Pete. Weds games is again day night, start 13.00 UK time. Forecast at present is fine.
A few things come to mind. Firstly Morgan has asked for slower and more awkward pitches to better reflect the conditions in the next World Cup which is played in India. Weds will be a fresh pitch but don’t expect a belter. Both sides are struggling a bit with this especially trying to work out a decent score when batting first but it is good to see two quality bowling attacks more dominant than the sloggers. Archer and Rashid in particular look very happy. Carey, Bairstow and a few others look like they are struggling to adjust their game.
For a while now England have been saved in various formats by runs from their handful of bowling all-rounders (even without Stokes) but Australia don’t seem to have equivalents and once a few wickets go down they look pretty vulnerable. Loss of confidence not usually a trait of Aussie teams. Langer looked furious, with some justification.
One to go, and then I think a well deserved rest for a an England squad that has played a lot of matches in a very condensed summer. I will lay a very large bet that if Finch wins the toss he will bat first!
Bruce
Ps Slightly worrying Smith not yet fit. I hope that there is not a really significant issue brewing fir his career.
Bruce - it’s also the case the Aussies leaked a lot of runs towards the end of the England innings. Tom Curran and Rashid took risks but were equally fed a lot of stuff to hit and Rashid is great to watch, as he’s so unpredictable & underrated with the bat. You would have thought the England tail would be fodder for Starc.
I feel sorry for Rashid as although Archer bowled well and got key wickets, the match was won by the extra runs. I hope any team MoM rewards go in to a team pot.
I’m hoping we do start to play into form, definitely agree they look shaky not sure why either. Guess there’s a lot going on at the moment I also think they’re still rather sheepish and as a team not completely overcome the sandpaper bs. We are coming off a long break and there’s nothing that a bit of game time won’t fix but if there’s something else going on who knows.
Hopefully Wednesday’s game will close and worth me being wrecked the next day.
Yes true, those last few overs were quite out of character, generally an Aussie side will put the sword through the last 4 or 5 batsmen. They love the smell of fear.
Maybe that damn Stokes inning last year has put a dent in their normally rock hard exterior.
Ok gentlemen gloves off today, we would seriously like to ruin your 5 year run (apparently) of unbeaten IDO series win. I have a meeting in the big smoke early tomorrow morning but that’s not going stop me from staying up (well that’s the intention).
Bruce - the one good thing England have exorcised from their gameplans of late is short & fast bowling at the outset.
As a former bowler, scramble-seam deliveries interest me, in that they often pitch and then ‘rudder’ - another bit of natural variation of the cricket ball. Credit to the production teams and camera work at the last game (and all the others for that matter), in that you could clearly see Woakes was bowling seam-up (slightly canted) and getting a lot of movement with the old ball - Morgan suggested it was reverse swing, which I thought was very, very rare with the white ball.
They talk about abrading the ball by bowling cross seam and also throwing the ball back on the bounce. I think they then try to get all the sweat and moisture into just one side for it to reverse as opposed to shining one side for conventional seam movement. I think the white balls still have less durable lacquer then the red equivalents.
England won toss and to bat with Wood in for Sam Curran - unfortunate but with fresh wicket understandable, so long as Woody doesn’t bowl short! Time for England’s top order to get some runs on the board.
Aussies unchanged - seems Smith still not ‘right’ post a net. I hope he’s OK. Finch would have batted too (of course).
Root got a very good one IMV - I thought it pitched leg/outside on first look but middle, that’s too good. I don’t understand why players don’t open-up their stance slightly to Starc as that’s his killer ball and Root has previous like this.
Looks a really good batting wicket…let’s hope for lots of dew this evening.