3 weeks is harsh. 1 would’ve been enough.

There wasn’t intent to dump him, and I wouldn’t describe it as careless either. He was just tackling a bigger bloke and clinging on as best he could. Not sure what other way he was meant to tackle in that situation. Are players not meant to tackle now either?

Not sure why this is top of the agenda in parliament. If they’re worried about drug use, how about focus on drug use in the broader community.
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Whatever happened at the demons is a symptom of a wider issue. And for this bloke to single out Melbourne, when 90% of people in australia probably couldn’t name the coach of the demons, demonstrates a lack of perspective and self awareness.

Can’t agree either
– renshaw was tried recently in India at the expense of head and I can’t remember how many ducks he got but it was a few.
– head then made that selection look silly and was one of (perhaps our best) performed bats in India, England and the World Cup, so it makes no sense at all to drop him for the home summer, or even now.
– smith has been underperforming for a while now but he’s still averaging 40 odd of late, which if his replacement averaged you’d be crowing about how great they’re doing. And with a career average of 58 his upside is obvious and better than anyone else’s if you stick with him.
– marnus is the one on the edge now. His and smith’s drop from their lofty standards is a big reason the ashes was close and our batting did not fire in the Aus summer (when head’s purple patch ended). Whe someone has class you stick with them but Perhaps it’s about time he does have a rest. The best option is really to open with Bancroft and drop smith to 3 (then when Bancroft gets three bad scores the author will call for him to be dropped).
I also don’t see how Warner’s selection would make the other players complacent. And I’d stirringly argue complacency isn’t why head, marnus or even khawaja haven’t got runs over the summer. Sometimes you’re out of form but backing your class players is the right thing to do.

I know, this on the BBC “ Making sense of the highs and lows of this England team is harder than putting spilled milk back into the bottle. The highs have become regular and often mountainous. They make the lows all the more unfathomable.”
Unfathomable? Not sure this bloke should be a cricket journalist if he can’t understand that Bazzball is basically just rolling the dice.
Full article
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/68326425

People overhype the benefit of a young fast bowler going on tour with the team and how much that’s going to help their development.

If the kids good, he’s good and going to play test cricket regardless of whether he went on this NZ tour or not. Maybe he hits his peak a test or two later but I doubt it. in the meantime, since they aren’t on the tour knocking Steve smith’s bat in, they’re going to be playing actual cricket somewhere else.

Just getting tired of people over analyzing these selections, particularly those for the backup backup bower.

The point I am making is that I don’t think having a no result whenever a game is washed out before 50 overs is competed is going to make things fairer.
Of course, when rain comes, whatever system you come up with is not going to be perfect, and the majority of the time, it doesn’t need to be perfect (most games that are rained off aren’t that close, is my hunch), but the DLS could be tinkered with to better decide the contests that are evenly poised or contests that are completely one sided, particularly given there are a lot more big totals now.
In the example you gave, The DLS could be tinkered with to state there has to be a minimum of 20 overs bowled or 7 wickets taken for there to be a result (people may complain if 6 wickets are taken though, or 19 overs bowled, but it reduces the number of outliers)
I don’t know what tinkering should be done. But I don’t think making every contest a no result if it rains before 50 overs is up is the right solution.

So, India scored 326 today, and South Africa were bowled out for 83 in 27 overs. If it rained at the 25 over mark and the players couldn’t come back on, would it be fair if it was a no result?

There would be another article, similar to this, saying there needs to be a fairer system that can decide a result if it’s a washout mid match. Particularly if it were New Zealand, not India, who had scored 326.

Where someone sits on the good bloke scale is completely subjective. Broad may not be a 100 on the good bloke scale but there’s something to be said about recognizing you made a mistake or got carried away in the moment, that moves you up the scale. It’s ok to make mistakes sometimes, just own them.

Johnny though continues to not see the hypocrisy of his reaction.

I quite like Stuart broad, even more after this article. Recognizes he got emotional and irrational, then when the mist cleared, he worked the situation to his advantage. It seemed to work too. They won the rest of the series, and Carey played rubbish thereafter. Fair play to broad.

Bairstow on the other hand…dead set door handle

They’re not worse than they were, and it’s hard to argue this hasn’t improved their squad. yes they gave up a future first for rutogolea and soldo, and dursma for BZT but that’s not a bad result given
– they didn’t have a particularly good draft hand to begin with, having no first rounder this year after the JHF trade.
– they need players similar age to rozee, butters and JHF who are ready to play now, not a skinny 18 yr old, pick 15 (or thereabouts) in next year’s draft who will take a few years to develop. Particularly when their need is big bodies.
– it fills and adds depth to obvious gaps on their list (tall key defenders and rucks), that were exposed by injury at the end of this year
– it’s questionable whether dursma is in their best 22 anymore, given the number of young players coming on who can play his position. BZT fills an area of need, whereas dursma didn’t.

So, overall, this seems an improvement vs what they could’ve done in the next two drafts, given their list profile. Maybe a couple of them don’t do that well, but it’s likely one or two of them will, particularly when they just need some role players to support their midfield and Alir. So I think it’s a definite B or B+ trade period.

It was a shocker, everyone could see that wasn’t advantage except the ump. He could’ve used some common sense and just called it back. Anyway, who knows if Brisbane would’ve kicked a goal from a play starting 60 out. So can’t say it definitely cost them the game.

