*Official* Fifth Test at The Oval

[tooextracool]

Outstanding bowling from England, Broad has bowled as well as I've ever seen him bowl, with excellent support from Swanny. Still a long way to go in this game, there will certainly be no chickens being counted on my part!

However, all the chat about 332 being below par, the lambasting of England's middle order, who, when you look at both sides after they've batted on this pitch, did a pretty good job!

There is little point in looking at both sides to decide how one batted. For one, Australia didn't pick a spinner, which may just go on to eat at Ponting's mind for the rest of his career. And Australia just didn't bowl that well to dismiss England for 332 tbh. England gifted a lot of their wickets away with poor strokes or pokes at deliveries that didn't need to be played with.

 

[Burgey]

FMD bring back Shakoor Rana. This ****'s eyes are painted on.

He's missed that by half a foot ffs. No like it was a near thing.

 

[NUFAN]

Poor umpiring, forgot to mention how obvious North edged the ball for his lbw too, umpires just got caught up in the atmosphere I think.

 

[sledger]

Wow, the last couple of hours have been some of the worst few hours of Cricket I have watched as an Australian supporter in my life.

Broad was absolutely brilliant, amazing to think that he's already got as many 5-fors as Freddy has in his entire career.

I still have some extremely optimistic hope that Australia will win this.

It's far from over imo, it's England's to lose now, but a good performance from the ball could really make for a thrilling final innings.

 

[four_or_six]

Gah sick of this, every time one team bowls well its all "nah nah nah the batsmen were ****, bowlers weren't special" and vice versa. Give the opposition a bit of credit ffs.

This.

Awesome bowling from us here, the Aussies have a really good batting line-up at the moment and I didn't think we could get them out for this little.

 

[Matt79]

This has been the worst umpired series I can remember - I think both teams have been extremely hardly done by at different times.

 

[SirBloody Idiot]

Acid Ralph indeed.

 

[sledger]

FMD bring back Shakoor Rana. This ****'s eyes are painted on.

He's missed that by half a foot ffs. No like it was a near thing.

Yeah good grief that was bad, when I first saw it I thought he had given him for leg before, bit of a joke decision.

 

[Uppercut]

At Lord's and now here we have just been diabolical, at Edgbaston we were done in by some excellent swing bowling, so won't blame the batsmen much for that, but today after lunch we just went into a shell as if we were playing on a minefield and led to this situation, I'm not taking any credit away from Broad, I think he bowled very smartly, but there is no way in hell we should be losing 8 wickets is one session, there simply no excuse for that.

Well obviously 8 wickets is a lot to lose, but when the bowling's that good you'll be losing 4-8 a session, largely dependent on whether things go your way. When Clarke gets caught an inch off the ground at cover, Huss gets a marginal lbw and North gets a shocking lbw, things just aren't going for you. It's just how it goes.

 

[Johnners]

Rauf deciding that the best appraoch to one-upping Billy on the worst decision tally is quantity over quality.

 

[pup11]

Just don't know whether there is much left for an Australian to watch and cheer in this Ashes series, we are in such a bad position now that even good solid resilient cricket won't bail us out of this predicament, so unless it rains for the next 2-3 days, I think it pretty safe to say that, no matter what we do, or no matter how well we play from here, the Ashes are gone.

 

[Matt79]

Gah sick of this, every time one team bowls well its all "nah nah nah the batsmen were ****, bowlers weren't special" and vice versa. Give the opposition a bit of credit ffs.

This.

Awesome bowling from us here, the Aussies have a really good batting line-up at the moment and I didn't think we could get them out for this little.

Didn't you two get the memo? All the good bowlers disappeared around 2001, apart from McGrath and Murali. Any batsman getting out to anyone other than those two has thrown his wicket away, what with the flattening of pitches etc.

 

[Matt79]

Just don't know whether there is much left for an Australian to watch and cheer in this Ashes series, we are in such a bad position now that even good solid resilient cricket won't bail us out of this predicament, so unless it rains for the next 2-3 days, I think it pretty safe to say that, no matter what we do, or no matter how well we play from here, the Ashes are gone.

You can't stop watching just cause we're losing!

 

[Jamee999]

It'd be better to get good umpires than a referral system

 

[Uppercut]

It'd be better to get good umpires than a referral system

Judging by the pathetic mismanagement of the system in the West Indies, we desperately need both.

 

[Johnners]

M00bs should let got of the bat mid-swing, somehow taking out Strauss, so he's already bowling at Englands tail when the innings change

 

[Son Of Coco]

Haha, come off it. You wouldn't get bowling of the quality Broad produced today.

For me it's been the story of one team with sub-standard bowlers and one team with sub-standard batsmen.

It's been mediocre at times, very mediocre. Not the standard you'd expect. I've found it hard to get overly excited for the most part as the quality hasn't been there like it was in 2005 or 06/07 (from one team at least).

To have the top runscorers, batting averages, 6 more hundreds and leading wicket-takers and still be losing you have to have had some very poor sessions.

Although at least some of that could change after this test. Australia do have a chance to rectify this in the next innings they (and Broad) have made it very hard for themselves.

 

[Burgey]

It'd be better to get good umpires than a referral system

Why can't we have both tbh?

 

[silentstriker]

Well, gotta give it to the umpires. They are showcasing beautifully why this is the last series without referrals.

This has been the worst umpired series I can remember

Short memory?

It'd be better to get good umpires than a referral system

Good luck with that. The standard of umpiring is actually pretty good, and while it could be better, it's almost impossible to get a lot more right than they do using the naked eye in real time.

 

[Jono]

Australia.

Comical collapse