Ashes 2025-26.

[bigfluffylemon]

Pathetic. Again.

[Durhamfootman]

you sound surprised

[alfie]

Alas : the old "second day horror" afflicted England again. Have to say I feared it would ; but even though the Australian bowling was excellent losing 8 on that pitch was just soul destroying. Surely never getting a better chance to exhaust the Aussie bowlers in the heat : and yet ... a total collapse - without even too many wild shots. In fact more timid , indecisive pokes...Very disappointing.

And worse because by the end of the day it was clear the heat had sapped the bowlers' energy to the point that Archer at ten and Stokes on one leg were in full command. If only they were 3 or 4 down rather than 8 !

Imagine the old "off with their heads " lines will be trotted out after this. And in truth apart from Stokes and Archer - and of course Root who has played one rather good knock (although only one out of five) - you could arguably bin the rest. Trouble being there are no serious replacement options

Just sad as a cricket fan to see a potentially interesting series killed off so quickly (raising enthusiasm for Melbourne and Sydney will be hard after this). But unless Stokes (who will hopefully get over his cramps etc overnight) has a miracle up his sleeve it looks like another game and series over almost before it has started...

Do have to praise the Australian bowlers. Kept generally to an excellent line and length - something that seems to be beyond England's bowlers at present. And surprise surprise - it gets results .(Probably more than it should have today but if they'd been as loose as England were at times yesterday the scoreboard would look rather different.) A pity all the Snicko controversy muddled some of the afternoon ( that technology really has let everyone down over these matches and needs to be looked at !) but we probably just have to say congrats to the better team. Again.

[backfootpunch]

The difference in the quality of bowling is so wide

Just a comparison of pitch maps would tell you all you need to know

Englands short and wide buffet bowling

Australia in the boland shoebox

Id be quite happy if crawley, pope and carse never featured in an england squad again

They picked the wrong squad, they picked the wrong team.

But would it have made any difference, probably not. The aussie pensioners are the walking wounded and we are still going to lose 5 nil

[sussexpob]

Much was made of Stokes' weak men comments after Brisbane, but actions speak louder than words. Once again today after England flopped on the field, their very own Karoline Leavitt was rolled out to do the "problem, what problem"? press conference while his boss hid in the dressing room. Nothing says tough like sending out your junior colleague on a propaganda exercise to claim everything has been done perfectly, and sometimes you just don't get lucky - thats sport, ay! Pope in a crisis of confidence? Nah.... he can't buy a run, but he just needs to keep trusting that process of flipping catching practice shots to fielders, you never know, they might drop 12 consecutive dollies and all the approach will pay off.

Stokes' rallying call after Brisbane would have been encouraging if it wasn't window dressing. In fact, he marched back on it a few days later by stressing in a press conference there was no individual chats, and that he was referring to collective effort. And then since, all we had heard is they got it right. Why would England's batsman change? Why would England's batsman work harder? At every opportunity, their leadership group are telling the world they are working hard. That their approach is right. That nothing they do is wrong - and then after constant failure, no one gets dropped. There is no accountability for anything. No admission of errors. And who in this batting line up should be concerned about their place? We have no one in the squad to replace them.

At the end of the day, the die is cast. You can't strip back years of malpractice in the space of 1 test match. You can't completely change the culture on the hoof... as shown by Harry Brook, who seems acutely aware his abhorrent stroke making in the first tests were dumb, but here we were 15 runs into an innnings today, and he is running half way down the track to plough Cummins into the stand. Dear Harry.... just to let you know those d8ckhead shots you were referring to? Yeah, thats one.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Stokes has batted for four hours unbeaten though. Twice as long as anyone else. And has kept Australia in the field when England might easily be already bowling again. So that's something.

[sussexpob]

I said before the last innings in Brisbane it was important for England to put up some fight. And while Smith and the Aussies mocked Archer, he did at least whip up a storm. He did at least here in Adelaide do the same when the chips were down, with bat and ball. I exclude him from criticism. Also, Stokes has gone out in his last two innings in forlorn situations and has put up a fight. He avoids criticism. Root made England's only big contribution at Brisbane, he escapes criticism.

The rest should be ashamed of themselves. Australia have thrown down the gauntlet, and they have been found wanting, I would go as far to say that some just don't look like they want to be there. If there is no place for Weak men in this team, then we need to make a lot of changes for Melbourne at this rate. Bethell at this point cant be worse than Pope, sorry Ollie your career is over. Ben Duckett has been pants and looks clueless. Crawley is only ever as good as how long his technical faults outside off channel allow him, which today again was not long enough.

And Jamie Smith has been utterly pants. His innings today was one of the worst I can remember in a while. No answer to the quality he was facing, so no point having a plan. No trust in his own ability to stay in. He batted like he knew he had 30 odd balls to survive so lets see how many wild shots I can play.

Huge disappointment for a player who seemed to have a big future. Again, he looks like he's crumbled against the quality and pressure facing him.

[sussexpob]

Stokes has batted for four hours unbeaten though. Twice as long as anyone else. And has kept Australia in the field when England might easily be already bowling again. So that's something.

I was getting to that haha

[bigfluffylemon]

you sound surprised

Disappointed, yes. Surprised, no.

[Durhamfootman]

Id be quite happy if crawley, pope and carse never featured in an england squad again

I disagree about Carse

mainly because if he wasn't in the England squad he'd be in Durham's

[Durhamfootman]

I confess that I woke up this morning and read the England score as 218-3. When I realised that it was 213-8 it just made so much more sense