Sri Lanka v England, 1st Test, Galle, 26-30 March, 2012

PeterCS wrote:Small mercies: at least that's twice an over less than Heal's old mantra "Bowelled Shine"!

Scant comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

Oh dear Monty.

Monty's packed his clown hands again.

Deary me.

MONTEHH! You dolt!!

tricycle wrote:Oh dear Monty.

How many has he dropped?

Two, both easy catches (second more so than the first), but more importantly, both Jayawardene.

Fark if Mahela can score all of the next 30 runs he might get the record for highest percentage of the team's total.

Abominable by Monty. Totally shows why having such a fielding lemon in the side is a bit of a letdown. The second one was a total sitter and would've helped finishing off the innings. As it is, they're getting halfway towards a decent total. It's certainly competitive. Shamola.

He's been catching them blindin' in the nets, according to Ian Bell.

Monty himself modestly played down the claims by suggesting he was merely trying to put his hands in good areas.

His hands are in good, generous areas. With nice space for the ball in between.

Maybe he needs to play in a car park, to sharpen up his handwork.

Or just go and play with the traffic.

Dello wrote:Or just go and play with the traffic.

I heard he tried to commit suicide by diving in front of a bus. The bus went under him.

taipan wrote:

Dello wrote:Or just go and play with the traffic.

I heard he tried to commit suicide by diving in front of a bus. The bus went under him.

He tried to strangle himself too, but missed.

I heard he fingered himself whilst trying to wipe his arse. Shame he didn't have a no-wiper going on.

Oh come on - we've all done that.

By accident sometimes, as well.

Dello wrote:Oh come on - we've all done that.

By accident sometimes, as well.

Oh cummon. That's just hearsay.

Taking the positives for England:

Monty gave the crowd a lot of pleasure and entertainment.

Swanner demonstrated why including Monty was maybe not such a bad move.

Belly didn't get out cheaply, and Kev didn't have a rush of blood and throw his wicket away either.

Vaughan wasn't giving the after-match interview.

The dropped catches helped to keep the match going long, and the coffers filling. (This is assuming that England can bat for a bit, which might be an assumption.)

England gave up the chance to really be in the ascendancy, you'd almost 'honours even' it given our recent batting weaknesses.

Is the party over for Swanny?

That most intractable of Test records (which relies purely on the cricket rather than the status of the players and thus has the possibility of being broken during the course of every Test match) - the highest percentage of an innings score made by an individual batsman - set by Bannerman in the inaugural Test at Melbourne in March 1877 when he made his 165* out of 245 representing 67.35% of his side's total appears to remain intact despite Jayawardene's effort today where his contribution of 167* out of 288 currently stands at 57.99%

He is even some way short of the SL record set by A.P.Gurusinha against India at Chandigarh in November 1990 when he made 52* out of 82 - 63.41% of the total. To break either record Mahela would have to monopolise the scoring rate, if not the strike, for a good deal of tomorrow so the spirit of Bannerman will probably remain undisturbed - for now. But one day, perhaps...

Just done a few calculations and it appears that Jayawardene would need to score 50 runs without any contributions from his partners to break the SL record but to break Bannerman's record he would need to score at least 83 runs tomorrow without any runs being produced from the other end. Should his partners score his run total would need to rise exponentially of course. Not totally impossible, I suppose.

Samit Patel is the first Leicester-born cricketer to play for England since Darren Maddy at Centurion in January 2000. When England last took the field with 3 regular spinners at Faisalabad in December 1987 (see above) one of them, Nick Cook, was also Leicester-born. Other Leicester-born Test players include M.J.K.Smith (1958-72) and Albert Knight (1903-4).

Absolute crock of shit.

HTF does 67-4 become 289 - 8 by the close.
saw most of the play (but won't be watching highlights) ... dropped catches when it mattered, Swan bowled tripe, Monty not much better ... two quicks FFS ... two to share the workload when the old ball WAS swinging like a bull's bollocks.

Who TF picked this team ...?
With Bell, Patel and Monty and Jimmikins as non entities on the batting front ...... it's gonna take some serious batting from the other 7 to at least compete.

Batted DPMD Jayawardene - a cracking innings from a stylish and confident player.

Jesus, I hope England get the breakthoughs tomorrow first thing ... or else they'll be starring down the barrel of 350 plus ... with DRAW (indeed perhaps LOSS) written all over this first test.

Forkin' shambles.

jaya now 4th on the list of players with most hundreds at home. 2 behind ponting and just 1 behind srt and kallis

8th overall with 30, going past the don

jaya also has the top 2 places for highest run aggregates by a player at a single venue - ssc in colombo and now at galle. kallis at cape town is now 2 runs behind jaya's galle tally, though almost 600 runs behind his ssc tally

the only other player to aggregate more than 2000 at a single venue is gooch at lords