The Ashes First Test Lords Thursday 21st July..Day 3.

[Pete]

Oh, gee.. Another stupid shot from Flintoff. Lovely catch though.

[Aussie-Yank]

Want to see Australia win today, however do want Pieterson to carry his bat through and make a great score.

[Mongoose]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

Doink, if they are not wondering about this, there must be a few thousand England supporters who would be happy to explain it to them. Excluding a man of Thorpe's class from a series against the world's number one unit was just plain daft.

David Graveney and Duncan Fletcher should be working on their 'Come back please' speech to Thorpe right now. Bell has looked scared. There's such a difference between his demeanor and that of KP. KP looks like a man who thinks he belongs in test cricket. Bell looks like a lost bunny. Before the match Pitersen was talking about taking on the Aussies. Bell was talking about how much he admired many of the Australian players. We don't want our guys to admire theirs. We want our guys to want to put it up 'em.

[Mongoose]

If it ain't bad enough facing McGrath on top form, Warne and Lee are also bowling beautifully. Together, too much for any side to handle.

[Aussie-Yank]

I have been one of the biggest anti-Lee selection for Australia since he came onto the scene. He may be changing my mind.

[Doink]

Originally Posted by Mongoose

Bell looks like a lost bunny.

You got it man! Bell may be good but he still needs more seasoning to face the Aussies. Thorpe may have announced retirement but I think he might reconsider...hope the England selectors wake up on time! AUS, unfortunately, have this one in their bag, but we wannna see how far can KP go!

[Occasional Fan]

Originally Posted by Mongoose

David Graveney and Duncan Fletcher should be working on their 'Come back please' speech to Thorpe right now.

If they have the gall to do that, I'd guess that Thorpe might also take a few moments to work on his response. About a second should cover it.

[Aussie-Yank]

Merv Hughes is trying to convence us that Dizzy is only bowling one bad ball an over which is being hit for a four. That because its only one ball that is bowled badly (sorry he corrected that and said full) then he is not far away from his best.


The sad fact is if Australia wins they will give hime one more try, mean while England are going to get an easy run on his bowling in the next test. Bribg back Kasper - right now if we are going to stick with Dizzy I would rather see Tait in there.

[acker]

Originally Posted by Aussie-Yank

Merv Hughes is trying to convence us that Dizzy is only bowling one bad ball an over which is being hit for a four. That because its only one ball that is bowled badly (sorry he corrected that and said full) then he is not far away from his best.


The sad fact is if Australia wins they will give hime one more try, mean while England are going to get an easy run on his bowling in the next test. Bribg back Kasper - right now if we are going to stick with Dizzy I would rather see Tait in there.

Sad fact is the two elder statesman of Australian bowling McGrath and Warne allready have over half the English scalps between them
So much for retiring gracefully, Warnies retiring disgracefully like Kieth Richards and Pigeon McGrath has just discovered the virtues of peroxide.

[Victor Frankenstein]

Well, i missed a lot of today's play as i had to go out and get our wedding rings, but i managed to catch a bit of our "bowling" and the end of our "batting".

The bowling, awful, don't know what happened to them in this second innings, i don't think they've bowled well at all at any point, yes the odd good ball but overall a complete lack of the intensity they had in the first innings and continual poor captaincy by vaughan, constantly changing his field for the shot the ball before and the bowlers not sticking to any of their plans. The happy side though, despite not bowling anywhere near as well as we can bowl, vaughan having an off day in the captaincy stakes, our catching being attrocious, we STILL managed to bowl australia out for 384, not a bad effort seeing as they were playing properly this time and attempting to score as much as they could not playing like it was a one dayer.

On to our batting, really good start by tresco and strauss, very impressed with them as tresco is mcgrath's bitch and strauss is woefully out of form, but they stuck in there and got a good start, a shame they got out like they did but it was a big improvement on the first and on all their one day innings. What happened after that though was shameful, after getting into a good position we should have been consolidating again and trying to get to the close without losing another, if we'd have been on 140-2 at the end of play we'd be in a really good position not only to save the match but even to win it, but no.

Vaughan, I just don't get him, i've never approved of him as captain or a batsman, he's a lazy cricketer, he has talent that most of us would give our right arm for but he has no concept of patience and putting the work in, he pushes lazily in defence when he should be doing everything he can to keep the ball out, just makes me so angry as it's him that's putting so much pressure on the rest of the new batsmen, he should be doing what nasser used to do, look ugly but stay in and support the new guys, doing what a captain should do. He does have the ability, he just needs a kick in the **** and an attitude change, start building an innings and scratching around, not thinking he's stuck in a 2002 time warp and hitting everything crisply.

Ian Bell, he's been dissapointing, in the first innings despite the situation he looked unphased by it to me, looked happy and played a good shot but then got out looking loose in defence. In the second, again he looked comfortable and played a couple of shots, but then looked all at sea against warne, 580+ other batsman have found that problem too so it's hard to have a go at him, i certainly don't think it's suddenly a call for thorpe or key to come back, thorpe is past it and key didn't do any better. Bell does have a lot of talent and should be stuck with, yes he had an opportunity to show what he could do and didn't, but then so did far more experienced bats, if they're not going to be dropped then i fail to see why he should be.

Flintoff, bowled poorly in the second, went for far too many runs, but why is he bowling 27 overs when other bowlers who aren't prone to injury aren't? it's not like he was going for less runs, he went for far more than hoggard and jones. He'll be out of the rest of the series if they bowl him this much in each test, nice one vaughan.

Pieterson,

Jones the glove, i'm one of his harshest critics because I like a keeper to be able to keep, hence being a fan of Read, but i understand that a modern keeper must be able to bat and so tolerate jones' place. He's improved a lot with the gloves, kept well in the first innings, kept poorly throughout the second, i said before that he kept catching it in the front webbing of his gloves and seemed to be snatching at it, only a matter of time before he dropped a few and thought it was odd as he hasn't been doing that lately. Just nerves, everyone has a bad day some times and i'm not going to be too critical of him, he still has time to make up for it with the bat. He's batted well so far in this test, i thought he got out unneccessarily in the first innings so if he doesn't do it in the second there's no reason him and pieterson can't put on a 200+ partnership, might not win us the game but at least it will give us some hope for the rest of the series.

Giles... I actually think he's been let down by vaughan more than anything, he's had to bowl to poor fields and been made to bowl negatively, he's been successful of late because he's been given attacking fields and been able to bowl like a proper spinner rather than an english "just hold up one end" spinner. He's lost the form he had at the begining of the year, sadly there is no one better so we have to hope he finds it again.

The plus side of all that's happened in this enthralling test is that I think we're competing, the australians haven't gotten away from us like they have in previous series, they're having to play well to win and they're bowling brilliantly, mcgrath, lee and warne bowling the best they've done in years, whereas our attack still has loads of room for improvement and yet is still managing to bowl australia out twice, something every australian said would never happen. I'd give us 6.5 out of 10 so far but we have loads of things we can do better with, and a decent performance with the bat would lift our bowlers so they don't feel like whatever they do is a waste of time.

Jones the glove is more than capable of scoring a 100, pieterson is more than capable of scoring 200+, I think this game will end with 2 days of rain as that's what the forecast is here, but who knows, i think considering what's happened and how good australia are at lords, we'll be happy with a draw.