The Ashes: Adelaide.

[GarlicJam]

Australia do need the extra bowler. Marsh has made runs, but Maxwell has made more.

Tough on Handscomb as he should make runs at Perth. The ball should not move as much. I guess no one expected S Marsh to be Australia's top scorer after 2 tests. But Australia do need to find another bowling option in the team. Though the 4 person bowling line up is working because Lyon is bowling so well.

Im not sure any of the 3 pace men will want a rest, more so that the next game is at Perth. Perhaps Australia will plan in a rotation for the MCG test?

Good point about Maxwell, he has been in the batting form of his life. With Lyon doing so well - and Perth supposedly not a ground for spinners - I can see them liking the pace back up option.


Should Aus win in Perth, it will give the selectors a bit of a free reign to rest and reward.

[Dr Cricket]

Calls for Bairstow to move up the order are only going to get louder.

England could bring Ballance in for Vince, but will be wary of having yet another southpaw in the batting line-up given Lyon's effectiveness. I suspect Vince's 83 will give him another chance in Perth, although given England's record there, he's probably on a hiding to nothing.

It's not just Joe, it's the whole side that has trouble converting (Cook used to be an awful lot better than now as well). Looking at the stats since the start of 2014 (when the current England era arguably began, after so many retirements post 2013 Ashes), England have one of the worst ratio of 100s to matches played of any team (only West Indies and Bangladesh are lower), and one of the worst conversion rates of 50s to 100s as well (worst of all the top 8 teams, only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are lower). But their rate of scoring 50s but not converting them is higher than any other team in the period, and their overall rate of 50+ scores (50s and 100s) per game is about equal to the other top teams - Australia, India and Pakistan, and better than South Africa.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine ... pe=batting

That's very telling, IMO. This current batting generation just doesn't seem to have the concentration to grind out the big scores on a regular basis like the players from India, Australia and Pakistan do, and like England used to when Gooch was the batting coach and the lineup featured Strauss, Trott, KP & Bell. South Africa also seem to have fallen off on that count since the loss of Kallis and Amla's drop in form.

Very intresting stats yeah most of England doesn’t convert but obviously root will get most of the critism because everyone knows he can get hundreds the rest it is usually an achievment to get a 50.
I suppose it says something about England batting when stokes, ali are in the top 5 best batsman in the country.
England depth of players is very low at the moment, they really need to see why and what they can do about it.
It is pretty shocking with the money ecb have and facilities they have and the money spent on loughbourough that they basically struggling to find batsman, spinners and fast bowlers.
TBH the only real good thing so far about the ashes is that Anderson is not finished yet and probably still got some life in him, without him I really sense England could even struggle in England at the moment.

[Durhamfootman]

well..... I woke up this morning thinking that England would have lost by 100 runs after losing 6 wickets in a session.

predictably it was worse than that. 120 runs. Don't know if it lasted longer than a session, but I doubt it.

I wonder when the last time the England lower order scored more than 50 or 60 runs to win a test match or to save a test match

they really are extraordinarily pathetic

this test... pink ball under lights.... was their only hope of winning a match

5=0 all the way, now, which sums up precisely how little fight there is in the team. Non-existent!

[Dr Cricket]

Also another problem with root his is lack of hundreds away from home only got 3 hundreds outside England.

[Durhamfootman]

I thought Mitch3 wasn't bowling at the moment.

just started recently

[yuppie]

Also another problem with root his is lack of hundreds away from home only got 3 hundreds outside England.

David Warner type stats.

[yuppie]

Tim Paine seems to have had a good match. I have only watched small amounts of this test, but his keeping seemed to be tidy, and his partnership with Marsh in the first innings is what set up this victory for Aus. Both he and Marsh seem to have been wise decisions from the selectors.

Andersons effort in the second innings was amazing. But one wonders how much it will take him to recover? Will Overton be selected for the next test? Stats wise he seemed to contribute, but in the second innings Root had little faith in him.

England are going to need so much more from their batsman. The top order has struggled for a while but have been bailed out by the lower order. So far Australia have been experts at getting that lower order out.

