Fourth Test

[Michael Rolls]

Oh, dear - obviously they heard me! 0-2 not the best of starts. Unless there is another Headingley style miracle, I fear that the Ashes stay Down Under
Mike. (At least Smith was dismissed for his lowest score of the series - a mere 82 - but did you see how close Leach was to another no ball?)

[Michael Rolls]

Well, after that 82 – his lowest scorer of the series to date – Smith now has 2,600 at 69.47, a slight improvement. On the other hand, his 12 most recent innings are now 2366 at 113.83. who knows, by the end of the series perhaps we can peg him back a bit more – but even if he records a pair at the Oval, his then most recent 12 will still average 98.00
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

Roy has just been bowled by Cummins, 'through the gate'. Is it my imagination, or is this happening more frequently to top order batsmen than used to be the case? I wonder of it ever happened once in a blue moon to Boycott, Hutton, Bradman, Hammond, Gooch, etc.?
Mike - whoops, I  posted this in error in 'Cricket'  - please forgive the duplication

[Cassandra]

Another day of consummate failure. I’m beginning to dread passing comment, as its merely repetitive criticism. As I predicted England passed 200 five down and and made around 300. In their inglorious failures they are at least persistent. Again, lack of concentration. Second time round, Root got a good ball and Burns made a poor shot selection, but at least he shows semblance of application. Starc was as good still as I said he’d be, still too sharp for everyone and Lyon was ripping the thing square out of the bowlers follow through. Hazlewood was excellent, line and control and Cummings ably supported them, well bowled, they also hold catches!

To see how bad we are, Smith again was supreme, the time he creates on the shot is just amazing. Leach was sub standard I'm afraid. For those of us brought up with Underwood, Lock and Laker he seems unable to bowl to a field? Perhaps I should re-phrase that - bowl to Root's fields! Ray East from Essex would appear a 'maestro' today even at this level which he never achieved as the great 'Deadly's' career was synonymous with his own.

I’m afraid this is the future for England in this theater and probably the five day game will soon fade away and we can continue successfully in the baseball festivals where limited mentalities can cope with truncated periods of sponsored slogging for big pay cheques. Not for me I’m afraid.

Video killed the radio star

[Michael Rolls]

Nor me
Mike 

[zoony]

Well done to Australia. They were the better team and deserve to retain the Urn. I'm hoping for a better result for England at The Oval where they can save some face by playing the right game!

[Michael Rolls]

Yes, they were better all round, except that last innings at Headingley, when it mattered. It is tempting to believe that if Leach has not let Smith off the hook that things might have been different, but I think Australia would probably have won anyway. Headingley was a glorious, impossible fairytale, incapable of repition. Overall, Smith apart, the ball ruled the bat and the superiority of ball over bat was in Australia’s favour.
 Mike

[Cassandra]

England only had to occupy the crease for less than 90 balls at the death to have drawn and saved the Ashes, but seemingly an impossibility for the lead players between them to achieve. I won't dwell, its too abysmal to bother writing about. In 1953 Trevor Bailey and Willie Watson batted for six hours - I repeat six hours to save the Lord's Test against Australia. Today six of them failed to comprehend this was about crease occupation. As usual they continued to chase the ball. Roy apart, who was defeated by a superb ball that would have got anyone, bad luck today as he was actually far more composed I thought. Denly likewise, but he's brittle. Simply their not cast for this game. They both possess the ability, but commonly with their fellow batters lack the mentality to change technique between this scenario and the flames of the one day game they were forged within. Simply put Patience they ain't got! 

Well played Craig Overton, a brave and courageous player and the redoubtable Leach. We can't drop them, far too valuable as batsmen! Of course once again at the Oval we'll persist and experience a similar Fred Karno ritual. The same cast, different stage, same results.

Root with the facial projection of a supercillious turnip mumbled away in mediaspeak afterwards - seemingly indifferent to the lacklustre compost heap he'd just presided over. The £1.6 million he'll trouser this year, no doubt helps promote failure into success. I always remember a seal trainer (in an animated action alleging tampering with his creatures food by a competitor) advising me his glossy troupe performed much better when they were hungry - "they associate fish with going through the oop guv'nor, know what I mean like" ...

I have tickets for Friday and Saturday for the 5th Match. Were it not for the tradition of attending with an old friend who will be travelling 5,000 miles so to do, I'd sell them on tomorrow, simply not worth it. I've seen the best, both in players and presentation.

