were all a very real possibility, and England came close, but the Australians took a late clutter of wickets, which meant that Kate Cross having to survive 12 of the last 13 balls of the match to get England to the draw with 9 wickets down. Drama!

Then this evening, the West Indies series v England, pushed all the way to the end of the series also, but the West Indies ended up winning the series 3-2, with that late dramatics of Jason Holder in the last over, taking 4 wickets in 4 balls to win the game and the series. Immense stuff!

Both have been exceptional adverts for cricket - men's and womens, in the longest and shortest forms fo the game.