The Ashes 25/26

[amber_fluid]

The Aussies won inside 2 days so I can’t see them changing much if any(Cummins in if fit for Doggett).
I can see Uzzie getting a ton in Brisbane to extend his shelf life!

[Booney]

Considering how long Warner avoided the chop, I can see Khawaja playing all 5 tests, sadly...

I can't. I'll be at work for some of them.

7 Plus.

[whufc]

The general consensus seems to be Khawaja should be dropped and ultimately you can't get any worse than at present whether you go with Head to open Webster in or straight swap for Renshaw to open.

However do we actually think Khawaja will get dropped........

I highly doubt it based on what we've seen previously with selections. I might be reading to much into it but throughout the commentary Warner was talking in a very matter of fact manner that Khawaja would stay in. Maybe Khawaja is on the same retire when you like deal as Warner was on resulting from sandpaper gate.

Khawaja has been a problem for a while now imo....

-AO day/nighter, Australia go to bat under lights 20 minutes to go and McSweeney has to face the first ball of the innings (for mine that should be the experienced Khawaja) Opposite to Trav Head who wouldn't let Weatherald face the first ball in the second innings as confirmed by Head....that's leadership
-Kohli bumps into Sam Konstas and Khawaja ends up with arms around Kohli having a laugh. Think what you like of Konstas but yeah nah.
-Khawaja chooses the F1 races over playing shield cricket
-Goes off for toilet break and stretching to only miss the right to open the batting, this after playing golf instead of doing the extra training session the day before the test.
-Then he has back spasms in the second innings.....lucky this worked for Australia.

Not sure that's my take on it but anywho, I thought he was diffusing the situation.

On the back of what happened in the first test tells me that they MUST drop him, piss poor, can't open the batting becasue his walking frame was missing a rubber foot which made it a tad wonky.

Could've ruined Weathers' career before it even started, unless your leg fell off you should be eager to get out there a do what you get paid to do.

He cannot be selected, whether they try another opener or use Head, I don't care, I've been an adbvocate for Usi for a while due to lack of replacements, but if he's not even gonna open anyway it's time to piss off.

He couldn't even last 30 overs in the field while fresh, we had nan going mid on to mid on Christmas Day 2004, she was alright to bat.

Couldn't agree more about Khawaja.

[Booney]

Chatter Lyon could be out for Brisbane.

[Trader]

Not a bad result.

Cummins in for Doggett
Renshaw in for Uzzie
Webster in for Lyon, strengthening the batting.

[Lightning McQueen]

Chatter Lyon could be out for Brisbane.

Driver would hope side.

[Armchair expert]

Inglis smacked the English Lions around and the media loves him.

[locky801]

Inglis smacked the English Lions around and the media loves him.

Even you would smack that attack all over the park

[Jim05]

Spotted this elsewhere but Fun fact

When Gillespie scored his double century he faced 425 balls
The soap dodgers faced 405 in this entire test

[dedja]

Spotted this elsewhere but Fun fact

When Gillespie scored his double century he faced 425 balls
The soap dodgers faced 405 in this entire test

I love stories about that innings. When he’d pass a recognised batsman’s highest score, he get make sure the message got back to the dressing room. The best one was when he sent a message back to Junior.

[Booney]

Josh Hazlewood ( On Facebook verified account )

Absolutely shattered to miss the Ashes. I’ve poured everything into getting ready, but the body didn’t cooperate this time. Proud of this group and backing them to bring the urn home.

[Armchair expert]

Josh posting at 2:10am?

[Jimmy_041]

I hope English "star" Duckett keeps gobbing off

[Booney]

England aren't sending any first XI players to the pink ball warm-up game ahead of the second Test, and the BBC's Jonathan Agnew asked Ben Stokes about that.

It was... a little awkward...

[wenchbarwer]

The absolute blind faith they have in their system is equal parts admirable and laughable

Methinks someone needs to give Stokes & Baz the dictionary, and show them the meaning of the word insanity

[PatowalongaPirate]

Josh Hazlewood ( On Facebook verified account )

Absolutely shattered to miss the Ashes. I’ve poured everything into getting ready, but the body didn’t cooperate this time. Proud of this group and backing them to bring the urn home.

Hazlewood in Sydney nets this morning bowling with a red ball next to Cummins who was training with a pink ball.

[RB]

England aren't sending any first XI players to the pink ball warm-up game ahead of the second Test, and the BBC's Jonathan Agnew asked Ben Stokes about that.

It was... a little awkward...

I really struggle to see the downside in the English batsmen playing in that match.

[dedja]

I’m more than content with their current strategies

[am Bays]

I’m more than content with their current strategies

[DOC]

From the Observer. I think it hits the spot.

