Well it’s been an excellent first day for England and Cook definately looks like a fine player for the future.
England 318/3
Trescothick 106
Strauss 48
Cook 89
Pietersen 54 N.O
Hoggard 2 N.O
It’s exactly the sort of start to the summer england needed, hopefully they can build on it, and are now in a commanding position in this match.
How dissapointing, England went on to make 551-6 in their first innings, they declared and at the end of day one had Sri Lanka reeling at 91-6. Yet from the second day onwards things did not go half as well, they made sri lanka follow on, eventually skittling them out for 192. People were expecting the match from their on to be over in 3 days, at most four, and here we are 5 down the line and sri lanka still not out on 537-9, somehow 170 ahead of England.
In the match England dropped 9 catches, which according to the commentators cost them 232 runs, which would definately have been the difference between winning and losing, even if we had held half of them.
Anyhow Sri lanka were superb in their resistence, but England must hope they can get harmison and jones back quick, because plunkett and mahmood were not much back-up; Edgbaston should be a more pace-bowler friendly wicket, as this lords pitch did not offer much once you got past the new ball.
haha, the world is normal again.
2-0 lead, this series is virutally over
bye bye POMS !!
[quote]TimmyC wrote:
haha, the world is normal again.
2-0 lead, this series is virutally over
bye bye POMS !![/quote]
It is great to be an Aussie today. Best day 5 that I have ever seen in my life and I only managed to see the last 2 hours, Damn work.
Only a few weeks and I will be at day 1 of the Sydney test!
[quote]TimmyC wrote:
haha, the world is normal again.
2-0 lead, this series is virutally over
bye bye POMS !![/quote]
As dissapointed as I am feeling today… you just cant help but admire Australia, the way they raise their game, when the going gets tough is phenomenal, I dont think the english batsmen batted that badly… Warne and Lee were just fantastic!
haha finally the ashes comes to perth and i get to personally watch us hammer the poms 
declaring at 5 for 527 what a score, it was great to see gilchrist tonking monty around the ground, welcome to the ashes panasar hahaha
[quote]TimmyC wrote:
haha finally the ashes comes to perth and i get to personally watch us hammer the poms
declaring at 5 for 527 what a score, it was great to see gilchrist tonking monty around the ground, welcome to the ashes panasar hahaha[/quote]
If this version of Adam Gilchrist had turned up to play in 2005 along with Mike Hussey in the team we would have been talking about Australia retaining the Ashes this summer, not regaining them, as England wouldn’t have got close to us in 2005 if we had just had two batsmen who could stay in for a while and notch up some runs.
I sort of hate to say this as an Aussie, but I am disappointed that England hasn’t been able to turn one of their match-winning positions into a result. Unless their top order can get through the next two days without throwing their wickets away it’s going to mean Melbourne and Sydney are “dead” tests.
The MCG is sold out for the first two days and nearly for the thrid day, could you imagine the atmosphere of 95,000 fans with the series still undecided? And a decider in Sydney is always special, there is something about the SCG ground for the New Year’s test, to come down to the 5th test would have been awesome.
I’ve never liked the way they now do the test match schedule where all tests are now finished by the New Year before moving on to the ODI games. The two biggest matches of the season now almost have no bearing on the results of the series because the Aussies have already trounced the opposition in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Rant over, I’m glad the Aussies are back to their best but I also like to see them challenged.
Cheers,
Ben
PS: I thought Monty Panesar was meant to be a bad batter, his driving technique on Friday should be taught to Strauss and Cook, then they might stop getting caught in the slips and England might get a solid opening stand under their belts! I thought he batted quite well, Harmison as well.
Hmmm, an interesting Day 4 yesterday, England certainly put up a fight. I think the two late wickets swung the odds back into Australia’s favour. There is some rain about in Perth this morning which will help England by wasting some time, but basically Pieterson and Flintoff have to stay together for at least half the day for any chance for them to survive and play out a draw. If they get going with the run chase there is an outside chance of even getting the runs needed to win, but having an extra two wickets in hand would have been a big help to them rather than losing them late yesterday.
Australia… What can you say?
We’ve currently got the best two bowlers I’ve EVER seen play, Hussey came into the team at 30yo and is blitzing the pommy bowling, Gilchrist is setting records and our captain is fast becoming the best batsman ever.
It’s kind of selfish, but I hope the English bat to a draw today. I want the decider to be at the MCG, where it belongs.
I actually read most of the posts in this thread…
The only time I’ve felt more irrelevant was when I heard several math majors high-level calculus.
[quote]jedidiah wrote:
I actually read most of the posts in this thread…
The only time I’ve felt more irrelevant was when I heard several math majors high-level calculus.[/quote]
Don’t worry, I’m sure most of us Aussies and Pommies would be confused once you started talking in great detail about baseball or NFL!
Well, so much for my posts above wishing for an extended “live” series. For the first hour today it looked like Flintoff and Pietersen had a real chance of chasing down the runs needed and once Flintoff got out the Aussies just went for the jugular and tore through the tail end of the Pommie batting order. I guess the only interest now is whether or not they can keep winning and beat their Test match winning streak record of 16 wins in a row later this year.
