***Official*** Australia in England (The Ashes)

[FaaipDeOiad]

At the end of the day, 2 best teams in the world should be umpired by 2 best umpires and we have not seen that. For all I care, they could bring Shep and Dickie Bird out of retirement (or any 2 other current English test umpires) as the current crop of neutrals simply are not up to scratch.

I think Dar and Bowden have largely been excellent, with only a few mistakes. Bucknor and Koertzen have been consistently poor.

 

[Slow Love™]

That's the reason I brought up the conspiricy theories rather than just talking about poor umpiring decisions. Many people, particularly New Zealand fans, claimed that the umpires were either purposely or subconciously favouring the Australian team and that was why Australia were having the best of the decisions. There were even individual threads full of flame wars about it.

There have been some Australians who have done similar things in this series, but largely they haven't, which is why the situations are different. Talking in a thread about cricket and having people go on and on (a-la Nuffy and Shane Warne in this thread) about how the umpires are cheating and favouring one team and that's why all the results in the series have gone the way they have and so on is extremely annoying and people who do that tend to get criticised a lot.

I would say that your recollection of this is poor. There are always a few trolls that are super extreme - but I can vouch for the fact that when I (and others who were not irrational conspiracy theorists) criticized decisions in Australia's favor myself in those series, the 'shut up" attitude was just as forthcoming. IMO, my comment on the parochial nature of people's perspective is very solid, and your somewhat kneejerk defense of Australian supporters on this issue isn't doing a lot to change my mind.

Australia have had the worst of the umpiring in this series, but they'd had a number of things go their way as well, and they had the best of the umpiring in the Australian summer at home. Against New Zealand, Australia had the best of the umpiring in the home test series, but when it went to New Zealand it evened up a fair bit. In India, Australia had the best of the umpiring early in the series, but as it wore on it evened up a bit.

That's what people mean when they say it evens out - poor umpiring decisions go against everyone eventually, they don't universally favour one team or another any more than injuries or weather or any other form of bad luck does.

Not that I even believe this, because things like this are in fact far less likely to end up 50/50 than they are to favor one party over another, but to make such a vague claim as to things "evening up" is essentially valueless. Some umpiring mistakes are relatively unimportant and cost little. Some can be catastrophic. That's the nature of the game. And if a set of umpiring mistakes cause a professional cricketer to lose his spot, or a set of umpiring mistakes cause a crucial series to be lost, this won't be evened up by that country getting the benefit of the calls two years later, either. It's simply a truth that various decisions will have consequences of differing severity and importance.

And there's a huge difference between luck and weather and poor umpiring, in that one of these factors offers far more capacity to be controllable.

 

[greg]

Trouble is that Warne has picked up a considerable no. of wickets throughout his career in a similar manner to the Flintoff delivery. Umpires have generally taken the stance that a batsman cannot simply plonk his pad down the pitch as a first line of defence.

Until this test, umpires have changed tact.

At the end of the day, 2 best teams in the world should be umpired by 2 best umpires and we have not seen that. For all I care, they could bring Shep and Dickie Bird out of retirement (or any 2 other current English test umpires) as the current crop of neutrals simply are not up to scratch.

lol - Dickie Bird would not have given Warne ANYTHING. That was the secret to his reputation for incredible consistency!

 

[wpdavid]

So... 373. Well, I hope we can get a nice lead here, but we've been expecting the Aussie bats to pass England comfortably on some of these bat-friendly tracks too often now for me count on it. I'd have felt a lot more confident if the Poms had 330 or so on the board.

There's one big difference this time though, and it's the obvious one about Jones missing. Most times you've made a decent start against our openers before running into trouble against our change bowlers. Now it's possible that Hoggard & Harmison will make inroads, but as each of them has managed one decent performance out of four, I wouldn't bet on it. Same goes for the talk of reverse swing. It's a nice idea, but our best practitioner of that particular art isn't playing.

 

[social]

lol - Dickie Bird would not have given Warne ANYTHING. That was the secret to his reputation for incredible consistency!

Which is fine because players can deal with consistency. Warne would simply have had to find another means of dismissing batsmen.

BTW, in that case, hawk-eye would prove that Dickie had made a monumental no. of mistakes if that was his stance.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

There's one big difference this time though, and it's the obvious one about Jones missing. Most times you've made a decent start against our openers before running into trouble against our change bowlers. Now it's possible that Hoggard & Harmison will make inroads, but as each of them has managed one decent performance out of four, I wouldn't bet on it. Same goes for the talk of reverse swing. It's a nice idea, but our best practitioner of that particular art isn't playing.

