dave_ragg1984

5.50 on the monday please... I've got day 5 tickets.

This is brilliant.

There won't be. Unless we release a new away kit in March, in which case there would be.

Strauss it is then. I wasn't sure if you had some kind of soft spot for the King of Spain and wanted to keep him for his Trent Bridge batting exploits. Stranger things have happened.

Swann in for Giles every day of the week. You'd have to keep one of Strauss or Vaughan for the captaincy as they were both great at it.

I think John Sheridan being nominated just shows how :censored:e we have been throughout history.

Bat long. Tire the Aussies out. Give our bowlers a rest. Bat them out of the game, and then bowl out a tired team. It does make sense. Hopefully some of our out of form batsmen can get scores. Putting them in again and trying to beat them by an innings sounded very tempting though.

Too reliant on James Anderson us...

Maybe the Aussies should flip the batting line up. That's 3 pretty dismal failures in a row for their top and middle order.

Is that because he was in the team in 2005? -

It was a great stage today. Did feel for van Garderen when Riblon burned past him. Its amazing how quickly they can open gaps in the high mountains. It wasn't that far from the end when he passed him, but he beat him by a minute. Would have been interesting to see how much time Froome would have lost had he not got the energy gel. Tomorrow should be good. Hopefully Movistar will attack on the first 2 climbs to see if Froome is feeling the strain. I think he will be alright though. I'd back Quintana to put some time on Contador tomorrow and finish 2nd overall. Quintana is only 7 points behind Froome in the KoM too, so that could be interesting.

Watson would walk into our ODI team, but would struggle to hold his place in the test team. He doesn't score anywhere near enough runs, and I don't think we would pick him for his bowling. Siddle and Pattinson (and Hilfenhaus if he was fit) would be fighting with the crop of pretty good fast bowlers that we have who are all trying to get in/stay in the team. So they would be in some times, but others they wouldn't. They are by no means bad players, but they shouldn't scare or worry quality international batsmen (of which we have a few). Just like the aussies won't be too worried about facing Finn, or Bresnan, or Onions. There are 2 genuinely world class bowlers playing in the series, and they both play for England. The rest are good, but not great. Whereas with the past Australian teams, if McGrath or Warne didn't get you, someone like Gillespie would. And they are the sort of bowlers that a batsman should worry about. Cook the batsman won't be worried about facing their bowling attack. If he is doing his job right (which he is doing) he will know that if he applies himself like he knows he can, he will score runs. If Cook the captain is doing his job properly, then he won't be too worried because he knows that if he captains the team properly, and the team perform, we will win. If we play as well as we can, and they play as well as they can, then we will win this series. And in the last match, we played nowhere near as well as we can, and we still won.

August 3rd - If he is overweight then, and struggling to perform for 90 minutes I'll be worried. It's currently pre-season. The idea of it is to get ready for the season.

Sickeningly early? You fanny. And its actually 10.42.

So we can all agree, if the Umpires had got all decisions right we would have absolutely battered them? ;-)

England played nowhere near as well as they can, but won the match. You could also say that England played nowhere near as well as they can, but nearly hammered Australia. Agar gets given out (when he was) on 6, and we have a lead of about 100 going into the second innings. As it ended we had a deficit of 80. I wouldn't really take too much notice of anything Warne says about England. Everytime he talks about us, he just tries to hammer us. During the Champions Trophy, he commentated on the England v Australia match and all he did was criticize us in a game which we won comfortably, and in a tournament in which we were pretty close to winning. I'd be tempted to stick with Finn in the next test. He had a pretty bad game in the last match, but he hasn't become a terrible player. Providing the pitch should help him, I'd give him another chance on his home ground.

Did it say "draw" or "tie"? They are different results. -

I never said they weren't good players, I said we shouldn't worry about them. Do you seriously think KP or Cook are having nightmares about the Aussie bowling attack? Siddle is a good hard working bowler, but he is no Glenn McGrath. Not even close to players like Jimmy or Dale Steyn. None of them are. If we play to our potential, we will win this series comfortably. If we don't, they will make it difficult for us. Over there will be entirely different though. -

You would have lost then. As far as the bookies are concerned, a draw and a tie are different results outside of the final session. If its a tie, win bets are settled as a dead heat and a draw loses.

I can't believe for one second that Koukash would be stupid enough to even consider moving any club to Salford. For one, it would alienate 90% of the fanbase who would stop going. And for two, there is pretty much already a team in Salford who happen to be pretty massive and really damn successful. So how on earth would a league one club attract any new fans there? It would be almost as daft as saying "lets build a ground 2 miles away from when the richest club in the country play."

I think Froome is going to have to put time into his rivals on next weeks time trials, because there are a few stages from now on in where I can see him losing time. Cannot wait for Ventoux on Sunday and the d'Huez double ascent on Thursday.

I know Starc and Pattinson haven't played much, but their averages are really good for tail enders (32.7 and 28.77). But the crazy thing is that their number 11 currently averages 98. He averages more against England than Don Bradman did. I'd retire now if I were him!

3 in India. 2 tons in 9 innings against NZ, which isn't bad going. I think you need a much bigger sample before you can start saying the captaincy is affecting his batting.

Since he got the captaincy he has 5 centuries in 10 tests (and not out in the 10th at the moment.) I wish the rest of our batsmen would dry up like that.

I don't think Australia played all that well yesterday. We gifted them so many wickets that it is untrue. Of the players you listed, Siddle got a 5 for. Fair enough, but he got 6 and a hat trick on the opening day of the last Ashes and look how that went of him. And I do wonder why you think we should be worried about an opening batsman who averages 35 and only has 2 test centuries in his career. The ball that got Clarke out was absolutely stunning. And being bowled by a ball that would get almost every batsman out doesn't make you a bad player. He is one of the best players playing the game at the moment and he will be the prized wicket in every innings. Just look at Jimmy's reaction when we got him. I'll maintain, after 2 days, there isn't an awful lot to worry about. If we play well, we will win. So far, we have had large spells where we haven't played well, but we are still in with a good chance of winning. If it wasn't for a freak innings from the number 11 then we would be well in control of the game, even after such a dire batting performance.