The Cricket Thread

91-8 at stumps.

 

Sri Lanka all out for 101.

Some old guy on a tour walked into the commentary box and was impervious to hints...just carried on talking to Atherton. Bumble looked round and called, 'Nurse.'

 

Not happy. Am up in Newcastle next week and all the spectators at Durham are wrapped up with their hoods up. Brrrr.

 

I appreciate that the weather looks awful for tomorrow, and not great for later in the day on Wednesday either, but I'd still have batted a little bit longer if I was Middlesex. So long as the rain does comes, the only way they can possibly win this is by being able to enforce the follow on. By declaring now they've set us a target of 318 to effectively draw the game. Given our batting, I'd say it's touch and go whether we could get there - but if they'd have just smashed another quick 50 runs, then they'd have no doubt put the target out of our reach, and only taken say 5 more overs out of the game.

 

Fair play to Sri Lanka for making England bat again, most teams would've laid down and died, if they could by some miracle get a lead of 150+ it could make the match a bit interesting!

 

What the hell has happened to Carbs this season?, with all the injuries and Vincey's call up, we need the senior players to step up.

 

At least he's made a 100 this year. He didn't manage that at all last year. But yes, that one innings aside, he's even worse this year than last year.

It doesn't help though that Jimmy and Smith have been equally as poor. All three of them have only made one score of note each so far. Fingers crossed that changes today, but I'm not holding out any hope.

 

What a superb knock by Chandimal, i'm almost hoping that he doesn't get out.

 

Understandable that Jimmy might be out of nick, he's just come back, but 9 batting points all season is abysmal and if it doesn't improve Hants will have a struggle to stay up.

 

Anderson gets his fifth wicket. SL lead by 45.

 

Serious Question . Who is in line to replace Anderson ?

 

13 bowling points out of possible 18 isn't great either - on average, that means every opponent is no more than 8 down after 110 overs, so are almost certainly putting on 300+ each time (on average).

But at least our horrific injury problems can be of some reasonable excuse for that. Unlike those abysmal 9 batting points, as you say (so whilst we're shipping 300+ every first innings, we're only getting 200 - 250 ourselves).

 

Right, now the three walking wickets are out, we can start our innings. Good luck...

 

So, we've already lost more wickets than Middlesex did in their entire innings.

When we are bad, we are bad.

 

Cook becomes the youngest player to score 10,000.00 test runs .

 

England win the 2nd Test by 9 wickets and the series.

 

No batting points at all this time for Hants, that is a pathetic effort with the last 5 wickets falling for just 15 runs.

 

You couldn't make it up, Hants send Smith in to open instead of Carberry and he gets out second ball for a duck...

 

I said, all three of them are walking wickets. Order them however we like.

 

The only Englishman to do it, and yet he probably wouldn't be many people's first choice of England greats.