by Gozu » Sun Aug 09, 2009 7:22 pm
Jarrod Kimber on last night's play:
Ashes 09: England Self Flagellate
August 9, 2009 – 8:21 am, by Jarrod Kimber
As a cricket writer watching a day’s play you generally take notes as it goes. Things that happened that interested you at various times, stats that stick out, perhaps some interesting quip you or someone else came up with. Anything that will help you write up the day.
For some reason I only wrote one note today, and I wrote it about 12 minutes into play.
“England are shit again today.”
I kept watching the cricket waiting for England to show some form of hardness. They didn’t. Stuart Broad and a handy opening partnership was the best they could muster when what they needed was the best day of their Ashes campaign.
They started by bowling short, ignoring their spinner and looking uninspired.
They ended by batacide and then having a panic attack that is usually only seen in bad horror films.
England made so many mistakes it is hard to know if Australia played well. They essentially bowled themselves out of a game they were supposedly desperate to keep themselves in.
And then when the Australian innings mercifully came to a close, England’s openers set up a foundation only for them to jump out of the tree house when someone shouted ghost.
Australia’s pressure had to be part of it, but the rate that England collapsed seemed to point to deep-rooted problems with their psyche. Even the scientologists would knock these guys back. Kinetics can only do so much. Losing 5 for 20 on a pitch that Australia just strolled to over 400 on is a special kind of wrong.
It was only one test ago that Mitchell Johnson looked like the player with mental issues. Today, thanks to England, he looked like an angry tiger in the afternoon session. Had Marcus North held onto a catch off Matt Prior (Jimmy Anderson was being a non striking nightwatchman) Mitchell could have ripped the rest of them out with what was a spell of 100% brutality.
Earlier Michael Clarke cashed in on some of the poorest bowling I have seen from professional cricketers, but he eventually went out in the 90s. Marcus North took over and went on to make his 3rd test century.
The biggest surprise of the day wasn’t that England put in a sub-test performance, but that Stuart Broad took 6 wickets. It wasn’t brilliant spell, but he was the only bowler who looked capable of taking wickets. England would be pleased with this, and NOTHING ELSE.
I am going to end the post here, not because I haven’t got more to say, but because I am pissed I have already put more effort into this than England did today.
"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment" – Warren Bennis
