New Ashes thread

[Grazz]

Went to sleep thinking we got this. Woke up to hear we went down by 74 WTF.
Aussies are mentally pathetic, seriously have a massive flaw mentally. >:(

[Hawka]

Watto will never play a test again ,Usman may of wasted his last chance and flower the selectors for keeping Bird outta the team for this long drained his confidence and form

[Nails]

Bird, Watson and Siddle took a combined 4 wickets for that entire match.

[Hawka]

Bird, Watson and Siddle took a combined 4 wickets for that entire match.

Siddle has had 1 bad test this series dont blame him, Bird should of atleast played the 2nd or 3rd test so needs time to find his feet again, and watto is done

[me]

should have played starc for his batting seeing as our tail score most of our runs these days (he didn't even bowl that bad at OT and although erratic does have the ability to take wickets) ... i guess thats the one upshot of our team, when patto/starc/agar are all playing in the same team in the future, our tail should be pretty good. perhaps we should just use them as opening batsmen, they have better techniques and coordination ... which is a pretty damning thing to say

the one thing i am sick of is the people that have been talking recently about siddle in terms of being of all rounder status (the commentators on channel 9 anyway), he's a completely rubbish batsman and should be number 11 without a doubt when starc et al are playing - which is fine cos he's in the team for bowling, but it just irks me

[elephants]

Stupid England, think they're so great. We're just tanking for draft picks.

[Grazz]

Stupid England, think they're so great. We're just tanking for draft picks.

Haha cracked me up. Wish it were true.  :(

[Hawka]

If batters find form or new batters perform well early in the shield, watch out England

[me]

for the home series gotta bring in new players who haven't played england before and thus haven't formed a mental block and/or inferiority complex from all the thrashings

with guys like smith/khawaja/hughes/watson brought up on a steady diet of rank incompetence and learning to thrive on defeat, we simply have no hope of winning

[Hawka]

for the home series gotta bring in new players who haven't played england before and thus haven't formed a mental block and/or inferiority complex from all the thrashings

with guys like smith/khawaja/hughes/watson, we simply have no hope of winning

Hughes is fine, Smith maybe
Klinger needs to come in dont care were he bats, Ferguson would be another good one

[me]

the thing is when these guys come out to bat, they look like they're just waiting to be dismissed, like they know it's the natural order for them to be getting out

i really can't see hughes making any runs except on a super flat track, batting first, and with the score 0/500 when he comes in... he doesn't know how to play spin either, looks like getting out every ball

[Nige]

Bring in some of the ladies, they're killing it at the moment.  :o

[Cicjose]

If batters find form or new batters perform well early in the shield, watch out England

there are plenty of those around, of which the selectors would be lucky to look at 2

[henry]

a few thoughts after just waking up after pulling nearly an all nighter watching this debacle:

the umpiring remains a massive joke and nothing short of an abomination on the game of cricket ... how bresnan could be given not out lbw when not offering a shot to bird (which looked pretty plumb) is beyond me when contrasted with watson/haddin immediately given lbw when the balls were shown to be barely scratching their leg stumps is beyond me    ----    i only hope australia gets the same volume of home ground decisions which england have received this series

that said, umpiring didn't affect the result here, as they would've got out probably next ball if they had survived those decisions.

also, australia's batting sucks ass and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. khawaja/hughes/smith/watson are not part of australia's short or long term future and have deep mental scars to go with their fragile and disgraceful batting techniques ... as for haddin, i can't believe he was even selected for this tour as he has always been an underachieving yet overrated flog

also, even though warner punched the douchebag root, he should have been played in the first test without a doubt... definitely did england a great service by not playing him ... unfathomable that scrubs like cowan/hughes/khawaja/smith got a go ahead of him

our seam bowling has been pretty good and we've pretty much broken even with england ... but you can't win if your batsmen don't make runs ... additionally our bowlers have made half our runs this series so they've been doing the batsmen's job for them

finally, not for one second did i think we were going to win last night, ever since 2005 @ the oval (langer and hayden both got tons and yet we got skittled for 367 and subsequently drew the final test) our batting has always tended to collapse like a sack of shower against england... just check the scorecards from 2009 where australia were routinely bundled out for nothing despite watson/katich making a lot of good opening partnerships...  in fact i remember broad ripping through us in a very similar fashion to last night at the oval in 2009 ...  i was just waiting for that first wicket to fall and it was pretty obvious the rest would follow

to summarize... australian cricket is as weak as piss.

I agree with a lot of this, its seemed that the traditional guidlines to umpires adjudicating of lbw have been thrown out the window. It is very unlikely that Haddin and Watson would have been given out lbw in previous eras, and as you said Bresnan's looked for more out live. I don't think this is just aussie bias. I really think that if you review, but the decision stays only because it's umpires call you should get your review back, very has to lose both reviews on such close decisions.

Regarding out batsmen, I think hughes is promising for sure, there is a lot of potential there and he's still very young. If Watson's for I reckon he has to play the next test, did score an impressive 70 in the first innings. I have never been a fan of steve smith, never thought he's a test level player. He's not delivered much at all.

Unfortunately I too thought that once England's lead got out to 250 it would be too much, but when you're 170/2 you should get far closer to 300 than 220. I'm not convinced the collapse was because of mental scars at all though, pretty weak if it is, it's more because of a lack of application which is still not good enough. Haddin I think can be forgiven. He has played some really important and gritty knocks through the series and is an excellent gloveman, far far better than wade.

Bird was disappointing. I was keen at taking a look at him, given he had performed well in tour games and I thought this type of wicket could suit him. Starc was stiff to get dropped though, coming off a 60odd with the bat and not being awful with the ball. I think we missed his batting too, as we saw with England the likes of bresnan, swan and broad really pushed their score up, whereas our tail was far weaker.

I think the 3-0 scoreline definitely flattens england, we need to win the last test to give us some momentum going into the home series.

[Vinny]

This was shower news to wake up to this morning seeing we were about 1-121 :(

Come on Aussies, do some good this summer.