And after watching Broad bat here, its hard to believe that he has a test match hundred and 11 50's.

[Dr Cricket]

Also another problem with root his is lack of hundreds away from home only got 3 hundreds outside England.

David Warner type stats.

TBH root is decent/excellent away from home, just can't convert 50s or actually make a mark overseas, his record in india a prime example, his sole innings of note his debut match in india, barring that his other 4 fities/ hundred hardly made a mark in that series or affected the games.
Away from home root got 17 fifties and 3 hundreds a conversion rate of 15% which is shocking and a sole reason why England can't really win games overseas anymore.

[Dr Cricket]

Although Joe Root does have it tough since he is facing a gun bowling attack in india in india and then Australia in Australia.
Basically facing the best possible attack you can in india and then facing the best possible attack you can in Australia.
So no easy runs at all for any of the batsman in England but that should be no excuse for Root because if he wants to be the best batsman in the world and regarded as the top he needs to make a mark in games especially overseas.
He doesn't really get what Kohli/Smith gets in facing awful bowlers after seeing off the initial threat or sometimes they don't face any threatening bowling.
But then Root should use that as an opportunity to win a game against the very best.
TBH that is probably why Cook would be regarded as a very good player irrespective of his average in the end since in his peak he actually made a mark in two Away series.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Add the four losses in India to these two in the Ashes and England have quite a run of away defeats.

[Dr Cricket]

Add the four losses in India to these two in the Ashes and England have quite a run of away defeats.

TBH was going to post something couple days ago but didn't because I felt it wasn't appropriate at the time.
but feel the similarities between the current england team and india 2011 are there.
both are awful away from home and one of the dobell articles reminded me of the indian articles at the time, mostly that results will be forgiven after they win at home.
Didn't actually post it because it feel weird for someone saying an away ashes series doesn't matter and home series wins against pak and india will gloss over the weakness overseas.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/ ... nd-cutters

There is a danger that all these issues will all be forgotten when England return home. If the counties produce green-seamers for the 2018 Test series against Pakistan and India, England may again prove hard to beat and delude themselves that all is well. But if England really want to improve, if they want to be better than home-track bullies, they need to confront the overwhelming evidence of the statistics and reflect on both the underlying reasons and the long-term solutions.

[Dr Cricket]

Add the four losses in India to these two in the Ashes and England have quite a run of away defeats.

Could match the 11 india had in 2011 then.

[Dr Cricket]

another problem I have with the england team at the moment is that their are very anti changing the team because of what happened in the 90s.
they basically happy to pick the same team because players have to get a certain amount of games before being dropped.
pretty much contributing to england poor record.
likewise Bayliss said no changes for perth even though it is obvious england need pace in the bowling attack.
really is stupid not to make changes because they played ok for 4 days out of 10.

england really struggling to get the balance of not making too many changes and changing teams too often and then sticking to the same team far too long even though everyone knows it needs changing.

it should be noted Kohli never played the same test team in a row ever, someone always come in or get dropped, so keeping the same team doesn't necessarily mean result will get better or likewise always changing the team doesn't mean results will suffer.
sometimes you just need to pick the best possible 11 for that week and you are allowed to drop players if you feel they not 100% or conditions mean some other player is better for that game.

[Dr Cricket]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricke ... spond.html

this article also shows how deluded the english management and captain are.
maybe england might improve when they actually admit they got some problems in certain area, maybe dobell is correct that england winning at home will gloss the problem areas again, although surely a 5-0 ashes defeat will get them looking at the problems.

[Dr Cricket]

Dawid Malan has shown he's good enough but he's got to do it for longer. It's exciting to have players who are good enough to make Test hundreds. We're not going to give up and get the next plane home. They've scored 30s, 40s and 50s. If you've scored 50, all you've got to do is that again.

Lol Bayliss is making me laugh here if you really getting excited about Malan, Stoneman and Vince the guy needs help considering none of them scored an hundred and don't even look like scoring hundreds.
you can get excited when you feel the players can score hundreds every 5-7 innings not every 20 test matches.