Ashes 2021-22.

[Durhamfootman]

Lyon must have been going for about ten years now. Amazing career for someone who arrived without much expectation. Thought he would skewer England's batting today.

me too

bad news for my FL team

[sussexpob]

Call me radical, but if I were the head of the ECB I'd have already fired the Captain, Vice-Captain, Head Coach, all his understudies and all the administrators linked to the national team this morning. Id be sending 4-5 players home on the plane with them. This has been a shambles and its time heads roll - why do we need another 3 tests of embarrassment for changes to be made?

Not the ECB style though .... they will need 6 months of investigation from a golfing expert to tell them what everyone else knows.

Id rather lose trying to change this mediocre side than constantly be thrashed with the same crap.... Bairstow has a top score of 16 since his last test in 7 games..... and you just KNOW he's going to be playing again soon despite this.

[Durhamfootman]

Not the ECB style though .... they will need 6 months of investigation from a golfing expert to tell them what everyone else knows.

before ignoring all the central findings

[Arthur Crabtree]

A few days off for England to de-stress.

Not yet to have played there is Bairstow, Bess, Crawley, Lawrence, Overton. Wood and Leach from the first Test.

Wood will come in, maybe for Broad. Woakes may make way as he's not taking wickets. Wouldn't be surprised if they call Lawrence a spinner and bat him at eight.

[Durhamfootman]

Root angry that England made the same mistakes in the second test as they made in the first

I'm not entirely sure what he was expecting. He was cross that the bowlers didn't bowl fuller lengths, but they bowled the same lengths as Australia who had no trouble taking 20 cheap wickets. He picked the same top 6 and the 4 who failed miserably at Brisbane failed miserably again. Doubtless they'll fail miserably at Melbourne too. He got his team selection and the balance of his attack as wrong for Adelaide as he did for Brisbane and he can moan about dropped catches all he wants, and there were a lot of them, but as long as he keeps picking an opening T20 batsman and throws him the gloves for test matches then that is hardly likely to improve.... and while everyone else stands around waiting for the penny to finally drop, he keeps on gifting Australia an extra 100 runs in every innings. Being angry about no balls is equally futile. No good moaning that the 3rd umpire no ball calling service isn't available leaving them having to rely on the on field umpires.... what rubbish that is....if it's a problem, you get in a position where you can observe it and tell the bowler to make the adjustment when he's pushing the limits.... how hard is it for the bowler to move his mark back a yard? Don't rely on others.... you're the *modded* captain son.... sort it out yourself

As Arthur so astutely observed after Brisbane, he'll pick the side he should have picked for Adelaide when they move to Melbourne and he'll probably blame everyone else for that defeat too

[yuppie]

From an Australian perspective it was great to see Jhye get some wickets. Still young he does seem to offer something different to the attack. Feels like he will become the 4th pacer Australia has been missing due to injuries. Potentially a big future but tough to get into the starting line up with out rotation.

Starc finding some quality was good to see. Both he and Lyon had question marks over them and both seem secure again.

Head making quick runs again was everything we want to see batting at 5. Green bowling well but now his batting seems to be an issue. Not covering his off stump well enough at present.

Carey made his first contribution with the bat, keeping was fine though at fault for a missed chance. Still not sure he is the answer.

As for who opens with Warner. Well as the results are good im sure Harris gets another chance.

I think enough has been said about Englands strange selections. But surely they must look at the Australian attack and see variety, pace and balance. I appreciate its not easy to find such players, but they must be looking for a balanced line up with variety. 4 RH medium pacers just offers nothing. If Leach is their best spinner, then he has to play. Back him, he cant do any worse.

I'm amazed that Woakes continues to get selected in Australia. His bowling is just not suited to these conditions and he does nothing against Australia. What ever runs he makes does not make up for his lack of wickets. He should have played his last test in Australia.

[Durhamfootman]

good points, well made

[bigfluffylemon]

While I agree about the selection of Woakes especially and Wood/Leach, yet again we are falling into the trap of blaming the bowlers when the batsmen lost us the match.

On a fairly dead Adelaide surface, 470 in the first innings, while not great, was far from a disaster. Many of us observed after day 1 that while England could have bowled a little fuller, they had bowled pretty well without reward - better than the scoreline suggested. Dropped catches and wickets off no-balls certainly didn't help, but another day and a bit more luck Australia could have been 4 or 5 down after day 1, and 350 all out.

But 350 v 470 all out makes not a jot of difference if your batting line-up loses 8-70 and can't even scrape its way to 250.

Our batting lost us that match, as it lost us Brisbane. No two ways about it.

Unfortunately, as many have observed, what can you do? Can't really blame Malan or Root, who are the only two to have made runs. Stokes hasn't made many runs, but he's generally been stranded with partners falling away. The others have been useless. Buttler probably saved his career with that knock yesterday, but what's the alternative anyway? There's no Foakes, just Bairstow, who won't offer better keeping skills or more runs. Hameed, Burns, Pope are failing, but who else is there? Crawley and Lawrence, neither of whose careers so far have suggested big runs. I guess you might as well try them as they can't do any worse, and Crawley's back foot game has an outside chance of working in Australia. But it's rearranging the deckchairs, really.

