You will probably get great odds at betfair for it too

haha, pcbs chairman of cricket, Ijaz Butt, coming out with a load of random accusations against the english team. http://www.cricinfo.com/england-v-pa...ry/477814.html

This guy is hilarious. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was in some way behind a lot of the fixing involved with the pakistan team. Interesting article by cricinfo about him from a year ago basically forseeing his ******eness. http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/con...ry/417134.html

Andy, I think you may just get your wish after this. Its just staggering

Yeah I totally agree now. Before, I thought it would punish Pakistan cricket fans unfairly but when the people who run Pakistan cricket are such incompetant childish morons who can't even accept there is a problem how on earth will things get better. If you were setting England's schedule what would it take to arrange another home series with Pakistan if the same people are in charge?

The problem isn't just PCB. Corruption is endemic in Pakistani society, it's a way of life. When you are constantly exposed to it from a young age you see it as normal and it's going to be very hard to change such perceptions.

last odi today. ashes squad to be named tomorrow, any thoughts on who you;d like to be selected?

2nd spinner is quite interesting with tredwell, panesar and rashid all in contention. Of course the performance squad will be out in australia as well so will act basically as a second xi, so the selection of this squad could be the more interesting.

tbh, England need to wrap Swann up in cotton wool. I'd not feel too confident with any of those against Oz in a typical Oz wicket so I can't see them ever picking two spinners. I guess England have seamers who can bat so they could go with Monty. I like the thought of Rashid but I reckon he'd get smashed all over the place at this stage of his career. I'll also be interested in the second keeper they pick.

two spinners at the scg is almost mandatory.... does pieterson still bowl a decent % of the time?

I want the poms to bring over harmison, trescothic and nasser one more time lol...

how can anyone be expected to take cricket seriously after all the recent revelations?

ok the Pakistanis got caught for now, but who will it be next?

Did you say the same thing about football after Grobelaar got caught?

England will only play one spinner. I'd say the second one will be mostly on the performance squad and I'd say it will probably be Panesar.

someone stalking me?

Yo, prz to not be posting PMs, show some respect for the "P" in "PM". Thanks.

Not if you haven't got two who are good enough. If you pick a 2nd spinner simply because "it's mandatory on such-and-such a ground" then you might be picking someone who's not good enough for Test cricket, leaving you with 10 men and a passenger. God knows we've done that often enough in the past, picking the the likes of Peter Such, Ronnie Irani, Chris Lewis, Mark Ealham and far too many others.

Pietersen, Trott, Bell and Collingwood can all turn their arm over at varying paces if needed to fill some overs. Trott has a 1st class 7-for.


As for spinners, I still can't work out how the hell anyone can seriously suggest taking Panesar. He's not that good as a spinner; OK, he can tweak it a bit and he's left handed, whic is a slightly unusual line, but he can't set a field, he can't vary his delivery speed, he doesn't flight it enough......

Add to that the fact that he would still bat #11 in most decent Saturday league teams and he still gets a cheer for performing a successful long barrier stop in the field and I can't really see the point.


I'd rather see Rashid going on the Lions tour and getting games; you don't learn much by carrying drinks and susbtitute fielding.

thats what i meant by if pieterson can bowl a bit. Havent watched a heap of english cricket, but you need to have slow options at the scg, which is fine if your bats can somewhat bowl....

Don't worry, our seamers plus Swanny will be more than good enough to mop up that ragged bunch of sloggers you call a batting line-up

on phone but someone needs to post the ITS ON!!! pic from south park imo...

England Ashes Test squad:
Andrew Strauss (captain, Middlesex), Alastair Cook (vice-captain, Essex), James Anderson (Lancashire), Ian Bell (Warwickshire), Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Paul Collingwood (Durham), Steven Davies (wk, Surrey), Steven Finn (Middlesex), Eoin Morgan (Middlesex), Monty Panesar (Sussex), Kevin Pietersen (Hampshire), Matt Prior (wk, Sussex), Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire), Chris Tremlett (Surrey), Jonathan Trott (Warwickshire).

No real surprises there, but Rashid not even in the performance squad which is a big surprise to me

Roll on Brisbane

no ramprakash or harmison. wtf is wrong with the selectors. sack the lot of them

I guess you have to go with Australia, especially since they're at home. I kind of feel like there's some good value at the -140 or thereabouts which is around. Question for me is the English attack.

On the other hand England's best players are healthy or at least should be, while the Aussies have a tough tour of India coming up. That should be something of a bonus.

the india tour was supposed to be 7 odis iirc and was changed to 2 tests plus some pyjama stuff so thats a plus imo....

3-1 australia i think is the likeliest result. Australia are obviously nowhere as strong as 4 years ago, england probably on a par with their team of 4 years ago. I;m more worried with englands batting rather than their bowling, strauss, cook, bell, collingwood, pietersen all played last time and we lost 5-0 and probably only bell has really improved out of the 5. Out of the bowlers, swann is a brilliant bowler who is uber confident. Anderson is much improved and will no longer go at 4.5 runs per over regardless of the conditions. Broad is a confirmed beast who i think will thrive in australia. Finn will get hit all over the place and be replaced by the 3rd test imo

If either Broad or Swann get injured, our chances go close to 0

bump for australias tour of india. Approaching end of day 2. Aus made 428, ind now 106ish-2.....

Why this tour is on around the same time as the comm games i dont know

boring, boring australia grinding it out. who'd have thought. only joking.

I see hauritz and smith got completely trashed in the warm up game and sehwag got after hauritz yesterday, thats a real worry in this series for australia because obviously you're going to need spinners to bowl a lot of overs, also a positive for england leading into the ashes

Watson dropped second ball of the match and makes his third ton of the tour so far.

Nice to see him using up all his rungood ahead of the Ashes