On SKy coverage (BT is shit btw), they used to have the Sky Pie, made up of the 3 sessions in a Pie Chart, and i guess out of 45 Pie chunks (i know there would have been less) we probably have won......less than 10.
On a different note, heard a bit recently about Jofra Archer as one for the future - anyone watched him much?
I’m a regular at Hove and he certainly is talented. He’s fairly quick but has that ability to bowl the odd really quick ball which is dangerous. The problem is that he can’t play for England for 2-3 more years.
On SKy coverage (BT is shit btw), they used to have the Sky Pie, made up of the 3 sessions in a Pie Chart, and i guess out of 45 Pie chunks (i know there would have been less) we probably have won......less than 10.
I would say a lot less than even that - maybe just 3 or 4. I can't remember a bowling session where we took a number of wickets & as I posted above, even when we got the 3 quick wickets on day 3 they then counter punched with a 100 run stand. And there weren't many times where we went a whole session batting where we didn't loose a wicket - only the big stand between Bairstow & Malan.
There must have been 2 sessions with Bairstow / Malan, maybe 2 sessions in the Adelaide Oz second innigs and maybe a couple of other sundry sessions - so, prob 6/7 in total?
How nice to go to bed not worrying about what the score will be when I wake up.
This is something that grates me.
I've been so sleep deprived for the 3 tests so far, ok I'm sat on a sofa as opposed to being there. The gutless way we have lost these tests has been exaggerated by how tired I've been the following days and I've held myself back from posting rambling vulgarity and bile.
Anderson has toiled away but there has really been no teeth to our bowling. When Broad and Anderson are patrolling either end and bowling with intent we look like taking 20 wickets comfortable. Whatever is going on with those two needs to stop. If it is that they have gotten old and their bodies are letting them down then we need to take them out of the team. I'm not sure this is the case with Anderson but Broad I think is not at the races mentally.
Cook has been targeted by the Aussies and I feel a bit sorry for him, Root the same and I worried that being captain and batsman would affect him negatively. Stoneman, Malan and Vince have learned some hard lessons.
Moeen Ali, I really like him, he's a good cricketer and has never hidden from his duty as the spinner even though I think he's had that role forced on him. His finger is in a mess at the moment and that is obviously affecting him and his capability to get revolution on the ball. I think he needs some time to let his finger heal up and he will come back as a really valuable player
The bowling is our real problem. I actually think we have some ok depth from a batsman perspective and I think we must stick with the ones we've got for now.
I woke up (on the settee) at about 4.30am and on the telly was highlights of 1986/7 Ashes. So I immediately thought that we'd been blown away in an hour an half. I had fallen asleep at 10pm whilst watching the 1984 TOTP recorded from BBC4, I'd been out at my family pre-Christmas dinner at my sisters in Greenwich. With my connections and my brother being a wine merchant it was a very convivial afternoon in Hyde Vale. So I'd had a good sleep and was now wide awake. I went into the kitchen to make a cuppa and then sat at the PC to see how bad we'd done. That's when I saw it had been raining and there had been no play! So I sat through all the chat and the blokes drying the pitch with what looked like leaf collectors and rubbed my hands as Malan saw off the first over. Then Bairstow went to his first ball of the day and the rest is history. I'll still be there for the first session at least for all days at the "G". That is an event whatever the state of the series. SCG will probably fade into insignificance for me.
On SKy coverage (BT is shit btw), they used to have the Sky Pie, made up of the 3 sessions in a Pie Chart, and i guess out of 45 Pie chunks (i know there would have been less) we probably have won......less than 10.
Look, I don't know who you and nor do I care. All I know is that you have spent the last 4 weeks trying to watch the Ashes for free somewhere whilst the rest of us pay for the pleasure. You are obviously very young and your knowledge of cricket is extremely limited and it is clear that you have never played the game and also seen very little of BT Sports coverage, in fact you have spent weeks slagging it off when it has actually better than Sky. Go and have some pie son.
The dynamic of this England side has definitely turned. The group do not appear to be tightly knit and I wonder if there's a bit of niggle there. For instance, Swanny mentioned that when the bowlers were struggling on Saturday morning the batsmen in the field were offering little support and seemed reluctant to try and pick them up.
The experienced captain Cook doesn't appear to be offering much advise to the relatively Green Root. Whether that's because Root wants to do things his own way and is distance himself from Cook or Cook doesn't want to help I don't know. Needs sorting.
In stark contrast to the Aussies. I have nothing but admiration for them. They got all so right. They are tough and made us look like, well whinging Poms! They took the piss out of us, undermined us and thrashed us. I wish we could show that attitude.
