chucked a lot.
Forget that for the mo, England shouldn’t have had to chase 325 to win the third test match and should have been 2-0 up anyway so the series won.
But English bowlers can’t get rid of tail enders quickly, happened last year with Australia in the Ashes, Brett Lee and Shane Warne were the best bats on show and this year especially Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas, who really should have got the Sri Lankan man of the series cause without his late order runs Murali would have had nothing to chuck…er…bowl at. Though you do feel Vaas should get far more wickets in early summer England than he has done.
It cost England the first and third tests, 139 for 8 wasn’t it they had SL on the first day at Trent Bridge ? You wouldn’t think they could end up 2 runs behind Sri Lanka after that.
Good to see Monty finish off with a five-for yesterday, that and his late hitting 26 off 28 balls, with a great six off Murali was probably the only high point but unfortunately it can’t make up of the disappointment of the performance and the injuries to key players.
ECB better do this right so Flintoff, Pietersen etc aren’t going to descend into a injury after injury hell by rushing back too quick, forget the next series retaining the Ashes is all that matters for this year, trying to see how the Aussies can whitewash a defeat in their own backyard.
First series for Channel 5’s cricket coverage, following the ECB’s great decision to give all England games to Sky and 5 the highlights, thus depriving most of the country the chance to see these games just when cricket was on a high and the World Cup is about to kick off.
Well one plus is that at least it was actually today in the “Today at the Test” unlike Channel 4 where you were lucky if it was “yesterday by some hours at the test”, unfortunately they’ve stuck with the Mark Nicholas show format, where we get that smug twat’s phizog on screen more than any play it seems.
When you have only 45 minutes, minus of course ad breaks before, twice during and then after the programme, wouldn’t it be better to show actually footage of the game not that slimy prat oozing over Murali and slo-mo shots of the crowd and the pavilion clock ?
Ah but you also have to fit time in for the slo-mo replays of the previous 15 minutes as another individual who has no test runs or wickets tells you the bleeding obvious, apart of course from the fact there should have been far more no balls called in these games 😉
Well, the ICC have cleared Murali’s action, so your accusation of his chuckiness is moot. Murali couldn’t chuck on the chuckingest day of the year if he had an electrified chucking machine. Or something.
Still, England should be able to play him whether he bowls with a bent arm or not. Pieterson showed that in his two centuries. I think if we’d have had Harmison and Jones bowling, or even Jimmy Anderson, then we would have had them out even cheaper. Sri Lanka only have one decent bowler – the rest couldn’t even get Geoff Boycott’s mum out.
Vaas has been impressive at the tail end – cracking technique. No idea why they don’t chuck him up the order a bit.
Anyway, bring on the Aussies in the summer. If we can our bowlers all fit then I still think we can get amongst them, especially if Vaughn can get back into the form he showed the last time he played down under.
Ah yes the sub-cont…I mean ICC, hmmmm if it was Warne up in front of them with the same action we wouldn’t see him play again.
You just knew Darrell Hair was twitching away ready to stick his arm up and call no ball.
Jones would have made all the difference, just need him fully fit for the Aussies, Harmison somehow thinks bouncing the ball a couple of feet over their heads gets tailenders out.