Ashes 2025-26.

[GarlicJam]

Snivelling Steve will be hoping one of these gets out with just a few runs to go, so he can hit the winning runs and glory in his own redemption, handed to him on a plate by the injury to Cummins and England's uselessness

He did it in style, definitely winning that particular battle with Archer.

A couple of great catches, to go along with his captaincy, and his half century. I reckon he did ok.

[sussexpob]

I really hated Brad Haddin as a player, he always came across as being a leader of the "toxic culture" that was vilified in the years after. But I have to confess he comes across as a likeable guy in the box and on his podcast. Got a sense of humour, doesn't take himself too seriously, and has good ideas on the game.

Hayden as well is weirdly likeable. The impression I got of him as a player was of him being boringly serious, bit of a god botherer etc. I wasn't expecting him to be so goofy ..

Mark Waugh on the other hand is just a drag. He seems to hate everything in the world

[meninblue]

Well played to Australia. Australia won both the tests by 8 wickets each. So far this series is as one-sided as was the recent SA-India test series.

[sussexpob]

Still not sure why the bowling became so ragged so quickly. Upset by the early belligerence from Head in Perth , perhaps ; but professional bowlers should be better able to recover their act and not fall apart again even before the heat sapped their energy...yesterday's performance was appalling and a look at the pitch maps of the two sides shows the gulf between the attacks. Batsmen are fairly being castigated for their failings but to me this match was lost in the field before this second innings even started. Which is a huge worry for England looking to the future because with Broad and Anderson - and Woakes - all gone , Wood surely on his last legs , Archer revealed as a false prophet and Carse's promise apparently a bit of an early aberration I am not sure where the attack goes in the short to medium term. To say nothing of a bare spin cupboard

Major rant part 2....

England's bowling woes over these two test are only surprising if we accept at face value all of the nonsense Rob Key has spouted about buy wickets and express pace being the only way to win. If for one moment we were to look at actual objective facts and debunk this unverifiable theory, then its not surprising in the slightest. Just look for one moment at who England have picked for this series.

Jofra Archer has played about 6 FC games in 4 years. We did not have a worthwhile warm up game. How can we expect even a world class bowler with so little recent experience of bowling 20-30 overs in an innings to come into the side and do exactly that? Atkinson missed all but one game last summer, and he's also had more injuries that I care to remember, so ibid. Do you expect him to come in cold with no recent experience of bowling long, and do that? Its not in the slightest bit controversial to suggest preparing to bowl long innings requires you to bowl long innings. And yet the ECB prevent Sussex from playing Archer - they do, however, allow him to play in India at the IPL. Which of these options prepare a person to play test cricket, and which do not?

Let's throw in King Sicknote here at the same time. Mark Wood couldn't even get passed 5 overs in the warm up before he got injured. And then another 10 overs in the First test and hey presto, he's injured for 3 tests again. Who would have thought? Well everyone.... because its been this way for what, only 10 years plus. Somewhat of an indicative trend to anyone with half a brain cell.... sadly, Rob Key doesn't even have that, so England will waste a lot of hotel and bar bills money accommodating this giant waste of space to be in Australia, so he can flunk around on his crutches while others do the work again. I can't wait for the Dead Rubber God of cricket to take a series changing 5-for again once we are 4-0 down already. Well worth that 3 year contract... and well worth ignoring the fact his live series record is one of the worst during his career span for anyone who played test cricket for a major test nation.

Then we get to Brydon Carse. Is Brydon Carse even remotely close to being a standout bowler in CC? He averaged 100 a wicket the year he was given his test cap. You think of all the bowlers who he's played with at Durham who have outperformed him. I reckon over his career at CLS, he wouldn't even get into a second XI of players ranked on wicket average in the same conditions. So why is he in the side? Because he is quick, thats it. We are supposed to believe that pace will kill Australia's best players, when it does not even kill Leicestershire on a cold April afternoon. Look at someone like Ben Raine.... in their last respective CC years for the same team, on the same pitches... Raine averages nearly 5 times less than Carse per wicket, and nearly half what Potts did last year. But the other two are vastly superior? Is that what we are supposed to believe?