Can add to the list of unlucky things that went either team’s way but Brisbane probably will rue a few things in the their own control
– Charlie Cameron’s down free free kick on Howe that allowed Collingwood to get through Brisbane’s defensive wall and score and then control territory for the next 5-10 mins (Brisbane had taken a mark off the kick)
– 50m penalty on the wing that led to side bottom goal in the last quarter. Think there was another 50 that led to a goal too.
– 2 goals from outside 50m after the sirens

But then again, if Brisbane won Collingwood would’ve rued that none of the extra 10 behinds kicked were goals.

Well done Collingwood

I don’t agree Collingwood have one hand on the premiership cup after that performance. They had 30 odd inside 50s to 60 odd.

Sure, they defended well, but as you pointed out, Melbourne attacked poorly. You wouldn’t expect port, Brisbane or Carlton (or anyone other than st kilda) to do the same. So the big worry for Collingwood is they got smashed in the territory game, which means they were getting beaten around the middle and couldn’t get this slingshot going from defence often enough.

Hopefully for them, Nick daicos comes back and improves their attacking game, otherwise this game felt a lot like their mediocre end to the season.

Melbourne as you said attacked poorly, which has been a flaw for them most of the year. So, this game really opened the door for Brisbane and Port in my view, if they can hit their straps (both are almost at full strength now).

Wouldn’t rule out someone from the bottom 4 winning it if they don’t.

You don’t need to appeal to the umpire and wait for a decision like you do for an lbw (which is why broad’s celebrations are different). If Keays had some doubt then, sure, wait. But this was obvious. From where he was, he could see daylight between the ball and post, the supporters who celebrated behind the goal could see daylight, the players on the line too. The only person that didn’t was the goal umpire. So, Keays was completely shocked it was given a point, and then no review.

So, I don’t fault him for that.

That’s harsh. Anyone would celebrate a winning goal like that (or more). The noise would’ve made it impossible to know what was going on. A review would’ve given them time to set their defence (if it was somehow not overturned).
Stuart broad’s celebrappeals though….

There’s no doubt it was a goal

There’s an angle where you can see a shadow on the post as the ball gets near the post and daylight even after that for a whole. It definitely didn’t hit. Gil confirmed. Shame, but that’s sport. bad decision not to review.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2023-gill-mclachlan-press-conference-ben-keays-goal-behind-review-reaction-video/news-story/1a4c1b72279e4d4f3ccd7eef12aa16a9

Ha, more behinds than goals was something my grandpa used to say. Loved hearing it again. He went to every crows game, and would’ve said the same thing

They didn’t really deserve to lose. They did enough to win the game, including a clutch goal that should’ve been reviewed. If they deserved to lose, Sydney deserved to lose slightly more for a terrible last quarter/second half, that had them down by 4 points without the bad call.

Sydney were lucky, crows unlucky. That’s sport.

I would love to say they’re done, but it’s not like anyone else stands out. Brings them back to the pack for sure but they still have enough good players to find a way. And then daicos may be back for a prelim. (Plenty of precedent of teams finding a way after losing a star, for example, the Crows lost modra in a prelim and Jarman became the key forward who won them a premiership)

Does make it wide open though. Melb, dogs, Brisbane, Carlton, port, geelong in particular must be feeling a chance, if they can peak at the right time.

Agree, our batting really didn’t fire all series, particularly considering we have 4 of the top 8 ranked batsmen in the world (something is off with those rankings)

For all the Bazball hype, Averages in the 30s for smith, labs, head, and 20s for Warner, green, Carey is what ultimately cost us the series win.

One of them today had to get a hundred. So what if the ball was swinging. It’s test cricket, it’s meant to. It was unlucky but was the umpire’s call, so accept it and move on.

Not getting overconfident, the result could go either way, and I agree this series has repeatedly seen the team with the upper hand lose it (Aus had the upper hand here after day 1, then batted badly but then finished ahead on the 1t innings, then England smashed it to be 4/340, then let aus back in by only getting to 390, and then Aus batted well so far. So who knows what will happen tomorrow.

I’m just pointing out who the favourite is right now based on betting markets (eg betfair), which takes into account the data and a lot more people’s opinions than our own.

The betting odds have England paying 3.40 for a win, Aus 1.70, draw 5 something.

So according to the bookmakers, England have under a 30% chance of winning. Anything’s possible of course, but they’re not favourites.

Thought the same,
Get marsh in in particular if the pitch isn’t doing much early. Head as well is a good idea.
Smith and labs have a low gear and can bat to the situation better, depending on how the other two go.

We can talk about how bad the bowing and captaincy was, but we really messed up with the bat again and should’ve scored 400+. Have we even had a 400+ score this series?
Bazball is going to have some awesome innings and some bad ones, but the average score across both innings for them would be 330 (even less if we hadn’t grassed 6 catches in the first innings). If we batted half decently for once, we should be able to score 660 across 2 innings… so, now it’s up to our batsmen to finally deliver as a collective.
2 or 3 of our guys need to get tons, and justify their world test batting rankings.

Another golden opportunity to get well on top but our batting has really misfired this series. Bazball hasn’t racked up big scores, other than the previous test, so if our batsmen (smith, labs, green in particular) had batted to what their records show they are capable of, we would’ve killed England. (Warner ave of 25 is actually better than expected, although with the flat pitches even he could’ve done better).

Anyway, maybe England have bowled well….

Yes, but my guess is they’re analyzing/reflecting privately, but not stating that publicly.
For example, that they didn’t declare in the 4th test is likely because privately they realised they made a mistake declaring in the 1st. Some other factors likely contributed (let Johnny score some runs) but if they were carrying the same mindset they had in the 1st (to take a risk to get a result), I don’t know why they wouldn’t have declared in the 4th.
I don’t think they should’ve declared in the 4th but. There was too much rain for a result. But the best chance they had of winning was if they declared earlier, so there was a change of mindset there.