England v Australia, 1st Test, Edgbaston, 1-5 August, 2019

lardbucket wrote:This really is an extraordinary turnaround.

At 8-122, or whatever, on day 1, the odds of Australia winning by 250 runs must have been a million to 1.

THis is up there with Headingley 1981, more bizarre than Adelaide 2006.

A difference from Leeds 1981 is that the turnaround began here on Day 1.



Anyway, all over! Well played, the Australian team. Smith, Head and the bowlers - latterly also Wade - in particular.

horace wrote:I hope he returns later in the series. Wont feel like the Ashes without him.

Turning out today may delay it by a further Test at least.

But maybe out for the series?

Cheers Peter.

What a fantastic comeback victory!!! At 8-122 we were shot, but Smith had other ideas. He added 160 with 10 and 11 then we did enough with the ball to limit the England lead to 90.

Another dodgy start but Smith, Head and Wade got us into a good position before Patto and 2nd had some fun to set England a near impossible 398.

Then it was the Elmer and 2nd show. How sweet it is!!!!

If Root has any self-respect he will resign after that. Craptain, as his Yorkshire team-mates once nicknamed him, is apt on this occasion, he completely ran out of ideas in the field. It’s ruining his batting as well, as per so many of his predecessors.

There’s three or four who need a break, at the very least. I’d go with Foakes, Archer, Leach and Morgan (as captain) for Bairstow, Anderson, Buttler and Ali. Maybe bring in a another specialist opener in place of Denly and drop Roy down to four.

The only ones who can take anything positive from that whole performance are Broad, Woakes, Stokes and Burns really.

Henry wrote:has there ever been a weaker England test batting lineup? Even in the 90s we had the grit of Atherton,Hussain, and Thorpe.

How can you forget AJ Stewart? It was an embarrassment of riches compared to our current stock that are simply an embarrassment.

Root is our solitary Test-class batsman. Our entire middle order is made up of number 7 ODI players.

beamer wrote:If Root has any self-respect he will resign after that.

Yeah, that's going to happen. He reheated his exact same post-defeat comments from the last Ashes shellacking, where after every hopeless defeat he kept talking as if England won nearly every session and were just pipped at the finish line.

He really is the most insipid numpty of a captain. As inspirational as he is intelligent.

beamer wrote:
Saying “that’s the way he plays” for someone like Roy is fair enough when it’s a first innings perhaps, some days it will come off... but we’re trying to bat out a day’s play, runs barely matter at all. There’s no need at all for big shots.

I'm sure Roydawg will get the pelters for a kamikaze charge, but that one's on the selectors. Unless they're truly inept and have done no research whatsoever on the players they pick on a hunch, they must surely have known that Roy doesn't trust his defence against spin. His IPL record is poor. He can't dig in and prod the spinners around. Smashing them out of the attack is literally his only option.

They must've known that when they picked him. They must have. Right?

beamer wrote:

PeterCS wrote:^ Bayliss, innit.

Well, at least he will be gone soon, has done fark all for the Test side. But what about Ed Smith as chief selector, he benefited from one of those county form hunches as a player at a time when it wasn’t so fashionable - and predictably failed. Shouldn’t he be learning from his own experience?

Ed Smith's own inexplicable elevation out of the blue to chief selector having previously been, what, a Telegraph columnist (?) is the perfect metaphor for England's current "f*ck it, that'll probably do" approach to joined-up long-term planning.

His "out of the box" thinking has so far largely been to simply draft players from the successful ODI team into the Test side, regardless of suitability for red ball cricket. What a f*cking genius.

Anyway... big, fully deserved win for Australia. They only batted, bowled and fielded better than us.

Is Root 0-1-5 from 6 Ashes Tests as captain? I'm tipping 0-2-8 once this series is out. We played exactly the same crap cricket as failed out in Australia. Our bowlers lacked the pace and aggression of theirs. Our spinner was a non-entity. Our batsmen had no substance whatsoever and didn't sell their wickets dearly once they got in.

Not a thing has been learned. Or if it has, there's no tangible evidence that we're capable of adapting to those lessons.

One game in and we're already talking about needing green tops to help us be competitive.

Dello wrote:

beamer wrote:

PeterCS wrote:^ Bayliss, innit.

Well, at least he will be gone soon, has done fark all for the Test side. But what about Ed Smith as chief selector, he benefited from one of those county form hunches as a player at a time when it wasn’t so fashionable - and predictably failed. Shouldn’t he be learning from his own experience?

Ed Smith's own inexplicable elevation out of the blue to chief selector having previously been, what, a Telegraph columnist (?) is the perfect metaphor for England's current "f*ck it, that'll probably do" approach to joined-up long-term planning.  

His "out of the box" thinking has so far largely been to simply draft players from the successful ODI team into the Test side, regardless of suitability for red ball cricket. What a f*cking genius.

He’s not the only overpromoted Telegraph columnist in a big job at the moment

He was also a pretty highly regarded up and coming TMS commentator. But then again, you wouldn’t put Martin Tyler in charge of picking the England football team either...

