Be Excellent To Each Other

Fuck me. Cricket is amazing.

Fair weather fan

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Cricket is amazing precisely because I'm able to go from embarrassed to elated in the same match. When that 9th wicket fell, England were down to a 5% chance at victory. Thank goodness for all-rounders.

I don't like cricket, but I know from when I was a kid that was astounding. Wow.

I may be a cricket fan yet !

You love it?

haha yeah that would be me

I used to play it a lot as a kid and at school and it was great fun but it's not so much fun to watch. Well, until recently.

Wow. The way Ben Stokes can focus. He seems to become a greater player when the equation is simple - either I do it, or no one does.

Trying to keep up from Canada, with wifi dropping out, was cruel. I had TMS working, all was fine, till Leach was on strike with 2 needed. Up pops a BBC headline: "In one of the all-time classic Ashes matches, England have..."

I guessed it was good news. But, bloody hell.

Oh yeah I had absolutely no hope yesterday until Stokes and Bairstow were in, and then not again until we were around 50 from victory. I thought we were about 100 runs light.

Even with 2 runs to win, I wasn't confident. That's what 20 years of watching English cricket does to you!

I think the whole affray incident with Stokes has matured him. That was an amazing finish, test cricket really is fantastic. There's nothing like it. How a game can ebb and flow like that with one side on the upper hand then being out of it, then doing alrite, then having no chance, then having even less of a chance, then THAT. England got lucky, the crowd sounded amazing, obviously got into the heads of the aussie players as if a catch wasn't dropped, if lyon didn't fumble the run out, if the umpire gave out a plumb looking LBW.

The ashes are well and truly alive. Hopefully England can take the momentum to Old Trafford, although 2 games to go, the aussies only need to win one to retain the ashes, and with Langoustine and Smith they've got 2 batsmen that refuse to get out.

Crawfish was a Smith swap out though. Will they play both?

Yes. Without a doubt.

Khawaja will make way, I expect. He’s had a poor series.

Or Wade.

All Aussie batters beside Smith and Lobster have underperformed.

I’m quite upset at how well Shrimp has performed since coming in as a replacement. I guess it shows the benefit of having played solid county cricket in the run-up to the series.

Yeah, who knew that extensive practice at long form cricket in English conditions was good practice for long form cricket in English conditions?

But he scored a century! And he’s got a total of

*checks notes*

41 runs from his other 4 innings. Hmmm.

My Aussie mate here was saying maybe drop Harris and move Khawaja up to opener and Langoustine in a 3 then Smith at 4.

Looks like Khawaja has been dropped so Laungoustine will come in at 3. And Denly and Roy have swapped too, although Roy coming out at 20-2 won't really make a difference.

He’s batting at 3, isn’t he? So at 0-1.

Called it

That Steve Smith a fair batter, I reckon. He might do well

If England lose this game (looking somewhat likely now barring the heavens opening up), it looks like England have finally found an opener in Burns. Roy needs to go, he's not a test player and this will probably affect his ODI form too.

Yep, you could say Roy’s had enough chances now, although only one in the middle order, which is where he should have been to start with. He’s no Warner or Sehwag and expecting him to just transition from limited-over cricket to Test cricket against a very fine Australian attack was just pie-in-the-sky thinking from Ed Smith et al.

I still think we can win, but we need to get close and then bowl them out for under 250.

You cursed him!

Smith is the best Test batsman in the world. He's made the difference.

Very much so, pretty much 300 runs in this match. England lost by 200ish.

Shame this game wasn't swapped with the Lord's one...

He made a big difference but it wasn’t all him. They’ve bowled better, batted better, fielded better.

We’ve put one-day cricket first for the last four years and it shows.

Smith aside they haven’t batted better, and fielding is marginal (England dropped too many catches, especially Jason Roy, but Headingley would have been an Aussie win if they had fielded even vaguely competently).

Labuschagne has done very well, but after those two their highest batting average is Travis Head on 27. England have 4 batsmen higher than that, and 4 of the 6 top run scorers.

Their bowling has definitely been more consistent, especially Cummins and Haizlewood.

Man, I wish Jimmy had been fit.

A FIRST INNINGS LEAD. I remember this feeling

Maybe I’ll get sex tonight too!

*paging Ron to the thread*

I guess Smith gets man of the series, but there's a decent shout for Stokes. Without him Australia would have won at Lord's and Leeds. Not a bad summer of cricket all told.

Cummins has a good one too, and Broad/Archer for England.

But in the end it’s obviously only going to one man.

The Taunton Tendulkar!

‘Classic’ Jack Leach!

It’s been classic Leach all summer

Best drawn series ever

Last time the Ashes were drawn it was 1972. Australia won the 5th Test to level it at 2-2. England retained the urn.

Riles, that you?

I can’t imagine there are many Chrises in London

I only know of one.

It was not me. I was sadly on a call when stokes got the final three though.

@JBR I should have placed a bet on the two second place teams beating England and Pakistan in the semi finals!

You should! Spot flipping on.

Test Cricket is pretty good isn't it?

Today, yes

I just meant the whole test, the swings, the roundabouts, the ups, the downs, and then Root getting a century and bringing up 10,000 career test runs.

And in one of those odd twists of fate, he's the same age as Alistair Cook was when he reached the same milestone!