I guess at this point I can hear Rob Key screaming "but what about the pace, you cant take wickets in OZ without bowling like the wind".... Well, I just witnessed a mid-30s medium fast bowler rip England to shreds for 5-40 bowling with his keeper up at the stumps. Last night, I seen Scott Boland break the top order with low 80s bowling, just hitting constantly on a line and length and nibbling it off the seam. It was Boland's 4-33 last week doing exactly the same that broke open the Perth test. So I don't want to hear this nonsense, because even in the first two frigging games this utter nonsense from Key has been debunked.

As I have said countless times as well, and which has been proven in both tests so far - irrespective of how quick you CAN bowl, expecting a load of injury prone guys who hardly ever play to be always at or near their top level pace is just ridiculous, and not picking a spinner to take away overs for them makes it even worse. And low and behold, in both games England have not actually bowled that quick. Archer today, faced with only a spell of 4-5 overs, cranked it up. Faced with bowling a whole innings, he came out and bowled 10 mph lower. Carse was in the low 80s most the innings. Atkinson too. And by the time they got tired the lid came off. There was no stock bowler to take the hard yards.... it has to be shock and awe, but the shock depreciates with every ball to nothing eventually. You are left with not really accurate quick bowlers not bowling quick.

And then we get to the spinner. To put this simply, England picked a spinner for 20 test matches at the same time his county decided he wasn't good enough to even be in their squad, and was sent packing on loan elsewhere to play. The same county last year had a spinner who took 2-3rd most wickets in the season at a brilliant average. Bashir is, by some distance and on every single metric you can measure, nowhere near as good as Jack Leach.... his county also believe that. Once again, England are not going with the trend, but against it. They decided, with no objective value, that a player like Bashir who was doing nothing in the game to the point of not getting a game, was somehow worthy of playing elite cricket.

And that's what it comes down to at the end of the day - arbitrary and unjustifiable opinions used to pick bowlers, going against all measurable fact. Make a sh*t plan, get sh*t results.

Can you imagine any other side in the history of the game leaving their best averaging bowler in 7 decades at home for an important series? A player that also has (I believe) the 2nd or 3rd best average out of any player thats played near a whole series in Australia since the dark days of the 90s and Englands fortunes in Australia plummeted. Ah yes, but Rob Key will tell you Robinson can't bowl 6 or 7 overs without his pace dropping, he's not fit enough to play, and his form is horrendous... and yet, in one week last year he had played more games that Archer had in 4 years. In two weeks, he played more cricket than Atkinson did all summer. By the third week, he'd send many more overs down than Carse had in the year he got capped. By the end of the summer, he'd been fit and played in more games than Wood has been in half his career. I cant be bothered to look, but I'd love to know the last time any of the people in the test team took as many wickets as Robbo did last summer, at a lower 20s average. But that doesn't matter to Rob Key. Fast bowlers who average 22 in test cricket apparently grow on trees. We can just ignore them. What would Robbo do on a pitch like Brisbane anyhow? Medium-fast rubbish just wont cut it....

Like it didn't in 2021 when he took 4/70 in the game at the Gabba, all top 6 batter wickets, against a statistically much better batting line up and no DN conditions.... remind me who did better this time?

Ah yeah... no one.

[GarlicJam]

...

and with that, Sussex, after the first innings in Perth, all the talk of Fearsome England blowing Australia away looked lie being right for a change.

They seriously were fearsome. I don't think I have I have ever seen a better innings from an English lineup.

If only they could keep it up.

[sussexpob]

They seriously were fearsome. I don't think I have I have ever seen a better innings from an English lineup. If only they could keep it up.

If you wanted to boil down the essence of Bazball into as few words as possible, the best I can do is to say that its a method that that is based on success coming from everything going for you at the best of times, when the balance of probability always means its more likely to go the other way.