As a young player, why hone your red ball skills, whether it's solid batting, fast bowling or long spells of spin, when the county championship is shoved to the margins of the summer and you'll be playing in the second XI in the heart of the summer when all the T20 takes over?
As a young player, why hone your red ball skills, whether it's solid batting, fast bowling or long spells of spin, when the county championship is shoved to the margins of the summer and you'll be playing in the second XI in the heart of the summer when all the T20 takes over?
You'd have thought the Australian's face exactly the same issues but somehow they manage to produce test calibre players. What are they doing differently?
I have relatives in Australia & my parents have been over there a number of times over the last 25 years. My dad, who is a keen tennis player, says that the main difference is that every school had very good tennis courts, cricket facilities & every park had tennis courts, and they were filled with people playing.
You go into your local park in the UK & try to find a tennis court - and if you do no-one is on it. Most of the local parks I've taken my kids to are now filled with skateboard areas or play areas filled with zip wires.
We need to start engaging schoolchildren into sport again.
Only freak weather or rank complacency by Aus can prevent this series ending 5 nil, or require Aus to bat twice again in a match. This England squad needs a fortnight to take 20 wickets in Australian conditions and that's without any snowflake shirkers 'getting a sore finger' FFS. With the comparative abilities available to each side, retaining the Ashes was never on, winning even one match unlikely. With the level of professionalism and application delivered by those selected for England thumping defeats have been inevitable. If the team's best bowler can't bring himself to pitch the fucking ball in the batsman's half until they're already 540 for 4 the game is already up and I suspect something is desperately wrong in the dressing room. Jimmy's no quitter, he's no fool and he loves taking wickets but his first day/innings performances in the last 2 games have been baffling, to say the least. The lack of any free to air coverage has turned out to be a massive bonus. I'd have needed a new telly by now if I'd watched the shambling feckless tossers and then listened to the craven snivelling poppycock in the post debacle interviews. I love cricket but this series is a fiasco to match any I've witnessed so far. Vince, Stoneman, Malan and Bairstow might emerge with some credit and 3 of those haven't been immersed in the current pantomime for long, coincidence?
I have relatives in Australia & my parents have been over there a number of times over the last 25 years. My dad, who is a keen tennis player, says that the main difference is that every school had very good tennis courts, cricket facilities & every park had tennis courts, and they were filled with people playing.
You go into your local park in the UK & try to find a tennis court - and if you do no-one is on it. Most of the local parks I've taken my kids to are now filled with skateboard areas or play areas filled with zip wires.
We need to start engaging schoolchildren into sport again.
The facilities at Tonbridge School:
Tonbridge has unsurpassed sporting facilities: our Sports Centre provides national standard indoor facilities to supplement our outstanding outdoor facilities which include over 150 acres of superbly-maintained playing fields, three astro-turf pitches (two floodlit) and an all-weather athletics track. The quality of the facilities has meant that Tonbridge is regularly used by a variety of national governing bodies and was recognised as an Olympic training venue for London 2012.
The playing fields are prepared as 12 rugby pitches and 6 football pitches in the Michaelmas Term, 7 hockey pitches and 11 football pitches in the Lent Term and 9 cricket pitches in the Summer Term. In addition there are two Rackets courts, four squash courts, six Fives courts as well as 3 hockey pitches (Lent Term) and 24 Tennis courts (Summer Term) on the Astros. Sailing takes place on a nearby lake. There is an indoor small-bore shooting range on the School grounds and an outdoor full bore range off site.
Sports staff have access to the latest technical equipment for both games and individual movements, as well as the latest performance analysis programmes, allowing pupils and staff to take advantage of the latest developments.
Seven per cent of British children are privately educated and yet the percentage of the England squad privately educated for the last decade is nearer 70%.
If one compares the facilities at Tonbridge to the vast majority of state schools in this country who don't have any playing fields let alone high tech facilities or staff sufficiently qualified to coach sport, one can see the sort of pool we are fishing in when it comes to catering for cricket, tennis, golf etc etc
I have relatives in Australia & my parents have been over there a number of times over the last 25 years. My dad, who is a keen tennis player, says that the main difference is that every school had very good tennis courts, cricket facilities & every park had tennis courts, and they were filled with people playing.
You go into your local park in the UK & try to find a tennis court - and if you do no-one is on it. Most of the local parks I've taken my kids to are now filled with skateboard areas or play areas filled with zip wires.
We need to start engaging schoolchildren into sport again.
Don't disagree, but this talk gets trotted out every time we fail at another major sporting event. Problem is, apart from the Olympic year, successive governments are simply not interested. There are far far more important things to pi55 the tax payers money up the wall for.
