If England win this, then we’ve gone the whole summer without having been beaten in any of the six series we played in.
This contrasts to what you didn’t read about last year’s cricket – that we won just two of the five series we played in (counting a sole T20 as a series) – when beating India in the test series was all that mattered. The elegant escape narrative for our press is always heartening to see.
But all sniping aside, this is a big day for England, but in my view, not for the reasons we are being told. This is a game that we absolutely should win. It’s being played up north, late in the year, on a wicket we seem to like playing on. The visitors are bedraggled, bereft and probably really looking forward to the flight home. They’ve coughed up a 2-0 lead and their morale should be low. If we can’t take them now, then when will we ever take them out? If England lose this series, it should be a real eye-opener, just as it was for Aussie when we shocked them in 2007 in the Commonwealth Bank series.
Win this and we’ll be having more Strauss than a Waltz convention. Lose it, and we’ll get defences.
I won’t be glued to the screen all day, as England cricket’s supermarket calls (you can leave the insults below!), but will dip in when I can. Comments to be added below here on the match, or anything else taking your eye. Then the real fun can begin!
Have a good one.
Being Outside Cricket 
I love how the two one off T20 games are considered ‘series’. It would take a cold heart to not enjoy the new personnel shedding off the conservatism of the world cup debacle but I don’t think that the make up of the personnel of the Aussie team over the last couple of games should be overlooked. A very different set of players to the one the triumphed back in March.
In some respects I would have preferred a limited overs breakdown of 3 ODIs and 3 t20s but I guess that is another debate for another time.
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Umpire and Hales have had a bit of a shocker there.
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RE: Hales.
Excuse me for delving into America Football parlance. Season starts proper today and I’ve been researching like mad for my fantasy team.
Hales doesn’t seem to be passing the ‘eye test’. I’ve said previously that I love destructive openers, but Hales’ footwork is shocking at this stage. Now, I hear people will chirp up about Sehwag and even Trescothick not having the best feet, but they were incredible at picking length. I don’t think Hales has this developed.
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By the way Dimi, I would be verging on ECB levels of hypocrisy if i passed comment. Out here in the UAE, we have two Waitrose. Naturally it is the wife’s supermarket of choice as it has a good stock of English brands and food from her part of the world.
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3 wickets down for not many, and Morgan walks off after taking a conk on the head.
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22/3 which with Morgan retired hurt may actully be 22/4
This is why we didn’t play a test match at Manchester I take it?
England can look forward to nice bouncy fast pitches when we go back down to Aus in 2 years. And they can’t moan because they are positively boasting about how they doctored the pitches this summer.
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Positively boasting? If you are referring to Anderson’s comments he doesn’t say anything about doctoring pitches.
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Nothing worse than when we all giggle behind our hands at what we were blatantly doing, while all the time pretending we were doing nothing of the sort. There were no e mails M Lord. You think those pitches at Birmingham and Nottingham happened by accident?
The England team are caught between wanting to shout from the roof tops how clever they were in fixing the right conditions, but wanting at the same time to pretend that they wouldn’t lower themselves to do such under hand, un English tactics. ” it’s only those other nations that Doctor pitches.”
Many on here are quite happy with the blatant doctoring of pitches. Thats not the issue. It’s the hypocrisy of pretending we don’t do it, while making it known through winks and nudges that we do. Rather typical of a lot of the way cricket is run in this country. “Trust” is a word bandied about by certain people who run English cricket. But it seems only a one way trust.
Anyway, whatever, we have guaranteed now that we will have even more hostile conditions when we go over seas. which will only increase the amount of one sided home win series. But as only home wins matter now because it makes more money for the home nation it’s all fine. Ka Ching!
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Well it was Darren Lehmann who first called for bouncer wickets so maybe the groundsman were just following his advice…
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‘Four series out of five’ articles in crisis!
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I am surprised they went big on that line Simon. Because if it happens 3 of the 4 would not have involved Cook.
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Operation Puff Up Cook is on hold because, as far as they’re concerned, they’ve won that one.
We’re currently on Operation Puff Up Strauss.
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Ha ha ha
So true! Pathetic, but so true.