The First innings at Perth is exactly that. On a wicket that is famously unique for being the quickest, bounciest pitch in the world, and the ball trampolining off the surface like someone smashing a tennis ball onto a concrete floor, England's attack given one flat out spell of bowling looked deadly. On day 2 when the bounce was nowhere near as sharp, the pitch lost a little of its juice, and every bowler had gone through one spell and dropped from peak pace... Australia looked like they could have turned on a huge score.

Since Day 1 at Perth, England are 800/14 with the a ball - and lets add context here - DN games have seamer averages plummet in comparison to historical norms, and Perth has been a fast bowler paradise at the new venue and a statistical outlier in the world game. So, in both cases, England have put up crap numbers in conditions trends suggest you should have above average returns. And why? Because the scenario isn't perfect.

You say "if only they could keep it up". Well, how likely was that? Extremely unlikely. Archer hasn't bowled this much in any format of cricket without getting a major, extended injury this decade. Mark Wood is literally never fit ever, and never has been. Brydon Carse's only experience of playing a long series resulted in him having the highest average ever recorded in test cricket history for a series in England where someone took as many wickets/bowled as many overs as he did. Atkinson has never played a 5 test series and he's a 27 year old who has had three season ending stress fractures, and another almost entire season ending injury. And Ben Stokes long term past fitness has been bad also - he got injured for the last test in the summer, and before the India series had all but ceased bowling in tests for a few years.

At what point did anyone think this attack would be able to sustain any form of barrage? If any of them even make it to the Melbourne test, I will be hugely shocked.

[sussexpob]

AC said it earlier today, and I also said it in the build up - that England were always under the cosh with the venues chosen for the first two tests. I made that assessment on batting, thinking more helpful conditions would work against England (especially with Cummins/Hazlewood supposed to be there), while the form of Labu/Head/Smith and a lot of questions on the rest of he batting line up leading me to have little faith in Australia making lots of big scores like the past.

In hindsight, its completely the opposite. Perth was the absolute perfect pitch for England's pace attack they went with, and they didn't make it count. And the DN game being more bowler friendly and adding the lottery of batting under lights also should have favoured this attack. None of this materialised in the end enough to England to maintain either game into the fourth innings. And Australia's batting has proven in both games to have turned up to win them the game. The fact England gave up 500 having won the toss, and Australia batting under lights both days, and their low order ending up giving the death blow on day 3.... that's terrifying.

If we produce 800/14 on those wickets when fresher, then I am flat out scared of what will happen if we get a traditional Adelaide slow burner. A flat, slow deck there bending your back does nothing, and all you are really doing is staying the game 3-4 days to see if the surface breaks up for your spinner on day 4/5.

That might favour England's batsman, but its the seventh ring of hell for this bowling attack.

[sussexpob]

Meanwhile, Bazza has his Peter Moores data moment by telling Test Match Special that if anything, England did too much in preparation for the first test, because they may have overcooked the net sessions.... Bazza, Bazza, Bazza.....

[Durhamfootman]

Then we get to Brydon Carse. Is Brydon Carse even remotely close to being a standout bowler in CC? He averaged 100 a wicket the year he was given his test cap. You think of all the bowlers who he's played with at Durham who have outperformed him. I reckon over his career at CLS, he wouldn't even get into a second XI of players ranked on wicket average in the same conditions. So why is he in the side? Because he is quick, thats it. We are supposed to believe that pace will kill Australia's best players, when it does not even kill Leicestershire on a cold April afternoon. Look at someone like Ben Raine.... in their last respective CC years for the same team, on the same pitches... Raine averages nearly 5 times less than Carse per wicket, and nearly half what Potts did last year. But the other two are vastly superior? Is that what we are supposed to believe?

I'm always pleased when Carse isn't available to play for Durham. He will always pick up 2 or 3 wickets, but generally bowls like a drain early on and allows the opposition to get their eye in quickly and the scoreboard ticking along. I'm not even sure if he is that quick, really. Is he noticeably quicker than Potts? I'm not so sure. He does get good bounce and carry when he gets it right and perhaps he's better suited on English test wickets than county ones. Great fielder, really quick across the grass and a more than useful number 7 or 8 bat at county level.

