The wheels finally totally fell off the England bandwagon today. It was only day 3 but the game was completed about 10 minutes before the scheduled close of play at 6pm. Earlier in the morning England shot out the last 3 wickets in about an hour with Warne playing a bright and breezy innings of 40 not out. Mahmood ended up with 4 wickets for the rather expensive cost of 100 runs off about 23 overs. I do rate him though . He bowls with a very smooth easy action at the not inconsiderable speed of 90mph. His problem is maintaining a good line and the fact that his action is rather low causing him to not get a great deal of steep bounce. He also tends to try too many different variations. When you can bowl that quick all you need to do is maintain a good line and length and the rest will follow. I think he is worth persevering with. Obviously if Simon Jones is fit he wouldn’t make the 11 but until that happens someone has to take his place. I don’t rate Anderson or Plunkett very much.
The batting was no better than the first innings. In fact worse as the conditions were considerable better for batting. There was no great amount of bounce, a little seam movement and only slow spin. Despite all this England only improved by a run or two on their first innings effort. No-one really did much. Strauss stayed in for a fair while, Pietersen moved up the order to number 4 but only lasted 8 balls. Just to rub it in Australia got 3 lbw decisions (all out admittedly) compared to zero when England bowled. Both Hayden and Symonds were given not out by Rudi Koetzen when neither had scored many, from deliveries Hawkeye showed were plumb out. As both scored 150 this kind of influenced the match outcome a bit. Even the Aussie press has noticed the poor decisions that had favoured them both here and in Perth.
So that gives us a couple of free days in or around Melbourne. Plus our ticket money back for the tickets we already bought for day 4. Moz has already booked up for a wine tour and a steam train trip. My thoughts haven’t really got beyond a good lie-in tomorrow morning……………..