I think we will be 180 all out sometime after tea. Will be really negative and dour whilst losing wickets. Horror test match, just have to rebound for the 2nd. Tremlett has to go, guy is no threat. Rankin for me.
Yeah, who'd have thought that Tremlett wouldn't be a threat based on his figures post-injury? Apparently everyone apart from our selectors afaics.
No idea whether Rankin will be an improvement. Or Finn come to that. But given what we've seen from Anderson for all but one of the last 5 and a half ashes matches, we seem to be relying on Broad to bowl them out on this tour, which may be a tad optimistic.
I know we've started series badly before, and we're kind of banking on some sort of Lazerene revival hereafter, but the fact is we don't usually do that. Not in UAE, or at home to SA, or away to NZ. India was the big exception. And, I suppose SL as well. Barring Johnson and Harris standing on stray balls before each of the next few tests, we're looking pretty much ****ed.
More than the results, which will probably continue to be abject, the worst aspect of all this is FiveLive's habit of finding the most ignorantly obnoxious crim to interview in the midst of it all. Yesterday it was some bloke from the local rag. Today it was some duffer who implied that Warner's ton was some sort of justice for being wronged by Joe Root in the English summer. I know from CW that they're not all like that, but this series looks like heading somewhere near the gutter in more ways than one.
And my only observation about our batting is has there ever been a more appropriately named batter than Trott, given that you can almost smell the brown stuff from your front room when he's facing Johnson?