Can't see the aussies lasting to long now the ball is doing to much

And don't worry once it stops doing things it will get changed

****

Glen mcgrath must be furious.

Lol England and then reviewing it

Seriously dark out there

My quick weather investiagation has said there is no more rain due. This should be exciting with it being overcast and lots of swing.

lol win viz thing has England 48% to win, Aus 34% and Draw 18%

Betfair exchange has Aus 4/5 to win, Draw 3/1 and England 7/2

Edit: make that Aus 1/2 favs now

Smith gone big wicket

Eng now odds on again

Reminder, Australia hasn't won a test series in England since 2001.

They can thank the rain they still have the urn.

Broad hit the final ball he faced as a batter for six and with his final ball as a bowler took a wicket to win the Test.

thank ****ing god we pulled that off, we were 7/1 at one point. losing the series 3-1 would've been inexplicable given the balance of play

yesterday at about 3:30pm was probably the most depressed i've ever been as an england fan and there's some ****ing stiff competition for that

bairstow taking the catch to dismiss carey and finish the series is a nice touch

2-2 **** off

khawaja robbed of the player of the series award. woakes got it.

Woakes and Starc both got it

Batters get MOTM

Bowlers get MOTS

It's been a great Ashes.

I'm full of what ifs right now:

Picking Foakes
No rain at Manchester
Stokes almost catch at Edgbaston

It's easy to think that England should have won this at a canter but there's probably just as many what ifs on the Australian side:

If Lyon wasn't injured
If England didn't always have the best of the conditions
If England didn't get a favourable rain break at The Oval
If England didn't get that ball change

So 2-2 is probably a fair result at the end of it all. So many close games, so much on and off the field drama. Broad retiring was the final twist when you thought things might be calming down finally.

Some highlights for me:

Broad final ball faced hit for 6.
Broad final ball bowled won the test.
Mo getting to 3000 runs and 200 wickets.
Crawley having a hell of a series.
Woakes and Wood sustained success.

So many stats I'm sure will come out about this series but possibly my favourite is that England batted 656.2 overs and Australia batted 906.4

Great series guys. Have no clue who will be fit and in form next time we clash swords but I'm looking forward to it.

Proposal: add a sixth day when weather significantly affects tests but to avoid messing with schedules/player recovery play the 6th day(s) after the 5th test has finished. E.g. this series they'd play a day in Manchester in a couple of days to decide the series.

It would cost a lot of money to add 6th days to tests

I have in my mind that in the days when there was a Sunday rest day, you could play on that day if you’d already missed a certain amount of time.

(Back in the dark ages, all tests started on Thursday and went to Tuesday with Sunday as a rest day)

But I may be wrong

https://www.espncricinfo.com/cricket...-batting-stats

Pat Cummins' average and strike rate have both now dropped for the third successive year. They've fallen off a cliff this year. He's now the wrong side of 30.

Bundy says Retire!

Playing out the final sessions of an Ashes series in front of a sparse crowd in a different venue is a very bad idea.

No, you're not wrong. And there were no back to back Tests.

Barely the dark ages. The famous 1981 ashes had some rest days. Who can forget the bbq

Venue would still be full - great commercial outcome for ECB. Local community would support as pubs would do a big trade

There was someone in here who claimed Joe Root is England’s greatest test batsman so I just assumed that anything pre 1990 must be pre-historic


But yes, I thought of the bbq when I made that post too. What incredible times

We ditched the Sunday day off in 1992 with the series against Pakistan.
I was at Lords for the first Sunday play there. 17 wickets in the day.

Wow. I was there as well That was my first day at a test match ever.

Amazing day