When you consider many schools are shamefully asking parents to put their hands in their own pockets to buy kids text books and stationary it's hardly surprising that there's next to no cricket program let alone sod all facilities for them to play!
At the moment Britain is extraordinarily good at summer Olympic sports, to come 2nd in terms of gold medals, and 3rd in terms of medals (marginally behind China) is a massive over achievement really. I remember when anyone getting a gold medal would be a superstar, in 2016 we won 27 of them, over 3 times what Australia won. India won TWO medals in 2016, and came joint 67th with Mongolia!
So despite our failures at football and cricket (much of the time), we're still a very successful sporting nation in many sports. A lot of money and top coaching is behind this, thanks to the lottery.
At the moment Britain is extraordinarily good at summer Olympic sports, to come 2nd in terms of gold medals, and 3rd in terms of medals (marginally behind China) is a massive over achievement really. I remember when anyone getting a gold medal would be a superstar, in 2016 we won 27 of them, over 3 times what Australia won. India won TWO medals in 2016, and came joint 67th with Mongolia!
So despite our failures at football and cricket (much of the time), we're still a very successful sporting nation in many sports. A lot of money and top coaching is behind this, thanks to the lottery.
And this is a good thing.
coincidence or not the sports we have picked up success in aren't traditionally lucrative certainly not anywhere near football or cricket.
Sports at my school was a fucking shambles.
I boxed, played cricket, rugby, squash, swam and football as a kid and did only one of them for the school (football) a couple of times a term as they were the only games we had arranged. So all of my sporting endeavours were at the expense of my parents time and finances until I could pay for myself. The school facilities were shit, truly shit. I enjoyed the two or three times we played rugby in a tiny grassed area as that gave me a chance to flatten a couple of the supposed hard lads even though we played touch (i hate that format of the game). Cricket I remember playing once at school, so it was mostly running or tennis at about 10 to a court.
I did throw a discus a bloody long way a few times but even that stopped as the boys school played hockey on the red gravel stuff and my high school full of delinquent scum weren't trusted with hockey sticks so we didn't get a chance to do that either.
There just isn't the space or inclination from schools in the south east, especially ones at the thicker end of the scale to do much sporting-wise
On SKy coverage (BT is shit btw), they used to have the Sky Pie, made up of the 3 sessions in a Pie Chart, and i guess out of 45 Pie chunks (i know there would have been less) we probably have won......less than 10.
Look, I don't know who you and nor do I care. All I know is that you have spent the last 4 weeks trying to watch the Ashes for free somewhere whilst the rest of us pay for the pleasure. You are obviously very young and your knowledge of cricket is extremely limited and it is clear that you have never played the game and also seen very little of BT Sports coverage, in fact you have spent weeks slagging it off when it has actually better than Sky. Go and have some pie son.
Bl00dy hell, Riv, another convivial night with your brother ??
Firstly I ve been trying to watch it for 'free', coz BT wont allow me to watch it where I live (Luxembourg) - their words not mine. In actual fact, i'll have you know that I have been paying for BT Sport for approx. 1 year so that I would be able to watch The Ashes only for BT to drop that lovely bombshell on me on the first night.
Secondly, you accuse me of many things, all of which are incorrect - although I do so wish that one of them was correct !
At the moment Britain is extraordinarily good at summer Olympic sports, to come 2nd in terms of gold medals, and 3rd in terms of medals (marginally behind China) is a massive over achievement really. I remember when anyone getting a gold medal would be a superstar, in 2016 we won 27 of them, over 3 times what Australia won. India won TWO medals in 2016, and came joint 67th with Mongolia!
So despite our failures at football and cricket (much of the time), we're still a very successful sporting nation in many sports. A lot of money and top coaching is behind this, thanks to the lottery.
Funding for coaching and facilities for Olympic sports is a major factor with their success.
The issue with football is more to do with the limited opportunities for home grown talent to develop in the first team because the top sides want the finished product and will look abroad for that. However, if you are a talented youngster at a PL Club then you and your family will be offered "incentives" to stay with that Club.
For cricket, a player (or rather his parents) have to supply all the equipment, pay to play and to be coached. Even at county level (apart from the big two or three I suspect) all equipment including clothing up to age 18 and coaching is paid for by the parents - even the county trials have to be paid by them! £500 plus for bat, pads, gloves, helmet etc etc (and every year too because kids grow) and one can see quite why cricket is so limited so far as opportunity is concerned. And that's without the "luxury" of 121 coaching!