Taking the game into the last session has probably prevented this being a humiliation along the lines of Adelaide 2006 or 2013, but just as those two, this is where the Ashes were lost. Again. Only rain at Sydney can save England from 5-0, I think.

[bigfluffylemon]

Lyon must have been going for about ten years now. Amazing career for someone who arrived without much expectation. Thought he would skewer England's batting today.

me too

bad news for my FL team

He got 5 wickets in the match, not too shabby.

[Arthur Crabtree]

There are options in the bowling, but as you say, zero options in the batting. Maybe that's why the bowlers get shuffled.

[alfie]

Well there are options in the batting - just none that look particularly enticing. Even so continuing with the current top order in the face of the 4 innings we have seen would seem to signal either meek acceptance of complete powerlessness , or blind faith in miracles - or perhaps unwillingness to change in case things improved and original choices made to look ill judged...

In truth I don't blame them for lining up as they did in Brisbane : selection looked as likely - or unlikely - as any to prosper. But after these two batting disasters it is surely time to try the alternatives - who can't do any worse anyway !

Burns probably won't do much better than his 34 on Saturday. And he can't catch ; but he is left handed and at least has one or two strokes : Hameed just doesn't look capable of handling the bounce of Australian pitches with his flawed technique and I think needs to give way to Crawley for Melbourne. Wing and a prayer maybe but if he were able to survive the initial overs at least he would have some prospect of taking the attack to the Australian bowlers rather than just waiting for the one with his name on it. Better fielder too which counts especially here.

Pope looks shot. If he ever survives the pace men Lyon will have him for breakfast lunch and supper. Won't be popular on here but I think Bairstow should play. Sure you can say he's done nothing special in Tests recently : but you could say the same of most of the rest of the batting order - except for them it would be "nothing special in Tests - ever". Not suggesting he'd be a miracle worker ; but he's a fighter and would at least bring a bit of energy and aggression in the field - and maybe move Burns out of slips !

Buttler saved his spot yesterday. They would probably have persevered with him anyway ; though it might have been a close decision had Carey not decided to let him escape without a pair. Not expecting him to make serious runs in Australia though. Stokes is still battling back into form after his lay off : hopefully he is about ready to fire.

One unlikely possible idea : Buttler averages 5 points higher when he doesn't keep. For Bairstow this is reversed. Let YJB keep and bat at 7 ; Buttler concentrates on batting in his favourite (on figures) position of 6. I know they won't ; but the data suggests it would be worth a try.

[bigfluffylemon]

Buttler saved his spot yesterday. They would probably have persevered with him anyway ; though it might have been a close decision had Carey not decided to let him escape without a pair. Not expecting him to make serious runs in Australia though. Stokes is still battling back into form after his lay off : hopefully he is about ready to fire.

One unlikely possible idea : Buttler averages 5 points higher when he doesn't keep. For Bairstow this is reversed. Let YJB keep and bat at 7 ; Buttler concentrates on batting in his favourite (on figures) position of 6. I know they won't ; but the data suggests it would be worth a try.

That was suggested on the ABC commentary yesterday. I can't see it happening, but you never know.

[alfie]

An add on to the above : these suggestions are intended as "short term" fixes. Whatever happens , there are likely to be some major rearrangements after this tour. But for now , they can only work with what is available.

[sussexpob]

Buttler saved his spot yesterday.

This to me is like crediting the captain of the titanic for his speedy arrangement of lifeboats, after he condemned the ship by steering it into an iceberg. When the game was live Buttler cost us a hundred runs with his iron gloves display, and then added an abysmal 15 ball duck when England needed some lower order backbone. As they say in the NFL, his 200 ball rearguard at the end was "garbage bin time".... playing well when the result is no longer up for debate. Totally meaningless..... Buttler more than anyone lost us the game.

2/3 years with the bat in the low 20s.... errors with the gloves. Why is he in the side? The experiment failed.

[sussexpob]

One unlikely possible idea : Buttler averages 5 points higher when he doesn't keep. For Bairstow this is reversed. Let YJB keep and bat at 7 ; Buttler concentrates on batting in his favourite (on figures) position of 6. I know they won't ; but the data suggests it would be worth a try.

Meaningless stat, because it follows the trend of Bairstow's career irrespective of whether he takes the gloves. Since 2019, he averages 18 with the gloves.... his averages with/without the gloves are different solely because he kept more in the only really standout year in his career....

He hasnt played a long format game since being dropped. His form in the T20 world cup was abysmal, he's been rubbish for years, and his keeping is also below standard.....

Case for reselection is unjustified on every single metric. Re-picking him would be a total lottery.... in fact, the chances of success are close to the odds of winning a lottery.