The Ashes: Australia in England 16th Jun - 31 July

[sussexpob]

I assumed Alfie was not mentioning the sledging, but was referencing Robinson's bizarre Wisden article, in which he seems to claim England won some sort of moral victory for playing a superior brand of cricket and could walk away feeling like champions, and that the Aussie's couldn't live toe to toe with England (he also said something like Australia only won because England let them, or words to that effect).... which basically made Robinson sound like a mad man, deluded, idiotic, and disrespectful all in one.

I agree with Ricky Ponting. Only an idiot would kick the wasps nest that is Australian test cricket team, because regardless of tactics, skill and the gap between sides, if you want to start a war with the Aussies, you best be ready to back that up, because they will come hard at you.

I say this with as much respect as I can muster, its in no way a criticism, (and have said it before) but the Aussie turn all that stuff into an art form. Its built into the psyche of the team... if you want to turn the series nasty against Australia, you are probably not going to win. That mental part of the game tends to bring out the best in them, and they react well to it.

I think this whole narrative played out in English press about negative Australia meets flamboyant unstoppable force might be our undoing. Been a lot of disrespect shown towards the Aussies during the last match.

[sussexpob]

R.Ahmed called into the squad .... is Mo's re-birth lasting one test?

[Durhamfootman]

waiting to see if Mo's finger heals in time, I reckon

[Durhamfootman]

I think all the match bowlers were fined 40% of their match fee for poor over rates

Typical cricket administrators... use a problem that they should be sorting to rake in a bit more money, instead of compensating punters for the lost cricket that they'd paid for in advance

Giving money away to make things right?

might not even be legal

[sussexpob]

Moeen Ali has been dropped apparently. England bring in Tongue, and will go all pace for the 2nd test

[Arthur Crabtree]

A bit surprising it's not Wood.

Potts and Woakes also overlooked.

[bigfluffylemon]

There goes the series.

All pace never never works.

[Arthur Crabtree]

I suppose they don't want Stokes to bowl. But if Root ends up bowling a lot of overs, this will look a risky decision.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Maybe suggests England should bowl first.

[sussexpob]

This has always been a debate that rumbled on about Lord's, and whether it is worth picking a spinner there. History since the millennium has shown that bowling first at Lord's with a spinner is essentially like playing 10 people, because they have close to as little impact as any other venue in the world. While there are statistically a few worse venues to bowl spin, the disparity between wickets falling to spin and pace is very large, and IIRC correctly only the Wanderers (which is a pace bowlers wicket with a low wicket value) has a worse ratio. There are statistically worse places to bowl spin, but those that are tougher also have generally high run scoring to all forms of bowling, but pace bowlers at Lord's go under the general average for test wickets (even counting the period in the 2000s when Lord's produced a fair share of total roads).

Really, spinners only do things in the 3rd and 4th innings, and in the 4th the ratio narrows considerably to almost put the same value on spin as pace... so the long and short of it is, if you get to day 5 and are bowling, spin is worth it. If you bowl first, the spinner is unlikely to impact the game, and probably wont even get the ball that much early in the game.

England bat very quickly, so without rain or a huge amount of runs being scored, its likely a lot of what decides the match will happen while the pitch is still dead for spin..... added to that the fitness questions on Mo, the fact he isnt that good, and it seems like a potentially sensible call

[sussexpob]

Obviously this is all subject to what style of pitch were going to get. There was a lot of press talk about England dialling up pitches to suit stroke play, and Edgbaston was slow without any real movement.... if the pitches have been numbed to suit Bazball and we get another like in Birmingham, not fielding a spinner might be a very poor idea.

[alfie]

Seem to be expecting this pitch to have at least more pace than the last one - and I understand a bit more cloud likely too. Whether it will remain as green as it has been looking we will have to wait and see ; but you'd still expect the seamers to be doing most of the work.

In any case , even if Moeen's finger is "healed" , what guarantee do we have it would have survived another bowling stint so soon ?

It is always a risk to go without a spinner I suppose ; but Root is arguably better than a real part timer. Might be bad for the over rate but this could be the right time to go all pace : won't be doing so every match.

Apparently they were concerned Wood isn't "match ready" (?) Not sure quite what they mean : if he needs centre wicket practice maybe he should have been released to play some CC ? Will an extra week of nets and rest help ? Watch this space...

But I thought Tongue showed promise v Ireland. Let us see how he steps up. Think Anderson and Robinson will be better for having had a game so not shocked they've both been retained. Only real worry I have is the tail looks a bit lengthy !

[Durhamfootman]

A bit surprising it's not Wood.

He's fit to bowl, but they aren't sure if he can last 5 days yet, so they felt Woody needed another week, seemingly and then 'play a full part in the rest of the series'... whatever that means

[bigfluffylemon]

Dropping Tongue in the deep end in his second match, must win game is another big risk. I wish him all the best, but my word, big ask.

Taking the point about a spinner only being useful in the 4th innings - that's true by the stats, but the converse of not having one means that you are relying on bowling first, which historically is not a good idea at Lord's. Time and time again teams see a bit of cloud or green on a Lord's pitch and get suckered into bowling first, and it doesn't often work out, because any advantage they get from having first go bowling is more than nullified by the fact they have to bat last, which is an enormous disadvantage. Where it has worked, it's typically been England winning against a team that was so much weaker than them in English conditions that the innings order was irrelevant.

Since 2010, the averages per innings at Lord's across all teams:

1st: 32.6
2nd 31.6
3rd 31.6
4th 23.9

The first three innings are very consistent, with a slight first innings advantage, while the fourth innings drops off massively.

Trying to bowl your opponent out in the first innings for few enough that the disadvantage of batting last is overcome requires you to essentially get the opposition for under 240. There's so much that can go wrong. And even if you accept that England wouldn't get much benefit from having a spinner, the reverse is also true - by batting first, England would deny Australia the enormous advantage of having Lyon bowl at them in the 4th innings.

I hope England prove me wrong, but alarm bells here.

[bigfluffylemon]

Tyring to see if I could back up my belief that not having a specialist spinner doesn't work out, even in England. It's hard to interrogate the stats for this - while cricinfo does flag bowlers as spinners or pace, you can't filter by whether a player of a particular type was playing, only if they took wickets. The best I could do was look at matches England won where all or nearly all the wickets fell to pace and see if a spinner was involved.

I could find one match in the last 15 years where England went in with four+ specialist seamers and no specialist spinner (counting Moeen as a spinner for this analysis) and won:
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc ... -scorecard