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Leaving out Finn for the series’s decider and on this pitch is looking an odder decision by the minute.
Is there a bit more to it than him being rested?
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Just to add on Finn, I understand England have to manage bowlers better and that they can’t play every game.
However England players have a 3-4 week break after today and then there are the Tests in UAE where I’d think Finn is quite unlikely to play.
They said they wanted another look at Topley. Topley looks to me another in the line of Kabir Ali-Dernbach-Woakes who they select because of their variations at the death while ignoring their inability to pose enough of a threat with their conventional bowling up front.
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Shopping at England’s supermarket eh! Did you win at poker last night?
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I hope Waitrose are giving it away as much as Team Waitrose are…
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Morgan out for the whole game. Being treated for concussion.
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Hastings and Mitch Marsh between them took 7/48. We’ll no doubt be hearing the “got to expect it…. young, inexperienced side…. ” meme but between them Hastings and Marsh have played all of 34 ODIs.
Starc and Cummins between them took 1/77.
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An England fan on Cricinfo ……
Richard……..: “This is the second youngest ODI side England have ever put out. To beat the World Cup finalists and go toe to toe with the champions is a top effort, regardless of the result today.”
Andrew Strauss should have him stuffed.
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Someone has now replied……
“There is no Warner, Clark, Watson, Haddin and Jonson and still people are thinking this is the WC winning side.”
There is a game of ……..”My team is more inexperienced than your team”……. going on now.
A bit like the Monty Python Yorkshire Men sketch…. “we were much poorer than you, we could only dream of living in a shoe box.”
Aus 36/2 at lunch. 103 still needed off 40 overs with 8 wickets left. Be a good one to win this?
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This inexperienced team…..
….. has a mere 1117 List A appearances between them.
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In other news I’m sure you will all be fascinated to know that Mr Swanny river has informed us of this………
“#MotoGP is hands down my favourite motorsport. Every week is brilliant to watch. (WRC is ace too!)”
Why do so many of the cricket pundits seem like characters out of The Fast show?….. “This week, I mostly been dipping my plonker in blancmange.”
I’ll get my coat…….
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Had a first disagreement with a who cares we won the Ashes type already today
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Anyone fancy polishing that turd of a match?
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No. Other than it was probably a good experience for the young guys on both sides.
The other good thing about it is that it was the last match between Australia and England for a while. The worst season of cricket I’ve ever seen. But Asia awaits.
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Third greatest margin of victory ever in an England-Australia ODI in terms of balls remaining.
There was one in 2003 and the Gary Gilmour match in 1975 were greater.
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When sh!t planning of tours do expose
Those ICC emperors with no clothes
And the MSM follow like castrated sheep
Is it only us true cricket lovers who weep?
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I had a go at the Essayist’s latest piece of nonsense in the New Statesman on a previous thread but this claim has been niggling away:
“Moeen Ali, the devout Muslim who has shone for England this summer, is gentle, polite and easygoing but his form is highly de-correlated from the team’s. That is his greatest strength. In a crisis, he doesn’t so much react (as the iron-willed Steve Waugh used to do) as not really notice. A batting collapse? The Ashes on the line? The nation on tenterhooks? He plays as though nobody got around to telling him. In tight situations, while others become weighed with anxiety, Moeen plays freely and lightly. He is not a battler in the conventional sense of the word – more a drifter. It is a rare and precious kind of drift”.
His Test average in matches won this summer was 48 and in matches lost was 17. I’m not too sure what “de-correlated” means, only having been to a redbrick uni and all, but I doubt it should be producing those stats.
There’s a Sports Psychology doctorate to be written about English cricket writers and Moeen Ali. An all-rounder with a decent but hardly stellar early career record keeps being portrayed as somewhere between Superman and the Dalai Lama. Most peculiar.
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The Essayist is coming very close to using the famous….. ” it’s the way I play”…… defence for Moeen.
Funny, a certain other player was not allowed to play…….”freely and lightly. He is not a battler in the conventional sense of the word – more a drifter. It is a rare and precious kind of drift”.