Cheers,
Ben
[quote]alstan90 wrote:
TimmyC wrote:
People often forget that Australia plays the ashes at the start of their cricket season every year after a long layoff. Alot of our guys haven’t touched a bat in months, hardly great preparation. Whilst most of the english team have had a great preparation. The fact that we have dominated the series for so long despite this disadvantage is a testament to how good we really are/were. Also did anyone else read that stuff about the poms sucking on cough lollies and using the spit on the ball to increase the swing !?! thats just not cricket…
That accusation was made by Nathan Bracken and was intended as a joke, and how would he know, he wasn’t even in the squad for the series.
This is taken off www.nation.com:
Australian paceman Nathan Bracken apologised Thursday for insinuating England’s bowlers doctored the ball to claim their first Ashes victory in 16 years.
Bracken, a fringe Test player who took no part in the Ashes series, said he was joking when he suggested English bowlers polished the ball with breath-freshening mints to achieve the reverse swing that bamboozled Australia’s batsmen.
The New South Wales bowler offered his apologies to English bowler Simon Jones, who was quoted in British papers angrily denouncing the sweet-cheating claim as “sour grapes”.
“I thought it would come across as a joke and it’s come across the wrong way,” Bracken told reporters.
“I’ve sent my apologies to Simon Jones and I’m making an effort to get in contact with him and basically sort things out so that everything’s perfectly fine and I can make sure that no offence is taken.”
Any genuine cricket fan will realise that what you said is ridiculous, especially since many of the Australian players also play county cricket in England.
Also I am not denying that the Australian team are great, the rankings don’t lie, you are the best team in the world, for now. Although I for one don’t see many more great players coming through the Australian ranks in the immediate future, McGrath, Warne, Hayden, Ponting, Langer, Gillespie, Kaz, Macgill, you are an old team and fact is that it WILL be a struggle for you to replace all those amazing players. By contrast England can look forward to a rosier future, as I can see a lot of talent coming through county cricket now that simply wasn’t there a few years back.
It’s just my view, and I might be wrong.
[/quote]
Accusation was a joke hey ?
maybe have a read of Trescothicks autobiography becuase in it he admits to ball tampering !! in exactly the same manner as bracken ‘joked’ about it, IOC are now investigating.
[quote]TimmyC wrote:
alstan90 wrote:
TimmyC wrote:
People often forget that Australia plays the ashes at the start of their cricket season every year after a long layoff. Alot of our guys haven’t touched a bat in months, hardly great preparation. Whilst most of the english team have had a great preparation. The fact that we have dominated the series for so long despite this disadvantage is a testament to how good we really are/were. Also did anyone else read that stuff about the poms sucking on cough lollies and using the spit on the ball to increase the swing !?! thats just not cricket…
That accusation was made by Nathan Bracken and was intended as a joke, and how would he know, he wasn’t even in the squad for the series.
This is taken off www.nation.com:
Australian paceman Nathan Bracken apologised Thursday for insinuating England’s bowlers doctored the ball to claim their first Ashes victory in 16 years.
Bracken, a fringe Test player who took no part in the Ashes series, said he was joking when he suggested English bowlers polished the ball with breath-freshening mints to achieve the reverse swing that bamboozled Australia’s batsmen.
The New South Wales bowler offered his apologies to English bowler Simon Jones, who was quoted in British papers angrily denouncing the sweet-cheating claim as “sour grapes”.
“I thought it would come across as a joke and it’s come across the wrong way,” Bracken told reporters.
“I’ve sent my apologies to Simon Jones and I’m making an effort to get in contact with him and basically sort things out so that everything’s perfectly fine and I can make sure that no offence is taken.”
Any genuine cricket fan will realise that what you said is ridiculous, especially since many of the Australian players also play county cricket in England.
Also I am not denying that the Australian team are great, the rankings don’t lie, you are the best team in the world, for now. Although I for one don’t see many more great players coming through the Australian ranks in the immediate future, McGrath, Warne, Hayden, Ponting, Langer, Gillespie, Kaz, Macgill, you are an old team and fact is that it WILL be a struggle for you to replace all those amazing players. By contrast England can look forward to a rosier future, as I can see a lot of talent coming through county cricket now that simply wasn’t there a few years back.
It’s just my view, and I might be wrong.
Accusation was a joke hey ?
maybe have a read of Trescothicks autobiography becuase in it he admits to ball tampering !! in exactly the same manner as bracken ‘joked’ about it, IOC are now investigating.
[/quote]
holy fucking two years ago.
Holy bump, Batman!
yea, i have a long memory
Whats with the bumping of old threads lately?
[quote]TimmyC wrote:
yea, i have a long memory[/quote]
Maybe it’s time to build a bridge and get over it?
Or start up a new ashes 2009 preview?
I’m an aussie supporter and I still think us losing that series was the best thing that had happened to the game for a while, all of a sudden cricket was interesting again.