pasag said:
Yes! Australia regain the Ashes and show everyone why we are the best side in the world. We’ve blown England out of the water outclassing them at nearly every opportunity.
Take that England. Take that all of those posters who have rubbed 2005 in over the past year and a bit. Take that Ian Botham. 3-0. YAY! I’m getting trashed tonight.
The Ashes are back where they belong!!!
I do feel for some of the English fans here, having to put up with dire selections, rubbish decisions and poor overall team management. Also, feel for those blokes coming from England paying thousands of dollars to see this.
Just in case anyone missed it, it’s 3-0.
3-0 is what I picked as the final tally for the series, so I think I'm gonna be wrong unless England can manufacture a couple of draws from Melbourne and Sydney. Highly unlikely, methinks. And you never know, England might snatch one if our intensity significantly drops - I think this Aussie team really wants to rub the Poms' nose in it after the previous loss though, and I haven't really expected the Poms to win one this time round.
And yes, you have to sympathise with the selection screwups, though I don't really think it would have changed the results (I guess there's a possibility they may have gotten a draw in Adelaide, though the manner in which they turned that into a loss didn't have an awful lot to do with that issue) up to this point. Obviously there's no doubt based on just this test that Panesar should have been in the team from the start, and the fact that Geraint has been on the selection committee is something of a farce.
The fact is though, that this outfit, even with the better players in the squad taking their places in the lineup are substantially weaker (certainly in form) than last time - and while we may have hoped for a tight contest, I think a lot of us suspected well before it started that we wouldn't get one. To be fair though, if this were played in England, I'm sure things would have been different.
Pretty pleased with Ponting's declaration this match - he knew he might need a fair amount of time to bowl the opposition out, and he didn't overkill it. He still has a tendency towards over-defensiveness in the field at times, but so does Flintoff, really.