Australian bowling trio runs through New Zealand for emphatic first-Test win

Testing

Do you honestly think the kiwis will take an objective view when it comes to Australia? The only good thing about Aussies is that NOBODY could ever accuse Aussies of bias!

Apparently the northern Winter tests were bloody expensive. CA got no money to broadcast them, gave them to Nine for free, and helped pay for their costs as well. And the ratings weren't the best either apparently as people weren't generally keen to watch the aussies play in Australia in Winter during the footy codes' seasons in the south. I thought they were a good idea for teams like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan etc.

Only took you nearly 24hrs to come up with such a scintillating retort, eh, bro? give yourself a pat on the back eh, bro?

I just feel that after being sent out to field in those conditions losing Ferguson forced NZ into bowling Wagner and de Grandhomme in longer spells than they would have liked. Really gave Australia an opportunity to wear them down, bat long and set up a 1st innings score to apply a lot of scoreboard pressure after the first innings. That stacks up at the back end of the game too especially with regards to fatigue on the bowlers. Not trying to down play the loss of Hazelwood at all but Australia have the luxury of a world class spinner in Lyon who can keep it tight for long periods and be an attacking weapon at the same time. Santner on the other hand bowls too many loose ones and lacked any penetration out there. Southee too, looked gassed and apart from his new ball spells was pretty ineffectual at his pace in the 1st innings. In defence of Ferguson his first spell was a bit ropey but I thought he was pretty good after that. He was dudded by Latham when Smith was on 19, that may not have hurt too much runs wise but it was another 20 odd overs before Wagner got rid of him.

Well, there will be one neutral test some time soon, with the World Test Championship final being at Lords. I assume they picked the venue knowing that it would be a neutral venue as England was no chance of making the final! :laughing:

Smith was asked about it after the game and his comment was "it will be good to get back to the red ball" suggesting the pink ball tends to come through more unevenly making it a lot harder to time shots like that. If the MCG offers a bit less pace, but quite even pace and bounce, that short stuff will be a lot less effective.

Sorry, but how could you possibly suggest losing Ferguson hurts more than losing Hazlewood. Even ignoring the fact that it's easier to cover the loss of a bowler when you come into a match with a 5-man attack than a 4-man attack, you are talking about losing a guy in his first test, who hadn't looked all that threatening to that point, with losing one of the best bowlers in the world who was bowling like he could was ready to absolutely rip through the NZ batting lineup.

Exactly. If NZ won the toss, Australia would just as likely have rolled them for 200-250 max and then built a 200 run first innings lead and won by an innings. But it's easy to look at something like that and say that made all the difference where nobody can actually prove you wrong, because the only way to prove them wrong would be to travel back in time, change the result of the toss and see how the test worked out. So they can happily make their comments even if it's a load of rubbish.

Neser has taken 5 for bugger all a couple of times this summer, but those were all a the Gabba in conditions that had a bit in the pitch for the bowlers. While I'm not sold on the Pattinson v Neser decision, and feel that people pushing for Pattinson are largely doing it on the basis of what he was like 5 years ago, not what he's like now, I'm not so sure how effective Neser will be able to be on a reasonably flat MCG pitch.

Definitely. You can have a match where there are 10 dubious decisions, 9 go for NZ and one goes against NZ and NZ fans will still claim they were robbed because of that one decision!

Debating not your strong point at school, hey bro ?

So often watching Ashes tests in England in the middle of their summer, it's a warmer day here in Sydney in the middle of our winter than they are playing in over there. I remember watching the previous Ashes, noticing Joe Root on the balcony in a beanie and asking Google the weather in Birmingham at the time. It was warmer in Sydney at 9pm in the middle of winter than in Birmingham at midday in the middle of summer. Because so many grounds are shared with AFL these days though it makes playing cricket through winter pretty difficult. But I think we should definitely be playing some top-end tests during the winter. Get some up to Darwin and Cairns and the like.

I would be surprised if they did that. Playing 5 specialist bowlers is something that gets talked about but never followed through on. NSW do it regularly in Shield cricket, but I just can't see the test team doing it.

Exactly. People say that all the time about playing against India in India. Need to win the toss and bat first or you are gone. Then the away team wins the toss and makes 400 batting first only for India to make 650 in their first innings and win by an innings. If tosses were the deciding factor in games we'd get a lot more teams winning away from home when they managed to get a few tosses right!

Definitely. People always talk about the toss deciding things, but if that was the case there would surely be less home advantage as a home team losing a string of tosses would regularly see them losing home series. But it doesn't happen that way. NZ wins that toss, they were just as likely to still be bowled out for 200-250 max and Australia have something like a 200 run lead on the first innings. May not have even had to bat a second time.

Nah, NZ bat first and Australia only needs to bat once and wins by an innings! Don't know why you suggest the next two tests will have conditions more favourable to the Kiwi's. The D/N test was the one that gave them the best chance. Melbourne and Sydney will be more likely to see a bigger gulf between the teams.

Yeah, out of England's last 10 tests in Australia they've lost 9 and drawn one. That's a more reasonable comparison. England gets smashed almost every time they travel to Australia or NZ. Wouldn't have expected much different. Probably why England arranged it as a non-World Test Championship series, they knew they'd get smashed!

Hard to know. Pakistan had warm up matches in Perth before playing the first test in Brisbane. That's a pretty common sort of thing, you are never going to be playing a warm up at the venue of the first test against high quality opposition. Maybe NZ figured that playing a test match in NZ was just as good a preparation as playing a bunch of kids at some ground probably in one of the eastern states of Australia before heading to Perth for the first test. Last tour Australia did to India they did most of their prep in the UAE among themselves, then had one warm-up in India, which was played on a pace friendly pitch against a team without a single specialist spinner, before playing a test series in spinning conditions against high quality spinners. There is likely some thought that in-country warm-up games aren't always the best preparation. Of course, NZ being smashed in the first test, they can have that as one of their excuses.

Exactly. In the end, Australia's second innings (where they really did just lose their way and seemed like they just were confused about what they were trying to achieve) didn't end at a time to give them any time of day advantage at all and they still rolled NZ for 170.