I said yesterday that if England played poorly they could lose this game. Today they played poorly, and without a massive improvement tomorrow they will do.
674 – 6 dec is a lot of runs. England are 200 + runs behind and two wickets down, although Bopara was robbed. Billy Doctrove got bored turning plumb LBW shouts down and has started giving high ones.
With a day to go, England need to bat exceedingly well tomorrow. The Aussie bowlers have got far more out of this pitch than we did, and Nathan Hauritz could well (ironically) bowl his side to victory.
Richie Benaud (on Channel 5 every Saturday) reckons that England are down and that the Aussies will have got a huge amount of confidence already from the last couple of days. He is, as always, spot on.
You can watch the Channel 5 highlights online by clicking here.
July 11, 2009 at 10:51 pm
So Bopara was robbed. The whole of the Ashes watching world was robbed, mate, by England’s shit-arsed performance. Not even bothering to play seriously, just fooling around wasting time. England obviously were never going to attempt to make a game of it, just fill in time til the rain came. Classic Pom sportsmanship.
WE were robbed.
There were two teams out there, but only one was playing cricket.
July 12, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Thank you, Steve, for your upbeat assessment. You might be right.