I woke up (on the settee) at about 4.30am and on the telly was highlights of 1986/7 Ashes. So I immediately thought that we'd been blown away in an hour an half. I had fallen asleep at 10pm whilst watching the 1984 TOTP recorded from BBC4, I'd been out at my family pre-Christmas dinner at my sisters in Greenwich. With my connections and my brother being a wine merchant it was a very convivial afternoon in Hyde Vale. So I'd had a good sleep and was now wide awake. I went into the kitchen to make a cuppa and then sat at the PC to see how bad we'd done. That's when I saw it had been raining and there had been no play! So I sat through all the chat and the blokes drying the pitch with what looked like leaf collectors and rubbed my hands as Malan saw off the first over. Then Bairstow went to his first ball of the day and the rest is history. I'll still be there for the first session at least for all days at the "G". That is an event whatever the state of the series. SCG will probably fade into insignificance for me.
1986 Ashes? 1984 Top of the Pops? That's all a bit modern for your usual tastes, isn't it?
Isn't cricket just a minority sport in England these days? I don't know, I'm just asking - I lost interest about 30 years ago!! Growing up in the 60's we were always out playing football in the winter and cricket in the summer I can't even remember the last time I saw boys playing cricket. Nobody at my son's state school in the noughties gave a fuck about cricket. Maybe the Ashes just means more to the Aussies in general.
Isn't cricket just a minority sport in England these days? I don't know, I'm just asking - I lost interest about 30 years ago Growing up in the 60's we were always out playing football in the winter and cricket in the summer I can't even remember the last time I saw boys playing cricket. Nobody at my son's state school in the noughties gave a fuck about cricket. Maybe the Ashes just means more to the Aussies in general.
In addition to the points I've made regarding the costs and facilities required to play cricket, there are two other issues - one is the fact that cricket can be dominated by three or four players and if those same boys get those opportunities week in week out then the rest of the team will, eventually, lose interest. This isn't the case with football.
However, you have hit the nail on the head so far as the division of seasons is concerned - in the pro domestic game the season used to finish on cup final day in the first week in May and didn't return 'til the final week of August. With kids football it seems to never end - in addition to the now elongated winter programme, teams seem to be involved in summer tournaments too.
Comments
I've been so sleep deprived for the 3 tests so far, ok I'm sat on a sofa as opposed to being there. The gutless way we have lost these tests has been exaggerated by how tired I've been the following days and I've held myself back from posting rambling vulgarity and bile.
Anderson has toiled away but there has really been no teeth to our bowling. When Broad and Anderson are patrolling either end and bowling with intent we look like taking 20 wickets comfortable. Whatever is going on with those two needs to stop. If it is that they have gotten old and their bodies are letting them down then we need to take them out of the team. I'm not sure this is the case with Anderson but Broad I think is not at the races mentally.
Cook has been targeted by the Aussies and I feel a bit sorry for him, Root the same and I worried that being captain and batsman would affect him negatively. Stoneman, Malan and Vince have learned some hard lessons.
Moeen Ali, I really like him, he's a good cricketer and has never hidden from his duty as the spinner even though I think he's had that role forced on him. His finger is in a mess at the moment and that is obviously affecting him and his capability to get revolution on the ball. I think he needs some time to let his finger heal up and he will come back as a really valuable player
The bowling is our real problem. I actually think we have some ok depth from a batsman perspective and I think we must stick with the ones we've got for now.
"Oh FFS"
I'll still be there for the first session at least for all days at the "G". That is an event whatever the state of the series. SCG will probably fade into insignificance for me.
Go and have some pie son.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/21805721/ecb-decade-errors-led-ashes-failure
You go into your local park in the UK & try to find a tennis court - and if you do no-one is on it. Most of the local parks I've taken my kids to are now filled with skateboard areas or play areas filled with zip wires.
We need to start engaging schoolchildren into sport again.
This England squad needs a fortnight to take 20 wickets in Australian conditions and that's without any snowflake shirkers 'getting a sore finger' FFS.
With the comparative abilities available to each side, retaining the Ashes was never on, winning even one match unlikely. With the level of professionalism and application delivered by those selected for England thumping defeats have been inevitable.
If the team's best bowler can't bring himself to pitch the fucking ball in the batsman's half until they're already 540 for 4 the game is already up and I suspect something is desperately wrong in the dressing room. Jimmy's no quitter, he's no fool and he loves taking wickets but his first day/innings performances in the last 2 games have been baffling, to say the least.
The lack of any free to air coverage has turned out to be a massive bonus. I'd have needed a new telly by now if I'd watched the shambling feckless tossers and then listened to the craven snivelling poppycock in the post debacle interviews.
