4th Ashes Test: England v Australia at Nottingham on Aug 6-10, 2015

[Pete Cash]

Can anyone recall when Clarke has ever come to the crease and batted ala Steve Waugh style and saved our sorry arses from certain defeat.?
The modern day cricketer seems to struggle to adapt to foreign conditions in test cricket consistently.The English struggle in Australia with the pace and bounce while the Australians struggle with seaming English wickets.
While Root and Broad are doing exceptionally well you could probably predict Starc and Smith will do the same to them on home soil.

They play so much limited over cricket that they trust instinct too much.

 

[Mr Bean]

Whats the odds Joe Root beats the Aussie total by himself?

Correct doubled it already or were talking about their 2nd innings?

 

[benched tiger]

Poor old Clarke having to front the media to explain that batting dross that was dished up,the whole team should of been paraded out to explain their thoughts on the amateur hour of batting.

 

[undertaker]

They play so much limited over cricket that they trust instinct too much.

By limited over cricket, I assume that also includes T20.

OT, this whole argument about player burnout that keeps popping up in the media time and time again is the biggest load of tripe. Yeah, players who IMO are grossly overpaid as they are (compared to the greats from 10-20yrs ago) complaining about playing too much cricket, only to board the next plane after an international series to play in some lucrative T20 tournament. What a joke. I do miss the old Ashes tours that were 6-tests. Would love the Ashes to return back to 6-test series, but will never happen.

England generally play 6-7 tests per summer, so burnout cannot be an issue for them. At the domestic level, their priorities are still heavily centred and focused on the longer form of the game (as is evidenced by their County cricket season, where more games are played than Sheffield Shield). When we became a dominant force during the Taylor/Waugh years of 1994-2004, there was a very strong emphasis on Sheffield Shield cricket and most of the test players regularly turned out to play for their states in Shield cricket, let alone many of the upcoming stars came through Sheffield Shield. Also, there was the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) and many of the talents during the early-mid '90s such as McGrath/Ponting/Warne etc. were spotted through the AIS system during Rod Marsh's tenure. Nowdays, I don't hear much about the AIS. Infact, I haven't heard much about it for many years.

When Ponting became captain (not long after James Sutherland became CEO of Cricket Australia), the priorities slowly shifted more towards limited overs cricket (coinciding with the advent of T20 cricket) and now you had players being picked for test matches off the back of limited overs form rather than the mode of cricket that was closest to test matches - Sheffield Shield.

 

[undertaker]

All our good batsmen were born in the same era,Matthew Elliot,Brad Hodge,Jamie Cox,Stuart Law,Jamie Siddons,Martin Love,guys like that prob would have played 100 tests in this donkey era.

Bring back people who can bat

The part in bold highlights the main point of my previous post: I would go as far as to say that during that 1994-2004 period, Australia had more talent in the lower-levels of cricket (e.g. state level) than any other country in the history of cricket. Look at all the batsmen who were scoring thousands of runs in state cricket (Sheffield Shield) and bowlers were taking wickets, yet only got limited opportunities when they finally got the chance to wear the baggy green. And lets not forget players like Hussey and Gilchrist who had to wait many years after scoring thousands of Shield runs before getting their test opportunities later in their career. We had enough talent to field a second XI (Australia A) as a test-quality playing nation that would've been ranked number 2 in the world behind the test team of that time that was captained by Taylor and Waugh. That is just how much depth and talent we had at state level.

The introduction of Australia A as the 4th team of the ODI series during the 1994/95 summer was one of the big keys that built us up IMO. Unfortunately, the Australian side kicked up a big stink after that tournament and Australia A were only confined to the odd ODI and four-day first-class match against the touring nation of that summer in the years after that, but the experience those guys in Australia A got playing against the test players in the Australian side, as well as the test-players of other touring nations (even if it was in ODI format), served them very well in the years to come. Nearly every player in the Australian A squad either wore the baggy green in the past (and eventually got back into the test team, such as Hayden/Langer/Martyn) or would go on to wear the baggy green in the future (e.g. Ponting). I used to like watching the Australia A matches when Ch9 televised them. After the first T20 match in Australia in 2004/05 between Australia A and Pakistan at Adelaide Oval, the only other Australia A match that was televised was the 4-day tour match against England in the lead-up to the 2010/11 Ashes series.

Bring back Australia A! In order to build up first-class experience during the winters where we aren't touring, Australia should play Australia A in some 4-5 day matches up in the Top End: Darwin and Cairns (where there's already cricket grounds that have hosted test matches in the past).

 

[Pete Cash]

There should be an A side tour of NZ as often as once a year. It's kind of a poor man's England with conditions.

 

[some11]

Now Clarke is trying to defend the way we batted, saying that the conditions meant we had to bat aggressively.

It was day 1

 

[Pete Cash]

Starc strikes

 

[TheParraboy]

Root out 130

Poms 5/301 - lead 241

nightwatchman Wood on 23*



Id be very surprised pom don't get well over 350 run lead, possibly well over 400

 

[TheParraboy]

Starc 4 wickets

I reckon he will match Broad and finish with figures of 8/140

 

[WaznTheGreat]

5 for Starc,good stuff.

 

[Pete Cash]

Starc is bowling well

 

[Nugget10]

All those bagging Starc can get a big black dog up em. 6 for

Edit just after I typed that he bowls 4 byes :-S

 

[WaznTheGreat]

We got dis

 

[TheParraboy]

starc 6/83

 

[benched tiger]

Gee Hazelwood is rubbish...!

 

[BunniesMan]

Our batsmen will get destroyed by this movement.

 

[tomdl]

Danger time for Rogers and Warner

 

[THE CHAMP]

You know you're in trouble when the first drop runs off with the openers

 

[benched tiger]

The whole team better pad up...!