this England side.
Another nail biting finish to an Ashes test match yesterday, thankfully with the right result at the end. Oh if they’d only have got that last wicket in the last game it would be 3-1 series over the Ashes ours never mind the Oval. What is it with needed less than 150 to win a game ?
As it is 2-1 ain’t too bad, certainly better than the 0-5 whitewash certain Aussie players were predicting, especially after the “same old England” of the Lord’s game.
As with Old Trafford it did look at one point as if the the loss of Simon Jones from the bowling attack was going to loose the game for England but Hoggs stood up and delivered with the ball and then with the bat, the sense of relief when he struck that full toss from Brett Lee for 4.
It’s of course made all the better with the whinging coming out of the Australian camp, piggy Ponting’s crying about the use of substitute fielders –
I think it’s an absolute disgrace the spirit of the game is being treated like that Ricky Ponting
Well Ricky the rules state it’s non of your business who or where England use sub fielders –
The opposing captain shall have no right of objection to any player acting as a substitute on the field, nor as to where the substitute shall field. Rule 2.2
And the one that ran you out, which was your’s and your batting partners fault, was on for the obviously injured Simon Jones, no England complaints about Michael Clarke being off the pitch with his bad back in the last game. And as for spirit of the game I doubt he’d be bringing that up if Australia was winning and the abuse was flying from the close fielders to England’s batsmen as in past series, of course if that was the case he wouldn’t be in fear of loosing his job.
Then there was Katich swearing his way off the park after a bad LBW against him –
It is clear the tourists have been on the wrong end of the contentious decisions in this Test. The Age newspaper
Well Bell got a couple of caught decisions against him where he obviously never hit the ball which could help to get him being dropped but never saw him crying about it in such a whinging way.
Onto the Oval, September in England what chance rain, lets hope so.