What do you call an Australian who can handle a bat?

And in Watson’s defence, at least he’s opted for a variation on his usual method of dismissal…

This has been quite delightful so far today. To borrow one Ashes-winning Captain’s words:

“Talk is cheap”

England’s game lose from this position.

Batting pitch and England have lots of good batsmen!
Aussies have lots of poor bowlers.

I can see a 200+ lead here.

Well, that was fun.

I particularly love the ability of the Aussie press to make themselves look ridiculous…one match report will apparently have to deal with an unnamed ‘medium-pace’ bowler dismissing the first five batsmen.

Someone’s been having fun on wiki – check out the editor for the Courier Mail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Courier-Mail

(Thanks to Aggers for the heads up!)

Key points for me are that Aussie top order is even more fragile than before. Warner could on his day make life hard if he comes off, but as a test match batsman, every ball could also be his last and quick 30s and 40s won’t win games. As Nasser said on sky, Watson’s swapped being an lbw candidate for being a guy with no idea where his off stump is. And the skipper can’t play the short stuff. The concern for aus is that our plans for each batsman are crystal clear, and we execute them brilliantly; have aus got enough about them to overcome clear deficiencies? Not on the evidence so far in this and the previous 5 games.

Two quick wickets in the morning and then set up to bat for 2 days while the pitch is at its flattest.

agree with theotherjonv but I have one concern about England. Once again we seem to have taken our foot off the aussie throat at the critical time. At 140 odd for 6, regardless of the pitch, you’d be looking for a sub 250 all out. I guess we’ll find out by close of play tomorrow exactly how this match is going to pan out, just hope we haven’t given the aussies 75 runs too many.

It’s a flat pitch offering the bowlers very little, and Anderson’s demonstration of why Bailey hasn’t played test matches before aside, their top and middle order got themselves out to good, but certainly not unplayable bowling. Maybe we’re in for a repeat of three years ago, maybe not, but from what I’ve seen today, the English batsmen have little to fear from the pitch. The Australian bowlers are sound enough, it’s whether or not Cook et al. apply themselves, or, like the Australians, forget that it’s not T20.

I see it conversely, once the ball is soft, the pitch is easy to bat on. We took wickets in the first 35 overs, then virtually nothing for another 45, then two more with the second new ball. The role of the top 3 is to get to that point for the loss of as few wickets as possible, so they and their colleagues can then cash in as Johnson and Haddin did. If Johnson at 8 can get 70 odd, kp, bell, root and prior should be licking their lips….. assuming cook, carberry and trott haven’t filled their boots first!

Nah, Warner and Watson were out to stupid shots, and Rogers was hardly inspiring. Clarke waved the bat at a high one, Smith’s useless, and Bailey was thoroughly done over by a bowler who the locals could only dram of having on their side. Bailey was the only one who was genuinely got out by the bowler, rather than being daft or having a major technical deficiency (In Clarke’s case: high balls, in Watto’s case: batting).

having a major technical deficiency (In Clarke’s case: high balls, in Watto’s case: batting

CHUCKLES

Good start but we’ll need to see how England bat in their first innings to see how the teams compare. The Aussie bowlers will probably do better than the batsmen did.

stevenmenmuir – Member
Good start but we’ll need to see how England bat in their first innings to see how the teams compare. The Aussie bowlers will probably do better than the batsmen did.

Seeing as most of them didn’t make double figures that’s not saying much and will equally apply to the runs scored as their bowling performance.

Hahaha! by Mark-Farrell, on Flickr

I’m a bit worried about Tremlett. He looks tight to me, and he’s not putting in a full arm-swing. Very out to the side then a ‘flick’ rather than a decent swing. Like Caddick used to get. The thing you have to respect about Broad and Anderson is the repeatability of their actions (even if you don’t find them aesthetically pleasing).

Other than that, all is well. Swann can consider himself unlucky, nothing wrong with tossing the ball up with lots of revs and asking the question.

I thought tremlett looked pretty solid. Nice and accurate generally which is what you want.

Broad again will they get 300?

9 down, and Lyon doesn’t look like he wants to be out there…

Well that didn’t take long!

This is not going well, not at all… England all over the place and under immense pressure.

Morning all 🙂

I’ll just pop in quickly and mention this – 5 wickets down for 7 runs, some might say very Australian like 😉

I love Test Cricket!

Make that 8 down . Still five short of the follow on… 😯

Make that 6-9!! 😀

It’s one of those moments… Enjoy it whilst it lasts 👿

Why am I not surprised? Usual first innings in the first test from England.
Yet with my rational head on you need to perform in multiple sessions over a tour to win a series and I still think England are far more likely to do that than the bogans.
If today upsets the odds I might have a flutter.

It’s the Broad and Johnson show.

Well Cook,Trott etc will definitely score runs in the second innings 🙄

Christ, I’ve woken up in the 90’s.

I remember that “Oh, I wish I’d stayed in bed!” feeling so well

Wow – I woke expecting to see a scoreline something like Aust all out for 280ish and England around 250 for 3 ish.

Back to the bad old days of decent start, brittle middle and inept end.

England need some English weather to save this one..unless the Aussies have a collapse in mind too?

Went to sleep at the 10th Aussie wicket and wake up to this. (dare I say, karma finally 😉 – probably not as Broadie scored some runs a d was second highest scorer!!) Did they bring Lillie and Thomson out of retirement?

Let’s not get carried away. Before this game the Australians had themselves convinced they were the second coming. Then by the end of the first innings they were pathetic and not good enough. Now they’re amazing again.

England haven’t won the opening test of a series since 2004 apparently (apart from against Bangladesh).

It is a bit worrying how long it is since England made 400 in an innings though.

Just what England needed TBH. Lot of complacency, particularly around batting, even after the faltering displays of the summer.

Great day’s cricket for the neutral too. Nice to see Mitchell Johnson actually getting accuracy, pace and bounce.

well it has made the series interesting and they need a miracle to win from here as my granny with a stick of rhubarb could core enough runs for Oz from here

psychle – Member
Morning all

I wondered where the fair weather supporter had gone 😉

That was pretty painful listening and watching today. In fact, I got to a tv just in time to see the collapse, so it’s possibly all my fault. Sorry!

I woke up in the night and thought I’d check the score, I was hoping it was a nightmare when I checked again this morning.

Aus convincing themselves!?!? We must read different papers and listen to different porgamrrmes Grum. It’s seemed we were the over-confinent ones even yesterday. Perhaps it was all the inevitable Broad hype and his brilliant reply.

Vaughan had sobering analysis on the recent batting average of all our top (?) batsmen this morning – even the foreigners.

Aus convincing themselves!?!? We must read different papers and listen to different porgamrrmes Grum.

Being an Englishman living in oz, I can assure you that as far as the media were concerned, Australia thought that the last three series hadn’t occurred, and certainly not a three nil drubbing 80 days ago

I know you love to be the contrarian, tmh, but on this occasion you’re simply making things up (ironically, a bit like punchy bogan, actually)

Wow. I went to bed at lunch after Trott had gifted his wicket to Johnson to get him going. Carberry looked in total control, Cook had got a decent one but hadn’t moved his feet properly, I thought it was well poised……

I got down again in time to see the final wicket fall.

All is still not lost, we made 517-1 here last time in the second innings. But we’ll have to bat afoal better than we did first time.

Credit to Mitchell too. His action still suggests that when it goes wrong it could go badly wrong, but when it goes right…. wow.