Yeah, I stayed up for Adelaide too.

We might get through this game with the weather situation so we have to fight. Someone needs to send some rockets, this is where Nasser excelled.

Agreed. I shudder to think what would happen if Nasser was still in charge; a broken dressing room door or two I dare say!

Engsmooth

I hear what you're saying and you're undoubtedly rght to make that point. However, that still doesn't change the fact that England have consistently selected the wrong bowlers and either bowled poorly or the wrong length for these pitches. Why is Panesar bowling so short? Why are they all bowling so short?

It's unfair to pick on Panesar, as in my opinion at least, it's been the quicker bowlers that have been mostly at fault, but even still Panesar has been extremely poor this series and I simply cannot understand why he's pulled his length back. The Sri Lankan batsmen, not only good at playing spin generally, know their own pitches and are simply sitting on the back foot watching the ball onto the bat at the lengths Panesar has been bowling at. When he has pitched it up, drawing batsmen onto the front foot, the ball can spit off the pitch and cause problems - he's far more effective like that, because it brings his bounce into the equation.

I've also seen Panesar being used as a defensive option in this series, bowling a foot outside leg stump to try and slow the run rate down, that is not what Panesar is good at and he should be used as an atacking option.

I also hear and acknowledge the grumbles about the poor umpiring decisions, but I just don't buy into it - sorry. Sure some decisions have not gone Englands way, tough luck, get on with it, you make your own luck on the cricket pitch. I could go into a long diatribe about sports psychology and how it affects players performances, perhaps I will sometime but not now. That's all about how when you're playing well and appear to be on top things go for you, but that's simply because you ignore the poor and bad decioons, because you don't need them - you're making your own luck by 'superlative' performance and England, lets admit here are far from superlative at the moment, they're ragged, sloppy and generaly pretty damned poor. That's when you whinge about the poor decisions.

Umpires are human, they makes mistakes, they'll always make mistakes and if they make on average 30 mistakes per 10 Test matches, nothings to say that they won't make 10 in one and 20 in 9, that's the way averages make monkeys of us.

Yes, the fielding hasn't supported the bowlers as well as it should, the bowlers have been wrong selections and bowled the wrong lengths and the batsmen have been pretty **** poor as well, I see nothing in there to be particuarly pleased about, do you? And neither am I willing to accept the excuses of poor fielding, poor batting or poor umpiring decisions and neither should you, because England simply haven't been good enough in all departments to even compete in this series and the bowling in my opinion has been the worst of the lot.

It would be easy to blame the batsmen after todays debacle and I'm sure many will, but we should all be more interested in why they collapsed in they way they did - pressure does that, a huge declared first inning total from Sri Lanka created that huge batting pressure and it was the general failure of the bowlers (and the fielders if it makes you happy) to keep the chasing total down to something acheivable by our own batsmen, that caused it.

To repeat an often used phrase, you cannot win test matches unless you take 20 wickets, regardless of how many runs you score so that leaves one of two likely outcomes - a draw or a loss and as England have consistently failed to take 20 wickets per game, those are the two outcomes they've got because they've not even looked close to taking 20 wickets per game and that, I'm afraid to say is very much down to the bowling (and fielding) departments.

I said before the series that England should strengthen their batting. A strong batting lineup will save matches on most occasions and occasionally win a match by posting a huge innings total that crushes the spirit of the opposition as Sri Lanka have done in the 3rd Test. We knew the England bowling was going to struggle on these pitches so no surprises there from the seamers. Panesar must be doing something wrong to be averaging 50 per wicket.

Looking at the England dismissals on Day 3 it looks like the England batsmen were playing from the crease with little footwork. This allowed the swing bowlers to pitch it up and swing the ball both ways. England's batsmen must be more positive tomorrow and attack the bowlers more.

England's recent away record in Test matches is diabolical. If they lose or draw this match their record will be one win in the last 15 Test matches.

In regards to the test series outcome...what are the implications on the Test Rankings??

How so? Englands No's 1-5 have been around for ages and they're good enough and International standard, where it goes pear shaped is with Bopara at 6, he isn't good enough yet for Test Cricket. It's not even as if Flintoff was scoring lots of runs at No6 before his injury - it's his bowling that's missed, not his batting.

England as I've said before, should play Collingwood as the allrounder and bring in either a another specialist bowler (my preference) or another specialist batsman, probably Shah in place of Bopara. But I don't see how strengthening the batting will help stop Sri Lanka posting 500+ scores.

Yeah, he's bowling to short and being used too negatively.

The seamers have by and large bowled well... the one small quibble being that at the start of this Test they had conditions that demanded an old fashioned (pitched up) length.... and (perhaps because they almost always play on pitches where back of a length is the only safe length to bowl) they didn't find that length.

Re: Panesar - he's not been hugely effective... but there's not really been much in the pitches to encourage him. Look at how easily Murali's been played this series: even Sidebottom was playing him with comparative ease. It's not been easy.

Two further things:

1. Vaughan has never shown himself to be a master of attacking through the spinner: he could have played Swann, or have tried bowling Pietersen more, but he's seriously averse to setting attacking fields and risking runs let alone "buying" runs.

2. This performance has really highlighted just how good Giles' performance was the last time England toured: he carried the attack that time.

They simply have to follow the exemplary style of Jayawardene: not "attacking" anything... just being positive and patient. That said... Vaughan, Cook and Bell have all shown themselves more than capable of doing that in this series, and Pietersen and COllingwood have shown those characteristics often enough - not an issue.

Excepting Bopara, of course... but you can't pick someone because they play the way he does and then expect him to do something different once selected!

England won't need to humiliate themselves. There are eleven Sri Lankans there to do that for them.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

If Sri Lanka win, they move up to second.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

Rachael, I sometimes wonder if we live on the same planet! If your views and opnions have been formed from watching the bowlers in action, then fair enough, that's your opinion and I disagree with it, but I rather suspect your opinion has not been formed by watching them in action because no-one could say that if they'd actually seen it with their own eyes, our bowlers have been downright poor the whole series.

I find this quite bizarre to be perfectly honest. Panesar hasn't been effective because he's bowled the wrong length and been bowled defensively which hasn't worked. Quality spin bowlers (and everyone will tell you Panesar is a quality SLA) take their wickets on any surface just the same as seamers have to take wickets on any surface with guile, patience, persistence, variations and luck. Panesar took plenty of wickets early in his career on surfaces that did not suit his bowling, purely because he was bowling the right line and length and allowing the pitch surface to do the rest. Panesars height, bounce, speed variations and flight variations are where he's strongest, not too disimilar to Giles and it must still be amazing everyone that Giles has a much better record in the sub-continent than Panesar has, despite being technically a much better bowler!

Panesar is innefective because the other bowlers aren't doing their job and Vaughan is turning to Panesar to 'plug' up one end and slow the run rate down and that's a defensive move and not the way Panesar should be used. They're using him as a defensive option because they're a bowler short.