lol bhogle kept saying debutant is hitting sixes and I was like wtf can't he see Dravid is on strike?. Then I realised he was actually talking about Rahul..

Tough to imagine Dravid being a debutant at anything at this stage of his career..

Wow India might actually win a match here.

another chance for bopara and patel to make sure we lose a match comfortably. prove me wrong plz

Morgan says hi.

omfg Samit Patel is a fat jabba

butnahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yeah its pretty close but I like our position actually given the pitch looks like its going to be an absoloute nightmare to bat last on. I am not sure how big a mistake it was not playing two spinners, the conditions are obviously very spin friendly but in all likelyhood both of our spinners arent up to the level and versus batsmen who have grown up batting to good spin, even on spiinning decks I can see playing them both as a pretty big liability. If we're really desperate Michael Clarke can bowl his little darts anyway.

Hauritz isnt in the sqaud because he doesnt know how to make the ball spin, he's more like a very slow medium pacer than a spin bowler. The guy who should be playing is Jason Krezjar who is a pretty big turner for a finger spinnner but does get pretty loose. He had prety bad tour with Australia A by all accounts and got dopped for the two net bowlers despite being contracted, which is going to destroy his confidence even more.

We are so ****ed when Mike Hussey retires though.

Not a bad debut for Nathan Lyon, amazing that the guy has only played 5 first class matches before.

yeah it was pretty impressive by the net bowel, his first ball ever in test cricket wasnt to bad.

I wasn't exactly spot on here — so much for my dream career as a cricket pundit

wp convicts tho

Has there ever been test matches played in "neutral" countries? I was watching the highlights of Sri Lanka vs the crooks and was thinking how when england play countries like Aus/NZ etc they rarely/never? play on the type of pitch that you get in Sri Lanka/India etc, which is a bit of a shame.

AFAIK, the first Tests played on neutral territory were almost a century ago, when Australia and South Africa played three matches against each other in the 1912 Triangular tournament in England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_Triangular_Tournament


The final of the Asian Test Championship in 1999, between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, was played in Bangladesh.

Also, Pakistan played two Tests in England last summer, part of a Pakistani tour which included the series against England which finished in the infamous no-ball shenanigans in the 4th Test at at Lord's.


There may also be others, though I don't know of them.

Just realised, it can be searched through Statsguru on cricinfo.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/eng...ults;type=team

This link gives a match-by-match breakdown of every Test match played at a neutral venue. The total currently stands at 13, but this will increase again in early in the New Year, when England will be playing Pakistan in UAE, although it seems at present that exact dates for this series haven't yet been finalised.

Cricinfo is such a beast.

FWIW Matt Hayden played one of the GOAT innings in 50 degree Celcius in Sharjah vs the Pakistani's around 2002 or so. He made a century, we got rolled I think for around 200 or so, while bowling out them out for something like 62 and 58.

I remember watching some of that on TV. You could almost see the heat and seam bowlers were bowling 1 or 2 over spells some of the time. Shoaib was seriously quick though when he did bowl.

Reading a book about spin bowling called "Twirlymen" by Amon Rajan.

Highly recommended. Lots of interesting info even for the cricket geek e.g. I had no idea that pre-war most spinners bold at medium pace.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twirlymen-Un...4977114&sr=1-1

Starting to get nervous, stopped watching yestarday cause the match seemed over but if Sri LAnka win this it will be an all time great performance.

aus win but good fight from the sri lankans...

**** don't like bresnan as a one day bowler- especially as an opening bowler. need a wickettaker to open the bowling but bres never does anything.

i disagree with nearly everything england do in odi cricket. i cant stand this

You can see why India are the best at one day cricket. They actually know how to pace an innings. England just wouldn't start turning the screw enough with 4 down in the 42nd - they'd keep it even paced, then throw away a bunch of wickets throwing the bat in the last 4.

Definitely threw away those wickets.

I was just reading the iconic sports photos thread and it reminded me of a cricket photo I saw a long time ago. I know it's not iconic but I thought it was one of the coolest sports photos I've ever seen. It was in like The Times or The Mail and from some tour England were on in the mid-late 90's - I think maybe South Africa (maybe India) - it was from a warm up match on some barren, rural ground, with Mike Atherton leaning on his bat and a lone cow grazing in the background. It was black and white (as most pictures from newspapers were in the old days ), and was very, very cool imho. I wish I could find it online.

On of my favourite cricket pictures: