2015 Ashes

Never moan about the wicket, as Jason Gillespie says.

But 17 wickets in 80 overs is not the sort of wicket you want in Test cricket, whether you're the Warwickshire treasurer, a ticket holder for Sat and Sun or merely someone who was hoping to watch some competitive cricket on TV this weekend!

Are we now evens, hh?


"The wicket is what it is" - © Jason Gillespie.

But it was obvious yesterday that on this pitch there was no way the Third Test would  last more than three days. As it happened , we're lucky it's even going into a third day  - 27 wickets in 158 overs is basically five sessions and means that the Test would have been over inside two days if we hadn't lost 30 overs on day one.

fraudster and flashbade may say 'who cares, we stuffed the auld enemy'.  But can anyone really defend pitches which mean a Test match ends in fewer overs than it takes to play two ODIs???

Read back  the comments after day one about the Lord's wicket. Well I say it is pitches  like Edgbaston  that are more likely to kill Test cricket than the one Mick Hunt served up at Lord's.

Four weeks ago Warwickshire prepared a pitch for Sussex on which 12 wickets fell in four days. The same groundsman has now prepared a pitch on which the highest partnership  achieved by a dozen of the best batsmen in the world has been  87.

Meanwhile, England have a problem now that The King of Swing © is almost certainly  out of the fourth Test with an inter-costal muscle injury. They'd better call Steve Birks, the groundsman at Trent Bridge , and tell him to stop watering the pitch as per  previous instructions and take off the grass  that they instructed him to  leave on it.

I feel very sorry for Birks, who is caught between a rock and a hard place and is under huge pressure after his wicket last year v India was marked 'poor' by the match referee. Even his own CEO hung him out to dry over 2014's Test wicket : " The bottom line from day one of the game was consistent. It wasn't a good pitch. It's not what we expect at Trent Bridge. It's not what we normally produce we've acknowledged that there's an error been made.Steve's made that error." Ouch.

Groundsmen like Birks, and Barwell at Edgbaston, cannot win when they have their county employers telling them to prepare pitches that will last five days so they do not have to refund ticket money  and England telling them to  water the pitch and leave grass on it for The King of Swing © .

The answer is obvious.  The ICC has to step in and stop groundsmen being instructed by the hosting Board to fix pitches for home advantage and place pitch preparation  under ICC instruction with the only requirement  being what is best for the game of cricket.

Jesus Christ, somebody stick a sock in his mouth - you and your pitch report, it's so off the mark BM. Have you actually watched any of the match? If you had, you would know that the amount of wickets that have fallen is purely down to great bowling and some cocky gun-ho batting. Not a single ball that I've seen has misbehaved off the track, it's a belter for all concerned.

I did say that Lord's pitch would ruin test cricket and wholeheartedly stick by it. The Jason Gillespie approach isn't to be adhered to by paying fans, just playing players. Why anyone would wanna watch five days of nothingness where the result could have been called at the toss, without having to bowl a ball, I don't know.

And Parsons, Jesus wept, don't play some poor man's modern take on a classic by a genius, play the original my old mucka - L. Cohen.

Meanwhile, Finn and Anderson have been amazing - Finn's spell today, heavens above forgive me Lordy have mercy on my soul.  There's been some high quality batting too, Warner, Bell and Root, but they all got themselves out with expansive cocky shots which had absolutely nothing to do with the pitch.

hh: talk about hoisted by your own petard.

"another hour of confident batting, and then a lead of 130 - 150. That would take some getting."

You've just told us there is nothing wrong with the wicket. Now you're saying that 130-150 would be a tough target on DAY THREE of a wicket meant to last for five?

I'm speechless, old friend. And you know that hasn't happened very often in our 50 years acquaintance!

"If this match had finished today it would have had very little to do with the pitch".

“Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!”

borderman, shake your head as much as you like, and yes, I have been watching throughout: this is not a bad wicket or a wicket that is lush. It is a wicket that favours the bowlers more than the batsmen, but it isn't in any way a greentop. I will repeat: Australia played very badly against some very good bowling; England mixed good with bad and ended up with a reasonable score. That's how it goes.

Read what I wrote: apart from Anderson, the majority of wickets went to bowlers who got a lot of bounce from the pitch. Neither Finn nor Johnson got a great deal from lateral movement, and Lyon was also successful by surprising with balls that turned and bounced higher than expected. Haslewood and Starc put the ball there and got damn all in the way of lateral movement, probably because "there" was the wrong length and they are still learning. Anderson did get lateral movement , but I think you would agree that he is a class above Liddle and Piolet.

Let's also consider the batsmen who failed, and why they did. Double failures for Australia and significant ones, were Smith, Clark and Voges. Smith and Clarke both went to Finn in each innings, and 3 out of 4 dismissals were to balls where the batsmen was late on the shot, either because of misjudgment of pace or bounce. Voges went to Anderson in the first innings at the start of his purple patch and then to another rising ball from Finn in the second innings. For England,  Lyth chased a ball that wasn't moving laterally so much as setting off westwards from the cut strip, Bairstown and Stokes were both unprepared for the combination of pace and bounce that Johnson found, and in Bairstow's case, his initial foot movement over-compensated for the angle of delivery and left him in an awkward position to play the bouncer. Others got out through a variety of means, but these were the key players whose rapid dismissals caused further collapse and meant that each innings was played at a frenetic rate.

In the planet I inhabit, a possible pattern of events might be: first day, Australia 240-7, finishing at 280/300. On the second day an England team might have been 220-5, or they could have folded and been all out for 150. As it is, England seem very likely to win - again see my earlier post for the reasons why I'm hesitant - and then we can have a fascinating game at Trent Bridge, which will probably see Australia absurdly dominant on yet another kind of wicket that looks naff at first but actually produces good cricket.

Scoreboard pressure - we're talking about the best seven batmen in England chasing a meagre 130 on the third day of a pitch meant to last for five and which you tell us is "not a bad wicket or a wicket that is lush"?

This discussion gets more and more bizarre at every turn, hh...