If they want to go with the one-day side, I’d tell them to just play one-day cricket, bat for 50 overs and score 300, if you’re still there after 50 you have the bonus of being able to get a few more. The halfway-house approach isn’t working, anyway. Either play traditional Test cricket or reinvent the absolute f*ck out of it.

Dello wrote:Anyway... big, fully deserved win for Australia. They only batted, bowled and fielded better than us.

Is Root 0-1-5 from 6 Ashes Tests as captain? I'm tipping 0-2-8 once this series is out.

0-1-7, they won’t give him the dead rubbers, surely. As I said, tearful resignation in a Loughborough media centre and a spell out of the side to rediscover his batting form.

Looks like Stokes is next in line for the poisoned chalice. As I also said, it will go as well as it did for Botham and Flintoff.

Nothing about Stokes suggests he's captaincy material. He's a competitor, yes, but appears to be as thick as mince with the emotional maturity of a truculent adolescent.

Dello wrote:Nothing about Stokes suggests he's captaincy material. He's a competitor, yes, but appears to be as thick as mince with the emotional maturity of a truculent adolescent.

Yeah, just like Beefy and Fredalo... making the same mistake three times in 40 years is just careless...

Congrats to Oz, that was some comeback.

I get less and less impressed by Root' s captaincy with each passing test. He's more two-dimensional than Chef.

I think I would take the gloves off Bairstowand giving them to Foakes. I can't make up my mind whether to drop Bairstow or get him at 4 to replace Denly who is not a test match batsman

lardbucket wrote:This really is an extraordinary turnaround.

At 8-122, or whatever, on day 1, the odds of Australia winning by 250 runs must have been a million to 1.

THis is up there with Headingley 1981, more bizarre than Adelaide 2006.

Not sure about 8fer but at seven down it was $9.

Basil wrote:

I get less and less impressed by Root' s captaincy with each passing test. He's more two-dimensional than Chef.

As many dimensions as that?

Come on boys, stop the bellyaching. Don't you know there's a war on? Careless talk costs lives. So be like dad - keep mum.

Or to put it another way:

Dello wrote:

Basil wrote:

I get less and less impressed by Root' s captaincy with each passing test. He's more two-dimensional than Chef.

As many dimensions as that?

What will save him from the axe, is the utter paucity of replacement material

So let's all just stick together & go into a chipper, positives-taking group huddle, in this hour of the country's greatest need.

Because as our cousins over the Pond in FDR's land of the free put it:

Sorry, did I say "positives-"? Silly me - I meant to say "drugs-", of course.

Now watch the fixation on Smith. Leaving some underlying problems to fester. Replace Jimmy, find a spinner, sack Root. Problem with wholesale changes is it requires someone to say, we wuz wrong.

Australia vulnerable not if they work Smith out ( stop it q you're not supposed to be laughing) but if they adopt a steady as she goes at the top. Even without Smith, and a lesser mortal struggles to make much beyond twenty we still win. Simplistic I know but probably about as advanced as our NSP thinking gets.

Not sure if you are indicating a further error of thinking in the England selectors' (and critics') minds in that second paragraph, or have switched entirely to the danger of complacency in the Aussie selectors' (and critics') thinking.

Because either way, cricket is only partly about maths. The stats is for when it's over.

Without Smith, or if he'd made an error and got out for that 20 or so in the first innings, Oz would have lost this Test. The psychological impact of that turnaround (with Siddle's and Lyon's runs in the first innings also made possible by Smith's stay), and then the crushing hammer of Smith's second knock, decided the match.

Not merely the near-300 runs off Smith's bat - the impact on both teams' morale, belief and focus was even greater.

Maybe it's time for a modern-day Bodyline approach, or a bit of sneaky ball tampering of our own? Fight fire with fire, if you like...

So I think it's right England do concentrate on how to get Smith out. Not in a stupid, headless-chicken-flapping-around, useless way, but coolly, intelligently - exactly as they should have done before Edgbaston. (I tried to suggest better, purposive strategies & tactics in a post above.)

Also, a focus on Smith's batting should not be obsessive in the other sense - excluding all other thought, all other preparation, all other work. Such as: how to hold a bat; who appears capable and who appears not capable of Test batting - in some cases, on present low form, or in a couple of cases probably for the conceivable future; and then, how to go about batting against these particular Aussie bowlers.

Again, all of which is the very least the whole England set-up, Selector, coaches and skipper should have addressed long enough before the First Test. Rather than now. With a couple of cartons of eggs (some rotten) on their faces. Which they are highly likely to deny, as the thick layer of egg continues to droop and drip off their chops, and runs into their eyes, making them blink. But they are not blinking, really. It's a positive situation, full of opportunity.

beamer wrote:Maybe it's time for a modern-day Bodyline approach, or a bit of sneaky ball tampering of our own? Fight fire with fire, if you like...

Joking apart, not really. Just Archer and/or Stone, & Leach (with proper plans in place), and a lot of careful strategic & tactical calculation. - See earlier post above, most of it under a SPOILER.