3RD ASHES TEST: England v Australia at Manchester Aug 1-5, 2013

[hineyrulz]

I'm not sure whatl more people expected from Clarke??? He declared twice and we scored our runs at a good clip in both innings. We lost nearly two days to rain and the Poms didnt try to win the game from the start of day 2 onwards. These merkins are very beatable Harris and Siddle have been outstanding all series. We should still be looking to tie the series up with aggressive positive cricket.

 

[umina panther]

If Harris stays fit and we get Patto back for Mitch "im a Johnson clone " Starc we will be taking the ashes back this summer

 

[WireMan]

This person on cricinfo makes a very good point:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/match/566934.html

I always felt that we batted for too long and should've declared, at the very latest, at tea yesterday. No way would England have attempted to plough down 290 odd or so (which would've been the highest 4th innings chase at Old Trafford), as all they need is a draw to retain the Ashes. I said in a previous post that we need as many overs as possible to bowl them out, and this may have been the final straw. We needed to take some big risks yesterday in order to win this match (which meant the possibility of England chasing down the total chasing a smaller target off more allocated overs), and our decision to not treat that 2nd session like a T20 match and score as quickly as possible has now given England the easy way out to take the draw and the urn.

This decision was nearly as brain-dead as the one we took at The Oval in 2005 when we walked off due to bad light when we had to win that test to retain the Ashes. I can understand that mentality if we were playing someone like Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, but when you must win a game you need to be out there for as long as you can, even if it means playing in the rain (which did happen back in an ODI back in the '70s)。 LOL to those who said the weather doesn't matter and you never play to the predicted weather forecasts. Days earlier, it had been known that the weather wasn't looking promising for days 4-5 of this test.

it is about field positions etc.

If you have a smaller target to defend you have to start defending it earlier. With the target as it was you could attack for the whole innings.

Maybe if he knew they were going to go off when they did and the rain would hit like it did then he would off declared earlier. But it is not easy to predict the weather around here (I live about 15 miles from OT) and he would of looked stupid declaring early for a slight change in the wind direction and England get a nice day to target 270.

Everything is easier with the benefit of hindsight.

 

[TheParraboy]

These guys are really not bowling that fast. The illusions of my childhood have been shattered.

Same here

I fell asleep after Holding did 127km/hr and Roberts 132km/hr. Pascoe 122km/hr lol

Then again back in those days technology wasn't most likely as accurate as today?

 

[Timbo]

Having said that, Thommo won with a 150kph thunderbolt, but Holding was the only other one to crack 140.

Sarfraz was flat out at 120 kph.

 

[Twizzle]

This person on cricinfo makes a very good point:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/match/566934.html

I always felt that we batted for too long and should've declared, at the very latest, at tea yesterday. No way would England have attempted to plough down 290 odd or so (which would've been the highest 4th innings chase at Old Trafford), as all they need is a draw to retain the Ashes. I said in a previous post that we need as many overs as possible to bowl them out, and this may have been the final straw. We needed to take some big risks yesterday in order to win this match (which meant the possibility of England chasing down the total chasing a smaller target off more allocated overs), and our decision to not treat that 2nd session like a T20 match and score as quickly as possible has now given England the easy way out to take the draw and the urn.

This decision was nearly as brain-dead as the one we took at The Oval in 2005 when we walked off due to bad light when we had to win that test to retain the Ashes. I can understand that mentality if we were playing someone like Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, but when you must win a game you need to be out there for as long as you can, even if it means playing in the rain (which did happen back in an ODI back in the '70s)。 LOL to those who said the weather doesn't matter and you never play to the predicted weather forecasts. Days earlier, it had been known that the weather wasn't looking promising for days 4-5 of this test.

we batted on in the bad light

poms would have bitched and squealed and we still would have lost all that time anyway