The International Cricket Thread

[tony scott]

Crikey I’ve seen a Villa shirt wearing fan in the crowd, good job his proper team is doing ok.

[Beard82]

If you’re brutally honest they’ve bowled really well once, and badly twice. As a unit they’ve batted really badly twice, and once got an ok score because one player was outstanding. In the field they don’t look match fit enough.

It’s pretty bad and it’ll take an incredible turnaround to save this Test now.

Unfortunately - unless we find new levels in the rest of the test and series - I think the knifes will be out after this. Ultimately the appraoch they have taken in the Bazball era have been typified by being under prepared for series too often, poor choices at key points and an apparent refusal to evolve the approach or take accountability.  There was alot of talk about "Bazball with brains" but we just havent seen it. 

[Brazilian Villain]

Crikey I’ve seen a Villa shirt wearing fan in the crowd, good job his proper team is doing ok.

I wonder if it's someone from H&V.

[Beard82]

I was pretty amazed to hear Steve Finn say in commentary that there were "a lot of tired bodies out there" when England were bowling.  I get it's hot out there, but tired from what?  It was day two after we'd batted the day before and more than a week after the first test which had only gone two days

Agnew made that point as well. It’s hot, but it’s not super hot for Brisbane. They just don’t appear to be in match condition, which entirely makes sense. I don’t know with international schedules how easy it is to get actual game miles in the legs, but in setting this tour out it feels like they’ve not really done anything to build for that.

The frustrating bit is it feels like there is an arragont refusal to do it.  Look qt deciding not to play the Pink ball pratice game as a prime example - we were hammered and half the team have never played a pink ball game - and now were dropping catches and getting ducks.  We messed up the first two tests of the last ashes by being under prepared and poor calls, and we have done exactly the same this time round when we knew it would be tougher.

[PaulWinch again]

I do have some sympathy for the actual team and squad on preparation in that the schedule is ridiculous, so fitting in the right prep isn’t easy. But this is arguably the thing English cricket prises most, I don’t believe we couldn’t have been prepared better than we are.

Either way, the players should be acutely aware they’re in a situation where they are behind, but not gone, if they summon the absolute best from themselves it can be recovered. But it’s not a good hour, a good session, they basically need four or five dominant sessions back to back.

If they can’t do that then the knives will be out, and in some ways understandably, it’s time to step up.