Unless your name is KP
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Maybe I’m being simplistic or maybe even racist, but it may have to do with his beard? When I think of the oversized welcome and support Panesar received, in excess of his actual performance, I wondered if it was England being happy to welcome someone “different” into the team, and perhaps it’s the same with Ali. “Looks at us, we’re so open minded we even have a fundamentalist Muslim playing cricket in our national team”. Hence his feats are overly lauded. (What do you call a Muslim with a big beard, fundamentalist? Orthodox? Or just Muslim?)
It’s also very common for England to excessively hype it’s new talent. Root is the only person in the last 15 years I can remember who has lived up to his publicity.
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Why I liked Panesar? He was a bit like any village cricketer who had an amazing talent relative to us. I was a hopeless fielder. Hated it. When I saw Monty take the field, I saw me in the field (he’s miles better than me). For me my liking of him was the Dhoni catches – the one he never got near to holding followed by the one he held in Mumbai. Oh yes, and he was a damn fine bowler when in top form and the circumstances suited. 5 wickets on a first day pitch at Perth also indicated that Warne was talking absolute bollocks with that played the same test shite.
Moeen I’m not as amped up about. Sure, when in nick, and playing those dreamy cover drives, he’s a fine player. If he’s your best spinner then you are in strife.
He’s not a fundamentalist or whatever that is. He follows his religion in the way he sees fit. I actually don’t see his religion, in the same way I don’t see Hashim Amla’s. It doesn’t matter to me. What I want to see is Moeen make hundreds like the brilliant one in the Headingley rearguard because this swish it and carefree stuff will sell his ability short.
I agree his performances haven’t been in line with the adulation, but then this is a country that produces and England captain that says getting a few strands of hair stapled to his bonce is the greatest thing he’s ever done, when he was also in charge of the 2005 Ashes winning team. Attention span of gnats.
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‘Devout’ is the word, Fred. Possibly ‘orthodox’. I think if he was a fundamentalist he wouldn’t be playing cricket with a load of unbelievers in front of crowds of more unbelievers that might include immodestly dressed women.
Moeen is impressive and confident when interviewed, though less articulate than Morgan. He seems more grown-up than most of the England players and he makes life easy for the journalists. Monty, of course, was legendary for his rabbit-in-headlights responses to the media.
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Anything / anybody allowed as long as they are “gentle, polite and easygoing”.
God forbid they start being loud, brash or demanding.
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“Why I liked Panesar? He was a bit like any village cricketer who had an amazing talent relative to us. I was a hopeless fielder. Hated it. When I saw Monty take the field, I saw me in the field (he’s miles better than me).”
That’s true. His everyman role was really important. Anyone who’s ever felt inadequate on the cricket field was probably grateful to see even an elite player experience the same thing. Makes you realise who incredible players are who can do it all, like Maxwell or ABdV or Dhoni.
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Thanks Zepherine. You’re right, “fundamentalist” is the wrong term, as such people wouldn’t be doing anything as trivial as playing sport in front of immodest women and men disguised as giraffes. The beard is certainly a statement though, I’m just not sure what it’s a statement of.
In cricketing terms, Moheen Ali is one of the decent things happening for English cricket at the moment. They should stop treating him as the next messiah and just that accept he’s a decent all rounder.
By the way, Mitch Marsh? I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but based on this summer, I’m wondering if he might be the Shane Watson that Australia always dreamed of.
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There has been one England batsman whose performances have been highly “de-correlated” from the team’s this summer.
Presumably this means he’s a drifter? Doesn’t really notice match situations? Not really a team player?
As it’s the captain, these claims might be a bit of a problem – so let’s put it down in his case to huge mental strength and his enormous iron rod.
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Has anyone seen or heard from Lord, comma, double standards, comma, Brocket today?…. thought not…Tho’ I guarantee that me me me sheep is smiling…. thank fu*K this summer is over… NZ excepted…
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Newman called it, nearly….
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Judged, like me, through an English prism….. only I know what that lot (Australia) are like. They rarely cop out….
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Start the car was utter shit.
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Morgan’s been hit on the head twice in this series. Not good. Lucky it’s Bayliss now, Flower would probably have told him to man up.
