About 90 runs light, some good bowling by Siddle but we thre wickets away, especially Strauss, Collingwood, KP and Prior.

The pitch looked ordinary when they batted.

Still it might quash some of the over confident bunch on here now

On that pitch and against that attack england should have scored more. It has been a weakness of England for a while that we dont score heavily enough like what the Indians or Sri Lankans do. We are 100 light i think.

Cricket is one place I actually back England. And my practical knowledge probably exceeds yours, but we won't get into that.

Depite all the hype about the Aussies being in disarray nine of their XI was nailed on once fitness issues had been resolved. The only marginal selections were Siddle for Bollinger and Doherty for Hauritz. It's annoying that one of these did all the damage, but I still think their selectors have blundered in dropping Hauritz (who did fairly well in the last Ashes series in England and was omitted from the Oval Test that decided that series) in favour of a 28 year old debutant with a career bowling average in the mid-forties. In fact it's an extraordinary selction of the type we used to see from England selectors in the last century.

We didn't get huge first innings scores in most of the pre-series games, yet still hit back to seize the initiative when our turn came to bowl, so we've just got to prove we can do this in the most important matches too.

Great bowling by Siddle. Only Bell and Cook got decent starts. Can't believe I made it until halfway through the afternoon session. We need some early wickets tonight.

I find it easier to go to bed early and get up at 4ish. At my age the hour between 11pm and midnight waiting for it to start is the killer.

I don't know which is the more sad.

Some of you people purporting to know a lot about cricket or those of you who actually admit to enjoy watching it.




FACT.

Test Cricket is probably the most boring sport on the planet.

In fact I take that back.


There is no 'probably' about it.


A game that can last for 5 days and its still not guaranteed a winner.


The ONLY form of cricket thats slightly interesting is Twenty 20.. at least they try and slog the guts out of it.


Here is a typical scorecard from the first 5 overs of a typical test between any test playing nation you like.



...... ...2.. ...1.. ...... 1.....



zzzzzzzzzzz

Oh dear. The poorest attempt at a wind up I've seen for a long time. How sad!

The fact you think it was supposed to be a wind up screams volumes really doesnt it.


It's true.

Test cricket is about as exciting as watching grass grow.

Try and disagree with anything I posted.


Nope.

Thought not.


You can't

Usually