England are regressing towards the mean. Lookiing a very average side atm.

No worries for England. They will bat for 5 sessions, then bowl out SL.

(And yes, I've scrubbed out what happened against Pakistan from my memory banks.)

Galle is not a flat pitch in recent times. It produces a lot of low scoring games. Batting in the second innings will be very hard. SL already favorites on betfair. Anything over 300 and they are sitting pretty.

Morne Morkel is absolutely ****ing on NZ, I thought for sure that they waited too long to declare but now they have over 40 overs to get the last 5 wickets.

It's a slow pitch. I will be surprised if SL bowl England out cheaply. Time will tell.

When I first saw the fact that RSA had a 199 run lead I thought NZ had set up a sporting first innings declaration to possibly force a result, and was mentally congratulating them on making a game of it, but then realised it was just LOLbatting.

Exciting finish.

Shame the RSA vs NZ series ran so early. Would have been pretty cool having almost 24hr coverage of cricket for a few weeks.

6am-1pm NZ vs RSA
12:30pm-8pm SRI vs ENG
9pm-4:30am WI vs AU

Perth times... LOL sleep...

2007 they bowled out England for 81 at Galle (day 4) but rain on day 5 led to a draw. Historically it's a crumbling wicket. Not flat like the SSC in Colombo.

Cerrent SL attack worries me, I don't see who can take the wickets?

Murali and Vaas took almost as many wickets between them as Warne and McGrath. They don't have many bowlers to fear this time around.

Is Patel a regular test batsman?

If he isn't then England's tail looks really long to me atm.

Yes his batting is stronger than his bowling. I expected him to get the no 6 position. England have a strong tail in Broad and Swann so imo they don't really need six batsmen plus Prior.

I got no clue why the hell they need 3 spinners either.

Patel's first class avg. is 41 so I guess he's a genuine lower order bat.

Herath, apparently.

I suppose England would have a chance if they were chasing ~250, but they'd have to bat as well as they ever have in the last few years, and I don't see that happening atm.

Who was it that said England would probably whitewash the subcontinent teams in the forthcoming series?

Um yea..

If they lose this test 2 number 1 sides this year would've lost 4 consecutive tests abroad. Lol test rankings.

Our batting is just woeful right now.

SL have already won this match. We cant chase down anything.

Clearly learned nothing from the Pakistan matches.

I really thought that Eng looked better in the one day games against Pak and the winter experience would help them. Oh well.

To be fair though, SL haven't batted great either except for one player and his knock is probably going to be the difference.

Announcement...

West Indies vs Australia T20 is on today in just over an hours time, and the second game is on Friday.

Btw why is India going to SA to play a one off t20?

No idea.

A few years ago (maybe around 2004) Australia and New Zealand agreed to play each other in a series of ODI's every year, alternating home and away. Maybe they have a similar agreement?

I dont know if that is still going, but I think NZ is the country we haven't been to in the longest, now that we are currently in the Caribbean.

Interesting spot today in our indoor cricket game.

We bat first, make about 140, standard stuff.

We bowl, after 15 overs they have the score covered, but a wicket or two gets us back in the match.

3 balls to go, we are 8 runs behind. Ash12 runs in to bowl



/csb

I've never understood why trying to run the non-striker out is against the spirit of the game, but being a 1/4 of the way down the pitch before the ball is bowled isn't.

Yup, someone is halfway down the pitch, he's getting mankaded end of story.

Yeah, this basically IMO was my thinking.

It was unfortunate because

1) I was originally going to bowl the second last over, where it wouldnt have looked so desparate being behind and with as little left to go in the match.

2) I was going to warn him on the first one, had he just taken one or two steps in motion. But unfortunately he was almost halfway down the pitch that I thought I had to claim it, because I know for one had someone on my team not run the guy out, I would have been kinda pissed. While I did actually tell my keeper from across the pitch "I might try Mankad him off the second ball" I never actually did the delivery stride, pause, and stern warning that is expected.

I dont really care that much, but I would do it again.

It just kinda adds to my "Ash is too competitive for social sport" since I was given a heap of abuse when I used to play as an indoor soccer keeper and would loudly claim "Mine" basically when a ball was 50/50 between me and a striker.

Meh, Im a dick, haters gunna hate.

The fact the game was C Grade, lowest level of competition, probably makes me a scumbag, but what can you do?

Totally fine. I'd do the same. I remember playing indoor cricket at university and some douche would always try stuff like this. Lol at getting heat for this.