The Cricket Thread

Might have looked different if Broad had got Warner but declaring with Root still in is potentially leaving 30 or more runs on table. Don’t like it.

Still don't. Reckon 393 is well below par on that pitch and Aussies will bat for 2 days and get 600+.

That brief session in between the rain, when they got both openers, combined with Moeen's dodgy spinning finger, has probably fucked us, hasn't it?

Probably. But Bazball is happening:

Last 10 ov (RR): 69/1 (6.90)

It's a heck of a test match. I think we're missing jp on this thread - he would have kept it ticking along all on his own.

Feels like this innings dictates the tone for the series. Most Australian teams would knock these off for 2 or 3 wickets - if that happens, England are in big trouble for the series. Close contest or England win and we've got a competitive series.

Bookies have them just as favourites.

From the BBC:

I was digging through the stats a little earlier. There have only been three successful fourth-innings chases of over 200 runs in Test matches at Edgbaston.

Ben Foakes is looking like a bloody fantastic wicket-keepr now...

If we don't get a wicket pretty sharpish we're in trouble.

I still vividly recall Webmong's excellent commentary on the first day of the first test of that 2005 ashes series as he steadily descended into drunken / stoned ramblings and made, at one point, a strange segue that no one saw coming into laydeez football by declaring he would "fuck Rachel Unitt into the future".

I have no idea how or why my brain retains this inconsequential nonsense either.

Joe Root is going to hold himself personally responsible for that defeat. I'm not saying he shouldn't either.

He didn’t declare on the first evening.

Also wasn’t his fault that we were trying to bowl them out with no genuinely fast bowler, no frontline spinner and in conditions where we didn’t fancy using Anderson.

At 8 down with 50 needed that was there to win. We didn’t have the tools to do it.

Agreed on both of those. But he did put down two c&b opportunities that would have made it a much tougher task to knock off the runs.

8 wickets and batting us to victory - not bad for a shit Moeen Ali!