I think I read somewhere he was injured & Steve Smith came in at four. If not then it's pretty poor. Phil Hughes made 50 unfortunately which buys him another 12 months of failure before he gets dropped. Actually given we have pretty much lost the series, before this test I was thinking that the worst case scenario for us with the Ashes coming up was for both Phil Hughes and Steve Smith to make runs so that they remain in the side

Re. Hussey retiring, I don't know whose fault it was but it was definitely handled really poorly. I highly doubt the selectors would have pushed Ponting into retirement if they had of known Hussey was going to give it away. Then again our selectors seem like idiots and have proved countless times over the last four years that they are capable of making decisions that defy all logic.

It will be interesting how the batting looks for the Ashes now that Hughes and Smith have made runs.

Apparently Mike Hussey did not trust the selectors enough to tell them of his plans. He thought he'd be dropped if he did. The selectors should have assured him that he would get a place on the Ashes tour and they could have agreed to let him skip the India tour to spend time with his family. Punter was a great but the runs had started to dry up. Are any of the old players like Jaques still around ? He looked very promising. Australia had no chance in India without decent spinners. That's how England won there.

LOL OZ

I ****ing loathe the "barmy army" and the sooner some despotic regime (eg Bernie Hogan-Howe's met at The Oval) takes out the trumpeter the better.

The barmy army were great when England were rubbish. Now its too annoying.

Great to see a traditional England, desperately hanging in there type performance.

15 overs to go. Time for a few hundred renditions of the great escape.

no else suffering with me?

3 overs 1 wicket left

lol monty on strike next over?

This gonan b gud.

such a great end to such a bad series

Monty

monteeeeee

Bleh single first ball.

Should've taken a single off the 5th.

How do they not have a short leg?

lol NZ commentators telling the fielders to kick it. GJGE.

prior shoudl tell Monty to lay down in his crease

MONTS!

Great stuff.

lol at nz for batting for 2 hrs too long

fyp

follow on or go smack it around for 20 overs both acceptable. almost 60 overs not acceptable

Its not like the pitch was a day 5 minefield either where batting second is unacceptable

Lol nz lol australia as well

Gif/video of Monty's dive anywhere?

Enforcing the follow on was probably optimal given the conditions. It was an unprecedented situation for the current crop of NZ cricketers, so they probably panicked and chose wrong.

I'm not sure about the follow-on really, what they did may have made sense but not when they batted on so long. It's just impossible for England to get anywhere near that many runs in that time given their slow scoring batting line up - either they lose wickets early and are pretty much screwed, or they don't and they bat out time from the start. Wasted chance for NZ.

Just noticed that Eng batted around 23 more overs in the match. Stay fit Pieterson, we need someone other than Prior to score quickly.

I don't think NZ has the cojones to ever declare before a lead of 400+. Teams that don't win often have negative mindsets and always like ensure a draw before declaring.

Follow on takes that out of the equation.

Truth is they probably didn't trust themselves to chase 150-200 without major hiccups and it could've cost them the game.

I think Matt Prior gluing the bails to the stumps was clearly the difference here.

http://i.minus.com/iDP0jQEltldBF.gif