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Vaughan quoted on the BBC website:
“It looks to me now as if the focus is very much on who are England’s best one-day cricketers. For the first time, we might see five or six real one-day specialists in the side.”
Remember this?
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/65879.html
I reckon there are six one-day specialsts there. One might note that the crucial innings was played by a Test regular (and one popular around these parts) but that’s another matter.
Is it compulsory to have no knowledge of, or respect for, your country’s past to work in the media these days?
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Obviously only someone in an advanced state of paranoia would read anything into the fact that all those images manage to omit a certain player…..
So that’s what I’m thinking.
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Think that’s him on the right of Vaughan in the trophy pic.
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They really are obnoxious aren’t they?
The air brushing out of one of England’s greatest run getters. You can’t sink much lower, when people who walked out on England are welcomed back with open arms to English cricket.
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Bunkers puts in a late bid for worst journalist in his match report:
“Sport, bless its cotton socks, occasionally fails in its mission”.
Yes – it’s sport that’s to blame.
“The final international match of the 2015 season was supposed to be a riveting climax to a wonderful summer”.
Wonderful summer?
“If they did not defeat Australia to win the one-day series in the fifth and deciding match, they would at least provide us with a memorable spectacle. Only Jeremy Corbyn has garnered more new supporters in the past four months and the newborn England would entrance them one last time”.
Reconnection by diktat through a laboured (boom, tish!) current affairs’ reference. Lovely.
“It was an unfortunate way for it all to end, but then perhaps too much was expected after all the marvels that went before”.
Marvels?
” It was the 11th international of the summer between these sides and the 40th since May 2013. England are 23-14 down overall in that period but have edged this summer 6-5, which shows both how far they have come and how far they have to go. Crucially they won the Ashes. With any luck – though the World Twenty20 next March may decree otherwise – they will not meet again until the late autumn of 2017 in the next Ashes series”.
Nice stat about the running tally then put to dubious use. And no serious analysis of why this treadmill of matches has come about, nor apparent awareness that it will be repeated.
Finally, like every match report I’ve read, guess who doesn’t get mentioned……
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Mills & Boon reporting.
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Another sobering stat that won’t get mentioned anywhere. Since 9 July 2013, England have a W/L record greater than 1 only against Scotland, Afghanistan, Ireland and India. New Zealand and West Indies sit on 1.00.
http://goo.gl/oqyORN
Australia are on 0.500; for every game England have won against them, they have lost two. The “difficult” winter goes a long way to explain that, but even if we just look at fixtures in England, Australia have won 8 games, and lost 11. Those Australian numbers are slightly more impressive than England’s won 1, lost 16 in Australia against Australia …
Australia and India dominate the numbers. This is partly obscured by the “ideal preparation” (according to the Comma Director) for the World Cup in Sri Lanka. England avoided playing India in the World T20 and the World Cup (partly due to sheer incompetence), while in both those events it played against Sri Lanka and New Zealand.
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Is TFT under hack attack again?
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Bayliss holds meeting with SA-born outcast batsman with view to a possible recall:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/story/920593.html
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Newman, on the other hand, reckons he doesn’t stand a chance and they’re going to stick with Hales:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-3234126/Alex-Hales-sweating-England-opening-spot-Test-series-against-Pakistan.html
He quotes Bayliss as saying, “‘If you’re a good player in one format you should be a good one in another as well”. Wasn’t it supposed to be okay under General Strauss to specialise in one format?
Who’s right? This’ll be an interesting little marker if ‘good journalism’ is still with us……
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Ali Martin has Hales in as well.
All of them say Taylor will be in the Test squad ahead of Ballance and Plunkett will get the last seamers’ berth.
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If Compton comes back and does well a lot of people will have egg all over their faces. In addition it will be even worse because there were dark murmurings about him being one of the awkward squad. The ECB/media complex don’t want any mercy for those that were seen as not 100% one of us.
I think he got a pretty raw deal and he deserves another chance. But are there cliques in the dressing room who won’t have him back? Mr Strauss will have to run it past Iron Rod. He seems to have a veto on who can return and who can’t.
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