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The Ashes thread – Brisbane

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So we will soon be seeing the willow on err pink ball with a day night Test. So Capt Pat is not in , Uzzie still is and Mark Wood was wearing a moonboot and knee brace not unlike mine after the attempted assassination by tree.
Starc reputedly best swinger of the pink ball going around.
I get England’s decision to train in Brisbane rather than a game in Canberra. Canberra is dry and quite cool at the moment.
Brisbane is hot and humid and building ip to the wet. I think you are far better acclimatising up there.

Predict Khwawaja to open and Australia to win if it is not rained out.

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Comments

  3. Kawaja will make 100
    Head will be out for a duck
    Root will be out in the 90s
    Archer will leave the field with stress fractures

    Tales Of The Unexpected it’s called…

  8. Kawaja has been ruled out due to a back injury. So I’m guessing Head will open again and they’ll bring in Beau Webster who is a player i really like – bats, bowls pace and spin and seems to be an all round good chap.

  9. So England’s epoch-defining pace attack lasted one test (or rather one half of one test given they went missing in the second innings). But it does look like the increasingly irritating management made the right call not to put too many players in the Lions warm-up game so they’re still getting some things right.

    Whatever the changes my guess is we’ll get beaten up by Starc again though.

  16. I met Beefy a few years ago at work here in Brisbane, he had some sort of UK trade ambassador role I think Cameron had bestowed upon him. He happily told our office about the time in 1983 a pig with ‘Botham’ scrawled on it got onto the Gabba pitch during a match. He must have told that story a thousand times, but was still happy to retell our office. In those days punters could take up to a case of beer into games. Some veterinary students smuggled the pig inside their esky (cooler). The plan was to release it before play started I think, but the anaesthetic didn’t wear off until tea !

  22. So finally an ashes century for Root in Australia. Well played him. At the same time 3 of the top 7 make ducks. England, sometimes very good, always surprising, often annoying and frequently unreliable.

    And Crawley has the 70-odd to ink his name in for the next 10 tests.

  24. Yep batted well. 270ish is competitive but hardly a stellar total. The batting has been patchy at best. I think this is one of the weakest Australian attacks I’ve ever seen – Starc excepted of course.

      • Yes we’ll definitely take 320. I’m now following online from work, but it sounds like Root played really well after he got to his hundred. And a last wicket stand of 50 plus is always demoralising for a fielding side. So I’m happy. This series is not dull is it?

  26. 325-9 at the end of day 1. I think we can accept that given it included 4 ducks. My main question as an England supporter is how we can get Starc injured asap. That’s 16 wickets in 3 innings!

  27. First of all well done Joe Root. He’s class.

    Secondly, leaving out Lyon may lose the test for Australia. No way would Archer have peeled off 30 odd with Lyon bowling to him.

    • Smug bastard you. Have some pity for folks who wake up to read “Australia only added 10 runs after inspired bowling by Archer and Crawley & Duckett have now both scored centuries” and then realise they’re still dreaming.

  47. This whimper feels more ominous than the implosion of the first test. It’s not like we’re being taken apart by a couple of world beating performances either just a better team.

  48. It’s my fault. I don’t dislike cricket but I generally can’t be arsed to follow it and when I do we always lose. This year an old mate is doing a newly retired trip to Oz to see all the matches. So I’ve followed it and we’re shit. I don’t understand how they are so inconsistent for top sportsmen but what do I know.

  52. Not here to gloat but discuss. Quite a few mates who follow cricket more closely have asserted that the English team is a superior squad talent wise. For mine there is the seemingly total reliance on Stokes to perform heroics to get you into a good position/ out of a jam. Also once he is gone no one seems to step up.
    This from the Guardian’s over by over.

    Atkinson’s dismissal really was abject when put into context, Stokes and Jacks had resisted the short stuff all day with the Australia plan to sucker them into a daft shot plain for all to see. Atkinson can bat and is an intelligent cricketer, he should have shown more nous and more ticker for the cause.

    • Not sure your mates are quite correct there tbh.

      But another factor seems to be that three years of ‘just wanting to entertain’, ‘saving test cricket’ and ‘just play your natural game’ drivel has left most of the England players’ brains mush.

      If every time you do something stupid (often) and your coach and captain just say ‘nice one mate, just go harder next time’ I imagine any critical thinking faculties you may have had (not many in some cases) just shrivel and die.

      This is a humiliation for the ages, or at least since the last Ashes tour.

      • I for one have no wish to go back to those, let’s face it, 5 day bores but for heaven’s sake – play according to the conditions, state of play etc not just swish bash every single time.
        For instance, Harry Brooks is one of the most natural hitters of a ball I’ve ever seen – if only someone could sit down with him, look through some of his inane dismissals and say “Think, just think!”

          • Old man’s longing for yesteryear when you could go for a walk, pop into the pub, buy a newspaper on the way home and when you got there switch on Radio 3: “It’s Day 4 and after a brief shower and a long Dickie Bird pitch inspection, England resume their innings at 237 for two still needing 398 to win. Boycott who opened yesterday afternoon is 28 not out. A seagull lands on the square and, yes, a No28 bus makes its stately way past the Grace Gates. Oooh, howzat! Another cake has just arrived!”

    • I think the Australian bowling attack is vastly superior – look at what they’ve done at the Gabba with two of their best fasts out.

      Alex Carey is clearly a better wicket keeper and batter.

      For the rest of the batting line up…England look flashier. But other than Root I’m not sure who you’d pick from England and slot in to the Australian line up.

  54. I’ve been reading Lawrence Booth’s book Bazball which is quite good, and particularly interesting to read now that we’re staring at Bazball’s literal ashes.

    It’s worth remembering that almost overnight it turned a bunch of boring, perennial losers (1 win in 17 was it?) into entertaining winners, at least for a while.

    But it’s also clear from the book (and real life) that there was very little ‘philosophy’ behind it and basically no strategy. It was the cricket equivalent of ‘free your mind and your ass will follow’. So the players had a good time, oponents were taken aback, it worked well for a while and it was a ‘revolution’.

    But because there was no great thought or strategy behind it (McCullum in the book comes across as having had literally one thought in his whole life – have a good time, all the time) it couldn’t evolve, and couldn’t adapt to different situations, conditions or opponents.

    So here we are, more or less where we were when Root and Silverwood stepped down. End of a cycle, time for a change. I hope we don’t go back to Boycott and Tavare, but the middle ground probably wouldn’t hurt.

    One little bit of schadenfreude. In the book they literally say they’re setting out to be liked and popular. Looking at the vitriol heading their way btl of the Guardian reports, that’s one area of the project that has failed more spectacularly than any other…

  56. I can’t stand this English team. I’m glad they lost.

    By the way, did you know that in the five Tests in 2023 and the first two in 2025, England have actually won the toss on six occasions!!!
    The only time the Aussies won it was in the dead rubber at The Oval.

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