The Ashes 2013-14: Australia v England [21st Nov - 2nd Feb] *** spoilers ***

:)

Michael Vaughan on TMS - "The one positive for England is Ben Stokes. He's certainly got talent, they've found a cricketer."

Kiwi-born though. England should just call themselves the Commonwealth XI :p.

I'm being deliberately cynical, as he was only 12 when he moved here so is genuinely a product of the English system, but it still raises the question again for me.
 
Talk of a mass cull of the senior players seems premature. This is the same team that won the ashes fairly comprehensively 6 months ago and won impressively in India before that. If we got rid of Swann, KP, Anderson etc. at once it would be a big mistake.

I think what's happened is the typical English got too big for our boots thing, where we thought we didn't have to try to beat this bunch of jokers. Only they've been working hard since they lost in England and we look like we never set the bowling machine above 80mph.
 
Meanwhile Warner is making hay with a better than run a ball 50. Edit - wrong assumption about the rate, but still gonna be a fast 50 :(.

This could be a big total and this Aussie side will just want to grind us to dust. Brutal and humiliating.
 
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Aussie have two 150kph bowlers out injured. Where are all England's 90mph bowlers?

I remember watching Angus Fraser waddle in against the Windies in the 90s and thinking, why can't we produce genuine nasty quicks like Ambrose and Walsh? Here we are almost 20 years later, and we still haven't had a Sean Tait or an Alan Donald. Seems every other test country has one or more raw pacemen, apart from England.

Johnson is proof that we should teach kids to bowl fast and worry about line and length later. Although Glenn McGrath didn't do too badly :p.
 
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Participant said:
Also Glenn McGrath didn't do too badly.
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I'm pretty sure McGrath was one of our slower fast bowlers. He was typically around 80mph, not 90.

I can't understand what's got into Warner all of a sudden. Did he have a great big bowl of sensible biscuits for breakfast this morning? Well, can't complain!
 
Evangelion said:
I'm pretty sure McGrath was one of our slower fast bowlers. He was typically around 80mph, not 90.
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Yep, that was my point. "Also" in my post should have read "although".

What's gotten into David Warner is that the pressure is entirely off him and he's free to do what he does best: bully people, without fear of repercussions.
 
That should go down as a Prior drop, why on earth didn't he go for it? We look like scared schoolboys. Anderson's first ball was a pathetic 80mph.
 
Participant said:
That should go down as a Prior drop, why on earth didn't he go for it?
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It was an odd mixup. I think Prior did move towards the ball first, and that put Cook off. Then Prior must have changed his mind, so Cook kept going.

Frankly, it's to Cook's credit that he came so close to saving that one.
 
I am praying that Clarke doesn't have a brain freeze and decide a lead of <300 is more than enough. He should do what he did in both previous Tests and set a thumping big score with plenty of room for error.

We should aim to win by at least 100 runs, not scrape it by half a dozen. Clarke's got two days up his sleeve and no pressure to use them. Can't see the sense in declaring early, that's just asking for trouble.
 
England have been putting more runs on the board with each innings. 251 is their highest to date. If they can hit that, they can reach 300+ and that means Clarke needs a hefty margin to stay safe.
 
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