Paul Hayward
Contributing Editor
One day the 11 Englishmen beaten in less than two days in Perth will be “has-beens,” to use Ben Stokes’s term: ex-pros, reflecting on the chances they took, and those they didn’t.
If the rest of the most keenly anticipated Ashes series in recent times plays out the way Perth did, England will forever be haunted by the delusional evangelism that caused them to collapse from a 105-run lead with nine wickets left to the first two-day Ashes defeat since 1921.
As social media flared and flashed with denunciations from England’s followers, it felt as if a cult was being called to account. It wasn’t the generalised anger of people who had stayed up half the night only to be disappointed. It was precise in its condemnation. This England team, it said, was taken hostage again by a Big Idea, applied in the wrong place, at the worst possible time.
We’ve been here before with the Bazball religion, with many a merry chat between proponents of orthodoxy and those on the hit-everything freedom train, where fecklessness is forgiven and Zak Crawley will always – always – open the batting.
It’s a caricature, but the reversion to self-harm in Perth was so pronounced, and so counter-productive, that England fans are entitled to lay a charge of frivolity on coach Brendon McCullum, the team’s managing director Rob Key and captain Ben Stokes.
Stokes will know better than anyone that Ashes tours are precious and fleeting opportunities, not to be tossed away. Jonathan Agnew made the point on Test Match Special that these trips into the jaws of a 143-year rivalry don’t belong solely to the players. The supporters and the country have an investment that needs honouring when England’s cricketers light the beacon for our winter of sport in Australia.
The series is far from done, and Stokes’s England have a talent for responding to adversity. But this isn’t a Headingley run chase. It’s the most taxing assignment of any England cricketer’s career, spread across nearly two months, with Australia’s hand at your throat the whole way.
Despite all the hoopla, and all the giddiness of England’s travelling fans, Ben Stokes’s side returned, in their second innings, to the reckless self-indulgence of a doctrine entirely unsuited to an opening Test in Perth. With only a game amongst themselves to prepare for local conditions, they stepped on to a bouncy, green wicket at the Optus Stadium thinking they could Bazball their hosts into submission when there were still three and half days of cricket left to play.
When it’s worked, trying to score off almost every delivery has given England’s followers many fun days out. When it goes wrong, it looks unintelligent and vain. And the one place on cricket’s planet where you wouldn’t risk it going wrong is in a first Test in Australia, where England’s record now stretches to 14 defeats and two draws since the victorious tour of 2010-11.
They were taken hostage by the Big Idea, applied in the wrong place at the worst possible time
Stokes came on the radio to say he was “shell-shocked” and “wide-eyed”, McCullum joined him in eulogising Travis Head’s match-winning 123 off 83 balls. Head’s century was Adam Gilchrist level, but Stokes and McCullum were blowing a smokescreen when they suggested one brilliant flourish had taken the game away from them.
What turned the match Australia’s way before Head came to the crease was a fatal phase of showing off by England’s middle-order when what they needed to do was stay put, apply traditional Test match discipline and accumulate a decent lead, with two to three days left to bowl Australia out. Glenn McGrath, not the most objective witness, but entirely correct in his dissection, marvelled at the willingness of Ollie Pope, Joe Root and Harry Brook to drive at balls pitched up, rising and moving outside off-stump.
After a Test that was supposed to go on until Tuesday but ended before Burnley played Chelsea in the Saturday lunch-time kick-off, McCullum defended his team’s mantra of “putting the pressure on the opposition.” A laudable aim, but crazy in the context of England being in control of a contest that was only a day-and-a-half old.
You could hear England’s leaders trying to use Head’s belligerence as a validation of their own assertive thinking. But Head’s controlled aggression was a tactical strike by a mid-order batter moved up to an opening slot. It wasn’t the whole team deciding to drive at everything outside off-stump in a disastrous attempt to transplant a mindset used in England to a first Ashes Test in bouncy Perth after one internal warm-up game.
England’s implosion has sent them 1-0 down to Brisbane, where they haven’t won since 1986. Ian Botham’s year before that victory included a John O’Groats to Land’s End walk and a two-month ban for smoking cannabis. So he didn’t have the ideal preparation either. But he did score 138 in the first innings in a city where, encouragingly, West Indies won a Test last year and India prevailed in 2021.
In this summer’s enthralling series with India, England were pragmatic, packing Bazball away for long periods, as if practising for the Ashes. The new realism was short-lived. Chris Woakes didn’t walk out in a sling to bat one-handed at The Oval just so England could throw it all away in Australia.
We’d all accept England losing to Australia – in Australia. But not them losing to an idea.