I love cricket but this series is a fiasco to match any I've witnessed so far. Vince, Stoneman, Malan and Bairstow might emerge with some credit and 3 of those haven't been immersed in the current pantomime for long, coincidence?
Tonbridge has unsurpassed sporting facilities: our Sports Centre provides national standard indoor facilities to supplement our outstanding outdoor facilities which include over 150 acres of superbly-maintained playing fields, three astro-turf pitches (two floodlit) and an all-weather athletics track.
The quality of the facilities has meant that Tonbridge is regularly used by a variety of national governing bodies and was recognised as an Olympic training venue for London 2012.
The playing fields are prepared as 12 rugby pitches and 6 football pitches in the Michaelmas Term, 7 hockey pitches and 11 football pitches in the Lent Term and 9 cricket pitches in the Summer Term. In addition there are two Rackets courts, four squash courts, six Fives courts as well as 3 hockey pitches (Lent Term) and 24 Tennis courts (Summer Term) on the Astros. Sailing takes place on a nearby lake. There is an indoor small-bore shooting range on the School grounds and an outdoor full bore range off site.
Sports staff have access to the latest technical equipment for both games and individual movements, as well as the latest performance analysis programmes, allowing pupils and staff to take advantage of the latest developments.
Seven per cent of British children are privately educated and yet the percentage of the England squad privately educated for the last decade is nearer 70%.
If one compares the facilities at Tonbridge to the vast majority of state schools in this country who don't have any playing fields let alone high tech facilities or staff sufficiently qualified to coach sport, one can see the sort of pool we are fishing in when it comes to catering for cricket, tennis, golf etc etc
Problem is, apart from the Olympic year, successive governments are simply not interested.
There are far far more important things to pi55 the tax payers money up the wall for.
When you consider many schools are shamefully asking parents to put their hands in their own pockets to buy kids text books and stationary it's hardly surprising that there's next to no cricket program let alone sod all facilities for them to play!
So despite our failures at football and cricket (much of the time), we're still a very successful sporting nation in many sports. A lot of money and top coaching is behind this, thanks to the lottery.
coincidence or not the sports we have picked up success in aren't traditionally lucrative certainly not anywhere near football or cricket.
Sports at my school was a fucking shambles.
I boxed, played cricket, rugby, squash, swam and football as a kid and did only one of them for the school (football) a couple of times a term as they were the only games we had arranged. So all of my sporting endeavours were at the expense of my parents time and finances until I could pay for myself. The school facilities were shit, truly shit. I enjoyed the two or three times we played rugby in a tiny grassed area as that gave me a chance to flatten a couple of the supposed hard lads even though we played touch (i hate that format of the game). Cricket I remember playing once at school, so it was mostly running or tennis at about 10 to a court.
I did throw a discus a bloody long way a few times but even that stopped as the boys school played hockey on the red gravel stuff and my high school full of delinquent scum weren't trusted with hockey sticks so we didn't get a chance to do that either.
There just isn't the space or inclination from schools in the south east, especially ones at the thicker end of the scale to do much sporting-wise
Firstly I ve been trying to watch it for 'free', coz BT wont allow me to watch it where I live (Luxembourg) - their words not mine. In actual fact, i'll have you know that I have been paying for BT Sport for approx. 1 year so that I would be able to watch The Ashes only for BT to drop that lovely bombshell on me on the first night.
Secondly, you accuse me of many things, all of which are incorrect - although I do so wish that one of them was correct !
The issue with football is more to do with the limited opportunities for home grown talent to develop in the first team because the top sides want the finished product and will look abroad for that. However, if you are a talented youngster at a PL Club then you and your family will be offered "incentives" to stay with that Club.
For cricket, a player (or rather his parents) have to supply all the equipment, pay to play and to be coached. Even at county level (apart from the big two or three I suspect) all equipment including clothing up to age 18 and coaching is paid for by the parents - even the county trials have to be paid by them! £500 plus for bat, pads, gloves, helmet etc etc (and every year too because kids grow) and one can see quite why cricket is so limited so far as opportunity is concerned. And that's without the "luxury" of 121 coaching!
I don't know, I'm just asking - I lost interest about 30 years ago!!
Growing up in the 60's we were always out playing football in the winter and cricket in the summer
I can't even remember the last time I saw boys playing cricket.
Nobody at my son's state school in the noughties gave a fuck about cricket.
Maybe the Ashes just means more to the Aussies in general.
However, you have hit the nail on the head so far as the division of seasons is concerned - in the pro domestic game the season used to finish on cup final day in the first week in May and didn't return 'til the final week of August. With kids football it seems to never end - in addition to the now elongated winter programme, teams seem to be involved in summer tournaments too.