Off Topic The Ashes

****s sake Burns. **** off will you?

 

I don’t care if he’s the best we’ve got available. He should be put on a plane home before he has a chance to get his pads off. Absolutely ****ing pathetic.

 

FFS

 

Yup

 

Probably the least meaningful Ashes in Ashes history. I mean, we'll get beaten soundly in the best of situations. But being stuck in a foreign country, almost the furthest distance away from home as can possibly be, away from your friends and family, over Christmas, in a country with the strictest of Covid rules, in the tightest of bubbles, typically in a sweltering heat, after playing next to no cricket. Not exactly the springboard needed in order to put up a decent showing is it? Bet they cant wait to get home, if even allowed to in the current situation. They dont want to be there. I dont blame them.

 

Australia made it to about 230 for 2. England can’t even make it to 15.

 

FFS! Cry babys! They're professional cricketers man! Well paid for their supposed talents! Most have got their families either there already or coming over. In a lovely,warm summer instead of our horrible,cold dampness. If they don't want to play,fine,....send them home and we'll find some other players who do.
They're a ****ing disgrace!

 

Me too. That Hameed wicket man! I’d have played it better and I batted 8 at second team level and wasn’t very good at that!!!

 

I just went out for a meal and a pint. 200 people in the place. No mask. Yeah I scanned a QR code, otherwise I wouldn't have known covid was about.

 

Start the plane. Just come home now lads.

 

When taking the quality of our team into consideration they will need to be at 100% in order to even make a game of it over there. Under the current climate, doesnt matter whether you are a sweeper upper, a MacDonalds worker or a professional cricketer, its incredibly difficult for anybody to be feeling at 100% at the moment. The Aussies having the comfort of being on home turf, they will be up for it, but even they wont be feeling tip top giving the current situation.
I'm not saying England should give up, roll over, embarrass themselves. But anything slightly less than 100% will not be good enough. Anything near 90% in top class test cricket, the Ashes, they're ****ed.
Particularly if they keep losing the toss. In todays test cricket winning the toss massively increases a teams chances. If Australia win the majority of tosses, on home turf, they will win the series, simple as that. Surely there needs to be a rule change. What about 5 match series for example - The away team should basically have the courtesy of 'winning the toss in the 1st, 3rd and 5th test matches. The home team in the 2nd and 4th. That would help balancing things out and avoid the potential of a lopsided series decided on the basis of a captains bad luck on a best of 5 toss of a coin.

 

I was under the impression that if anybody so much as coughed in Australia the state would go into lockdown?

 

What a load of horseplop!.....and,.we won the toss at Brisbane.

 

Did we? I stand corrected. Steve Harmison said we lost both tosses on Talksport this morning.

 

That'll be the same Mag supporting Harmison whose first ball went wide of second slip in a previous Brisbane Test!

 

Six months ago, most definitely. But I'm in Melbourne, the most locked down city in the world and it's just not like that anymore.

Everywhere is open for a drink, for food, for shopping.

The only state that is currently like that is WA and Perth was knocked off the calendar in favour of Hobart, Tasmania.

Covid restrictions simply aren't an excuse. The Australian captain went out for a meal the night before the second test and sat next to someone with covid... if anything they need a better bubble

 

Further back in this thread somebody wrote that England are a team in transition and whilst it's true that we have a number coming towards the end of their test careers, (Broad and Anderson with honours - Burns, Bairstow and probably Buttler with inevitability) for transition to be remotely successful there has to be people knocking on the door and there really isn't.

We only have Root, Stokes and Robinson inked in on the team sheet for the next couple of years - I like Malan but he's 34 - hopefully Pope and Hameed can find consistency but that still leaves over half a team to find. We'll do ok in England due to the conditions but I fear that this is going to be the norm overseas for the foreseeable.

 

I agree, there were some genuine play and misses. But most of the bowlers were bowling too short, and none of them can bowl above medium pace now. We might as well have Darren Andrews there!

But I can never remember a team so disjointed, badly led, negative, badly prepared, or in all honesty, more reluctant looking than this lot.

We will probably lose this very heavily as Australia employ the highly radical tactic of bowling a length that might hit the stumps if it gets that far. I'd like to see what percentage of balls in Australia's innings were of a fullish length.

It looked to me as if they were trying to stem damage from the start.

Just as well no one has forked out thousands for the trip down there!

 

Spot on!

 

Yep. It was me going on about transition.

What England just refuse to do now is give young players a go , let them learn , fail a bit and see how some of them come on.

Sadiq's treatment has been a scandal for three years now. He is quick, swings a lump of coal and takes wickets. He is an obvious choice. Maybe he wouldn't crack it, but how will we know? Just keep playing the same players forever, because they say they are " up for it"?

Garton too is quick and different. Nowhere to be seen. We are unlucky with Stone, and Archer has been flogged until he dropped. But there are other good young bowlers who should have been blooded by now. I don't exclude Matty Potts from this either. He is bowling quick regularly now, has a lot of cricket behind him already and takes a lot of wickets. Mind he's 22, so if he hangs on for ten years maybe they'll notice him. Either that or go and play for Surrey!

The old guard is looking after the old guard, hoping that something will happen. Like it used to. But it won't.