Why the downer on Harmison? The guy has hardly bowled since June as will still be rusty- IMO he is still at least 30 overs short of match fitness? If we are going to play 3 seamers though one of then has to be fast, if not we may as well play 2 spinners.
Its not as if the other bowlers ran through the SL batting.

As SL have just come from a tour of OZ where funnily enough the only Aussie bowler to take wickets was Lee - their only genuine 90mph+ bowler. The accuracy of Clark or Johnson didnt exactly account for many wickets

As for Englands tailend - i dont see it being any weaker than we have had for a while. Swann/Broad can bat a bit Hoggard can block a bit and Harmison and Sidebottom can give it a hit and could easily slog a quick 15-20.

Our batsman should look to attack Murali wherever possible, if we sit back and simply look to survive he will runs through us. Historically he has never done as well when he has been attacked. Our top order should be able to cope with his threat but all in thier own ways. The one player i do fear for is Cook. I cant see him olaying Murali well at all.

__________________
Mark.

No one is going to be bowling fast in the heat and humidity. The bowlers with variation will do best. I don't think Harmison will be playing at all in Sri Lanka.

Apart from the odd moment of sanity.. I think you have all lost it...

Harmison bowled 8 overs, at the back end of an innings where nobody had exactly covered themselves in glory, and yet you would think that he was the only one who bowled badly.

Then I hear for calls to pick Broad over Harmison, and I get even more confused. I like the idea of getting the young guys involved, but when you have a guy with 200+ wickets, still under 30, and faster than anyone else. To pick a guy over him who has not played a Test, is madness.

For me, Harmison is best used as a strike bowler, forget about the runs, forget about the no balls, just let him loose, and let Hoggard/Sidebottom/Anderson take the role of restricting the runs.

I would love Harmison to be a metronome like McGrath, but he never will be, but he takes wickets, and he makes wickets for other bowlers, so for me he is worth his place.

Well as nice as it is to give everyone a bat the key aspect of batting out in Sri Lanka is not technical but mental and physical in terms of how players keep their concentration in the extreme heat and humidity. Now I would love for people to explain to me how a gentle 2 hour net before retiring properly prepares a player for batting for a day against Murali when runs will be somewhat less easy to come by?

With just one more mickey mouse three dayer to come it's good to see that the lessons of the previous regime failure to properly prepare for testing overseas tours . If only we had done some kind of review (maybe a report of some kind) of what went wrong in the Ashes then we might not yet again be approaching an away test series horribly undercooked.

I must admit that this ricdiculous notion of reitiring players when they've got between 38 and 65 is beyond my comprehension. The team that is due to play the first test match should be getting experience of putting big totals on the board. Bell and Cook should have been putting big centuries on the board instead of having a glorified net practice and then retire once they have got their eye. By all means, retire at 100 but to have Collingwood retire at 38 so Prior can bat is so short sighted it is laughable.

It looks like I was just beaten to this one by one minute.

I can understand it in a way because everyone is getting a bat and nobody will go into the 1st test without having actually batted on tour.One thing though,if we scored 315-2/6 then it shows that our bowling wasn't as bad as we feared.

I have to say that these type of tour games really annoy me. The have been off for a month they come back and play two three day games. Why?

Test, as I recall are five day affairs!!

As has been the case on to many tours, we have lost the toss on a benign pitch and have spent two days in the field, which has done no good what so ever, and we have now had to have players "retiring" to get everyone a game.

Totally pointless, last year I said that the ashes were lost due to games like this. I have no doubt that unless we extend tours by one week, which will allow one game like this and two proper four day affairs, then we will continue to fail whilst touring.

Not quite all of us have lost it

Anyway I couldnt agree more with what you have said. As i've said the Sri Lankans didnt play Lee well yet werent troubled by Clark or Johnson.

__________________
Mark.

I'm not judging Harmison on his 6 overs. That would be silly.

I'm judging him on the fact that he has bowled like drain for some considerable time, and is far too old to use inexperience as an excuse. He doesn't just need a run in to get his rhythm back, he needs to be taught how to bowl a proper line again.

__________________
Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi

Moss,

Think you will find that he was bowling ok, despite the figures.. not that either of us where there to see it but this is what Peter Moores thought

"I thought he came through OK, he looks nicely lined up."

The fact is that none of the bowlers had a chance with this pitch, if you take the "retired out's" out of the wickets, you will see that just 7 wickets were taken in three days!! How can that help understand what the bowlers were doing?

The fact is that Harmison has not bowled well, probably because he was never used well. Flintoff was probably too good a friend to know how to get the most out of Harmison. Vaughan on the other hand is much tougher on the guy, and I am sure he responds well to it.

If Vaughan was the skipper in last years Ashes, Harmison would have bowled much much better. Vaughan would have seen his nerves, and would have judged that him opening up would be a big mistake. When Harmison opened up at Lords in 2005, it was on the back of two Tests and several ODI's, but in Australia last year, he had no rhythm thanks to the ridiculous concept that two three day games would be enough. Flintoff being his buddy, may have been too close and the result was a very poor series.

As for the West Indies series, it is difficult to judge as Harmison was forced to do the stock role, one I don't think he is very good at, and after that he struggled with an injury.

In my mind, Harmison is still the best bowler we have, and to leave him out and gamble with Broad, would be folly IMO.