Flintoff is definately the key for England. The ball will reverse for a long time on this pitch, and he's excellent with it while the others largely aren't. Hoggard won't get a lot of help from now on, Harmison hasn't been bowling well at all for some time now and this isn't really a Giles pitch yet (although it will be in the fourth innings). Can Collingwood reverse the ball, or only swing it conventionally? He's kind of handy when it swings but hopeless when it doesn't, so it's hard to say if he will have an impact or not.

This is the sort of innings where, if Flintoff is to cement himself as one of the best bowlers in the world (and he's close to doing that in my opinion), he has to take a bag of wickets rather than just 1-3. 1-3 for Flintoff won't be enough if the other bowlers struggle on a pitch like this.

 

[Slow Love™]

There's one big difference this time though, and it's the obvious one about Jones missing. Most times you've made a decent start against our openers before running into trouble against our change bowlers. Now it's possible that Hoggard & Harmison will make inroads, but as each of them has managed one decent performance out of four, I wouldn't bet on it. Same goes for the talk of reverse swing. It's a nice idea, but our best practitioner of that particular art isn't playing.

Yes, I agree (and boy was I glad that Jones didn't play this match) - we've seen in our own attack what happens when our backups take the foot of the pressure pedal.

You can't blame me for being nervous though - we still have a set of left-handers that have been very vulnerable so far to some fairly orthodox swing.

 

[wpdavid]

Flintoff is definately the key for England. The ball will reverse for a long time on this pitch, and he's excellent with it while the others largely aren't. Hoggard won't get a lot of help from now on, Harmison hasn't been bowling well at all for some time now and this isn't really a Giles pitch yet (although it will be in the fourth innings). Can Collingwood reverse the ball, or only swing it conventionally? He's kind of handy when it swings but hopeless when it doesn't, so it's hard to say if he will have an impact or not.

This is the sort of innings where, if Flintoff is to cement himself as one of the best bowlers in the world (and he's close to doing that in my opinion), he has to take a bag of wickets rather than just 1-3. 1-3 for Flintoff won't be enough if the other bowlers struggle on a pitch like this.

Agreed on all counts - but it's a heck of an ask to expect him to do it single handedly, which is why I'm far from confident. As for Collingwood, I expect him to be cannon fodder on this pitch and in these conditions.

 

[Slow Love™]

Which is fine because players can deal with consistency. Warne would simply have had to find another means of dismissing batsmen.

BTW, in that case, hawk-eye would prove that Dickie had made a monumental no. of mistakes if that was his stance.

I get the basic point, but I don't think hawk-eye would prove squat, really.

 

[Nate]

I reckon Collingwood might be alright.

 

[marc71178]

The Weather Forcast and it does not look good

Oh yes it does

 

[marc71178]

Dunno why people are trying to make a conclusion from an innings where the batsman played and missed once, played some solid shots and then got a Rudi special.

If the same innnings had been played by anyone else you'd have been moaning about them all day.

 

[marc71178]

Nice shot and then misses a straight one a la Vaughan.

Only one person cannot give credit for the delivery - why am I not surprised.

 

[marc71178]

Man Lee has been unlucky this series, this game. Great bowling for 0 wickets.

Great bowling interspersed with a lot of tripe.

The great bowlers (ie Warne, McGrath) don't have the tripe.

 

[luckyeddie]

I for one will be well pleased when this flaming series is over, because frankly the mindless whining and ranting that has been coming from what now seems to be the MAJORITY of Australian fans on this forum is, quite frankly, pathetic. You moaning bunch of mardarses.

 

[marc71178]

How many times has Hoggard played and missed without edging?

And each one followed with a big smile

 

[marc71178]

And that wide! This isn`t ODI cricket.

But it was way out of the batsman's reach, so a fine call.

 

[social]

Great bowling interspersed with a lot of tripe.

The great bowlers (ie Warne, McGrath) don't have the tripe.

Absolutely correct.

 

[marc71178]

Hey, hey. Warne gets Ash out five times this series.

So no complaints with the umpiring there then?

 

[marc71178]

Bad decision really. But I guess it makes up 1/50th of what happened this morning.

2 bad calls - 1 let the man off, 1 gave him out.

That'd be even then.