bearded_red

Max, much better with the ball at its feet. Don’t think it’s a coincidence that the football has been better since he’s been in goal.

Your two opening batsmen getting out playing shots like that. Just give up.

16th drop of the series from England. Shambles in every way.

The absolute state of it for crying out loud.

That’s absolutely an acceptable explanation for the players missing county cricket due to being away at the IPL. But the Hundred? Its the ECB that decided to throw loads of cash (cash they have from the broadcast deal that is largely for test matches!) at average county players to spend the peak of the summer playing in their white elephant of a tournament. Clearly first class cricket has its financial concerns, but for the ECB Test Cricket is their cash cow. Over two thirds of the 1.1 billion broadcast deal is for the test matches. One single test match brings in more ticket revenue than a whole season of the hundred. Test matches, in this country at least, pay the bills. It’s remarkable the attitude the ECB has to them. This isn’t a young team that’s been thrown under the bus. Look at the ages of our better players, this is a team that’s only going to get worse. As incredible as that sounds.

The argument that The ECB have chosen the money of white ball cricket instead of the purity of first class cricket doesn’t stack up though does it. The ECB make the vast, vast majority of their money through the 6/7 test matches they host every year. The Hundred doesn’t make money. It loses money. And lots of it. We can all write lists of people that need to go, and we’d all be naming roughly the same people. But if none of these lists can leave off Tom Harrison. His removal should be announced well before we all start debating who should be the next captain and coach and who are the next batch of unqualified top order batsmen to be thrown in with next to no chance of succeeding.

Double post.

A few players should have played their last test, a couple more should have played their last test outside England. The captain and coach should both go..and yet.. you still won’t have got close to the underlying problems with first class cricket in this country. The ECB is an absolute disgrace and are bringing the sport into disrepute. In my life England have lost 5-0 in Australia twice, 4-0 another time, lost the ashes in 10 days in 2002 and apart from 10/11 they’ve failed to win a test while the ashes were still on the line. Yet this is the biggest shower they’ve been and it’s not even close. This Australia team is good, it’s not great. We’ve only had to play their first choice bowling attack once. An utter embarrassment.

I genuinely think that first innings at the Gabba is the least pathetic of the England collapses in this series. What a team.

Bowled well so far today to be fair.

Well kind of as Australia could have drawn the series, but even then England had retained the ashes before they got to Sydney.

At the very least the ashes remaining five tests has to be in some doubt, certainly in Australia. What is the point? Every four years England fail to even compete? How will people remain interested in a five tests of a one sided mismatch. The SCG, one of the most famous grounds in the world. When did it last have a live Test Match when England are touring?

The standard of batting in this country, good grief. Embarrassing.

Crawley outperforming his year average. Great progress.