I never watched or listened until the highlights tonight on 5. I'm glad my possible future relocation had persuaded me not to persist with earlier thoughts of subscribing to Skysports. This decrepit performance, with the mewling Alison Mitchell screeching away like a self propelled haunted violin in the background - no siree, I'd rather "die in a ditch"!

[zoony]

  ...But Cassie, it's only a game!...Don't apoplexify old bean, I know it's not. I do, however, think that The Oval Test might just be a squid of a rather different ink. If it takes being beaten and shamed to wake the squad up then they're wide-awake now and I expect them to have loins girded and homework done before they win the toss...

[Cassandra]

...But Cassie, it's only a game!...Don't apoplexify old bean, I know it's not. I do, however, think that The Oval Test might just be a squid of a rather different ink. If it takes being beaten and shamed to wake the squad up then they're wide-awake now and I expect them to have loins girded and homework done before they win the toss...

I'm sorry it's far more serious than just a game - sepecially against these wretched colonists!

I forgot the wink after the word Ditch! I'm afraid they are incapable of change, not from stubborness, but from habit. Smithy is the difference between these sides and Root (the nearest we have to him) seems to have had a frontal lobotomy! All the rest (both sides) are enigmatic performers, with a paucity of patience and reason. I do hope your right - I have no belief in a Damascus conversion for this lot though. They'll continue to gather Nuts in May in the minefield with unchallenged frivolity. If I had the money to waste I'd have an plane towing the trailer 'REMEMBER THIS ONE LASTS FIVE DAYS ' over the skies of SW9.

Peter Richardson of Kent and England once took seven hours to score 117 and save England. This wonderful player was also a great prankster and sent match reports to the Telegraphs intensely solemn cricket editor Jim Swanson from an author purporting to be a retired Colonel from India. He kept the whole team up in bad times, but could switch from team comedian to complete concentration and purpose when batting. He once told me he'd have given it all up to have my role in life. To achieved his accomplishments and fun therein gathered - I'd have gladly swapped.

Mind you I'd do the same to have had your abilities too old Zoon!

[zoony]

    Lordy!..( Not a diminutive.. ) Neither do I expect any Damascene conversions of players steeped in a different regime but I do think the team will react in a positive way.
Undoubtedly, Smith is almost unique in his vision and OCD batting manner but he can get out as quickly as the next man to the right ball. There just aren't very many of them and them there are get dropped or no-balled!
  We should acknowledge watching him bat rather than regret it but there's no shame in being beaten by a phenomenon backed by a good team.
Abilities seem the easy way out to those that have them I suspect. Those that don't have them might perhaps reflect on how peaceful life is. 

[Michael Rolls]

As ever Geoff Boycott summed up one of the very obvious batting weaknesses (I speak.as a specialist number eleven!) of coming forward with bat way in front of pad, leaving, in the words of GB ‘a gate I could drive my car through!’
Haven’t had the heart to work out how many, on both sides, were bowled through the gate or survived an inside edge missing leg stump, but it was a fair number, bearing out GB’s comment
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

Stokes apart, England’s batting numbers don’t inspire much confidence (although without checking, I doubt Australia’s without Smith are much better).
Burns 293 at 36.62
Denley 205 at 25.61
Root 247 at 30.88
Roy 120 at 13.75
Stokes 354 at 59.00
Bairstow 178 at 25.43
Buttler 130 at 16.25
 
Combine all seven and you get 1517 runs at 28.62. That looks bad enough, but if you take Stokes out the equation, you get 1163 runs at 24.74.
A bit of perspective as to the ‘Smith effect’. In five innings he scored 671 runs at 134.20. In other words, in those five innings he scored 44% of the runs England’s top seven scored in 56! Pretty worrying, although it does demonstrate just how special he is. After all, in those 56 innings, England managed three centuries - Smith equalled that in five innings'
Mike

[Michael Rolls]

Crease occupancy - in that last innings, England's top seven occupied the crease for an average of 81 minutes. Overton managed to last for 172. If he can do it, why can't the top of the order?
Mike

[Diasi]

England only had to occupy the crease for less than 90 balls at the death to have drawn and saved the Ashes, but seemingly an impossibility for the lead players between them to achieve

My knowledge of cricket in minimal, to say the least, but am I correct in saying that I seem to remember this technique being called 'stonewalling'?