**Official** Sri Lanka in England / Scotland - 2011

[Howe_zat]

****'s sake, Strauss.

 

[Uppercut]

Zaheer is going to eat him alive.

 

[wpdavid]

Maybe. But they'd have been dead pissed off with it at 84/4. Or at 22/0 for that matter. No need to be so selective.

Nice lecture at the end there mate. If you disagree, fine, but lets leave out that sort of stuff eh?

 

[GIMH]

Strauss's form a big worry

 

[Uppercut]

Err no. 4/40 is pretty bad but 180 is still not great, and you'd not be happy with <200. Slightly less **** is still ****.

Hmm, Strauss...

Leaves Sri Lanka in the game, though. Even if they were to get England out for 250, if the sun comes out in England a 70 run lead can start to look quite trivial.

 

[vcs]

Cook looks so assured right now.

 

[Spark]

Leaves Sri Lanka in the game, though. Even if they were to get England out for 250, if the sun comes out in England a 70 run lead can start to look quite trivial.

True. But anyone who's happy with putting up 180 first dig is kidding themselves, really. It's still a pretty bad score.

 

[Burgey]

Strauss not a fan of the out-of-form-but-ground-out 50 is he? Such a rocks or diamonds player.

 

[Uppercut]

Decent over from Lakmal, that.

 

[BoyBrumby]

There you go - Strauss is a tactical genius and we take it all back.

Shame he seems to have forgotten where his off stump is tho.

Zaheer is going to eat him alive.

Looking that way, yeah.

His form against the cack handers is genuinely very worrying now. If a lesser talent like Wele can exploit it one worries for him facing the real McCoy.

 

[Neil Pickup]

It will be interesting to see what Strauss does during the ODI series when he's back with Middlesex.

 

[wpdavid]

True. But anyone who's happy with putting up 180 first dig is kidding themselves, really. It's still a pretty bad score.

Sure, and no-one's saying they'd have taken it at the start of the innings. But when your top four including your two bests batters have gone for less than 40, you're left with one guy with a healthy overall test average but much less so outside the SC and looking all over the place in this series, a kid who's probably a place too high at 6 and numbers 7 to 9 probably a couple of places too high, all in thoroughly helpful conditions for the bowlers ....... SL will know as well as anyone that they could very easily have been facing an absolute disaster.

Instead, they have a score that's unquestionably low but might keep them somewhere in the game if things go their way in equally helpful conditions now that England are batting.

 

[Howe_zat]

Strauss not a fan of the out-of-form-but-ground-out 50 is he? Such a rocks or diamonds player.

Very true. And more worrying is that last time this happened he had to be dropped before getting his form back.

 

[GIMH]

I felt we should have been looking to get them out for 130 or so. We did let them off a bit at the end I thought.

 

[vcs]

The level of analysis you get on SkySports is really very good. Interesting discussion going on about using the new ball and seam position.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Sure, and no-one's saying they'd have taken it at the start of the innings. But when your top four including your two bests batters have gone for less than 40, you're left with one guy with a healthy overall test average but much less so outside the SC and looking all over the place in this series, a kid who's probably a place too high at 6 and numbers 7 to 9 probably a couple of places too high, all in thoroughly helpful conditions for the bowlers ....... SL will know as well as anyone that they could very easily have been facing an absolute disaster.

Instead, they have a score that's unquestionably low but might keep them somewhere in the game if things go their way in equally helpful conditions now that England are batting.

Yeah, inclined to agree. A draw away at St James Park isn't an awful result, but when the visitors had been 4-0 up it'd be disingenous to say Newcastle wouldn't be delighted with a point.

Purely hypothetical example.

 

[Spark]

I felt we should have been looking to get them out for 130 or so. We did let them off a bit at the end I thought.

Generally speaking when Dilhara bloody Fernando scores almost 40, something's gone a bit awry.

 

[vcs]

It seems like Cook hasn't played and missed at one in about a decade now. FFS, do something wrong. Anything.

 

[Uppercut]

It seems like Cook hasn't played and missed at one in about a decade now. FFS, do something wrong. Anything.

Haha, he's done a Kallis and become so good it's got boring to watch.

 

[Howe_zat]

Lakmal coming round the wicket to Trott already.

It's going to be a long day.