Ben Raine looked a pale shadow of his former self this year. That may have been down to him carrying all the other bowlers, because we ended up having to bowl him into the ground in 2025 and it showed in his figures and our relegation. Gets most of his wickets with wobbly medium pace lbws these days. Very accurate, very miserly, but wouldn't trouble international batsmen

Potts had a poor season by the standards of the previous couple of years. In and out of the Durham side according to the whims of the England selectors. I can't remember him being sent back to play for Durham on the occasions where he didn't make the England XI. I remember Harmy complaining about this during the county season. This England seem to think bowlers get more benefit from 12th man duties and training with the England team than actually sending them back to their counties with a bellyful of disappointment and a point to prove. He was pretty vocal about that at the time

[Durhamfootman]

Meanwhile, Bazza has his Peter Moores data moment by telling Test Match Special that if anything, England did too much in preparation for the first test, because they may have overcooked the net sessions.... Bazza, Bazza, Bazza.....

a laugh out loud moment, for me, when I read that comment

[Durhamfootman]

...

and with that, Sussex, after the first innings in Perth, all the talk of Fearsome England blowing Australia away looked lie being right for a change.

They seriously were fearsome. I don't think I have I have ever seen a better innings from an English lineup.

If only they could keep it up.

That first day, the Aussie players were seriously worried and the Aussie press instantly jumped on their own team. Starc came out on media duty and effectively said that England surprised and shocked them a bit, which at the time seemed like a startling admission and maybe even suggested that the Aus management were preparing the ground for something different this winter. It lasted a day. By the end of day 2 the Aussie players knew they'd got the series in the bag and the Aussie press reverted to mocking 'same old' England

If the Barmy Army keep chanting 'same old Aussies, always cheating', the Aussie press keep printing 'same old England, always capitulating'

[Durhamfootman]

And the DN game being more bowler friendly and adding the lottery of batting under lights also should have favoured this attack. None of this materialised in the end enough to England to maintain either game into the fourth innings. And Australia's batting has proven in both games to have turned up to win them the game. The fact England gave up 500 having won the toss, and Australia batting under lights both days, and their low order ending up giving the death blow on day 3.... that's terrifying.

Australia outsmarted England. 74 overs on day 1. Choosing to bat first would be my preference in a D/N game and I guess Aus would have done the same, so when England lost 2 early wickets, Aus were presented with the distinct possibility of maybe having to start their innings under lights, late in the day.... so they bowled even slower than England would have done to take that last hour out of the equation and I'm going to hazard a guess that there is a limit for how long a D/N game can continue, to help carry it off. England, of course helped them along by losing 9 wickets, so that only a few minutes were taken out of the play on day 2 for the Aussie innings to begin in the best possible conditions for batting.

When England bowled slowly on day 2, Australia had started batting in good conditions and the innings was well set by the time that the conditions should have favoured the bowlers. They also made sure they extended their innings well into day 3, so that England were forced to come out and start their second innings in less favourable batting conditions that then further deteriorated. Smith himself mentioned the importance of extending that innings

Stokes doesn't think it's England skill levels and says he's trying to work out why Aus are better in the key moments, but it is just fundamental cricket smarts that undid England in test 2

Had Smith won the toss and batted, England would have bowled slowly and given Australia every opportunity to bat 4 sessions until batting conditions got harder for their reply. Smith did it because England's poor batting meant it was the smart thing to do, England would have done the same thing, but against Australia's superior batting it wouldn't have been the smart thing to do, but they would have done it anyway, because they just don't get the importance of maximising every possible advantage... they just keep doing the same things over and over. I believe they call it trusting the process

[sussexpob]

Well at least us poms still have motor racing to cling to... take that Piastri and you Aussies!

[Durhamfootman]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/art ... 0pqjp0jyqo

we've been saying all this stuff for a couple of years

[Durhamfootman]

and this about the way the coaching staff talk

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/engl ... ed-1514843