It's a big call to drop him for an unknown in the test arena, especially when Hauritz has a decent record in Australia. If he had an abysmal record i could understand it.

Lets not confuse being an arsehole with mental toughness.

In terms of our bowling attack, i really hope to see at least 1 full time spinner in there. The pace bowlers aren't special enough to carry through our attack by themselves.

arsehole matched with mental toughness ;)

The Ashes Blog: Aussie prices are just the ticket
8:57am Tuesday 23rd November 2010

By Matt Donlan »
Sports reporter


REGULAR readers of these little diatribes will be aware of my feelings about ticket prices for major sporting events.

Okay, I may be getting slightly carried away when I say regular readers and perhaps I should rephrase it regular reader - but that one person will know exactly what I think about the price of a day at Lord’s or a football match or pretty much anything sporting in the UK.

It is nothing short of a rip off to watch sport in this county.

In the summer just gone you could have parted with £100 (60 pints of bitter in a Blackburn town centre pub) to go to Lord’s for the Test with Pakistan. Yes, you may well have witnessed Amir and Asif and their no balls - but you don’t really want to pay £100 for that privilege, unless you can’t resist pointing at aeroplanes.

That price is a joke - and you pay well over the odds to get into Old Trafford for a match against the likes of Bangladesh.

So imagine the surprise in Telegraph Towers yesterday when, through jealousy as much as research, there was quite a bit of internet searching ahead of the Ashes.

Top price tickets for the opening day in Brisbane, the first day of the most anticipated series in years, cost just $80Aus - that’s £49.

Cheaper tickets with just as good a view are also available.

And for the Blue Riband of Test cricket, the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne, prices are really friendly.

The top, top, top tickets for that game are something called a Platinum Package. These are the real deal, they are the best seats in the house in the best cricket ground there is. They cost $145AUS - £89.21.

That is still a bit steep...You can brave the notorious Bay 13, where even the Aussies fear to tread, cost $36AUS, a mere £22.15. That is also the same price across the rest of the general admission areas of the ground.

It’s great pricing - no wonder people go.

Domestic games are even more friendly and tickets for the Aussie rules also come in way below the price of even the cheap days at Ewood Park.

Yes I know there is different taxing in Australia - but surely we could take a lead.

The spectators should not suffer for the wages paid to the players.

Right, that's that sorted...just need to convince my boss that the Lancashire Telegraph should have representation Down Under...

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/comment/8681939.The_Ashes_Blog__Aussie_prices_are_just_the_ticket/

Basically, the First XI will be not too dissimilar to what we have seen in the recent past, although i'm not sure anyone knows whether we will pick a spinner or not for the seamer friendly GABBA pitch.

I think your being very harsh on Pointing's captaincy, i don't think he's a particularly great captain but he's alright with the tools he's got on hand... Clarke will play, the whole thing is a storm in a tea cup and Doherty will definitely play and it'll be a fight between Siddle and Bollinger which will probably be decided tomorrow or already has been decided this evening by team management. I don't think you can blame ponting for the lack of stability with the spinners selection, i'd look more at the selectors and the spinners themselves than blame ponting for the current merry-go-round spin selection.

Hussey's record is considerabley poor, his last legitimate century was against England in the 5th test and hasn't scored consistently since when he was under heaps of pressure during that ashes series (anybody remember the leave against Graham Onions at Edgbaston)... the century issue isn't the big thing but the consistency, the last Simon Katich century iirc was in the first test of the ashes but you look at the differene between the two, Katich regularly gets scores and has been unlucky at times (iirc out for 99 against Pakistan in Melbourne?)... that is why Katich is a mainstay in the team and Hussey left it to the last possible oppurtunity to secure his spot in the side with his shield 100 when he was dropped earlier in the day. I think his average is about 25 from the past 2 years, at an age of 35 he does himself little favour

you have to pick a spinner if you get into a situation on the 5th day and you need to take 10 wickets, it will be seam friendly conditions for the first day and abit as the wicket flattens out and loses it's greenish tinge... it'd be a good toss to lose imo for Ponting because both captains are troubled by history this way, if England wins the toss do they bowl first, considering this would be there natural instinct the thoughts of what has happened the last two times up in Brisbane when they have bowled first (love the Nasser call, "i think we'll have a bowl"), while with Australia it has long been the instinct to bat (for too long Australia have only had one strategy, bat first and make 400+) but these are bowler friendly conditions with a chance to really rip into the english batting order with the kookaburra ball swinging from the off as it normally does.

Hussey's start in his Test Career catapulted his average to about 80 for a long period, for that to have dropped now to below 48 has meant serious under-performance. But sheesh, your looking at dropping a player that averages 50 in Tests!!

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but the buck stops at his use, or lack-there-of, of his key bowlers and timing during the India series

I agree the guy had a phenomenal time at the start of his test career, but that average is not a true read of where his game is at compared to four years ago when he was arguably the dominant batsmen of the 06/07 series, too often the guy has made runs not when the team has to but when he has to at risk of being dropped... look at Mark Waugh he was quite easily dropped when he had a similar test average

would this statement be different if the plum lbw by Johnson been given in Mohali when India we're 9 down, if Australia we're to win that test match nobody would have questioned Ponting and many people would have said to draw a two match test series in India would have been a very good result against the ICC's No. 1 team

would this statement be different if the plum lbw by Johnson been given in Mohali when India we're 9 down, if Australia we're to win that test match nobody would have questioned Ponting and many people would have said to draw a two match test series in India would have been a very good result against the ICC's No. 1 team

If you're going to go back and correct bad umpiring decisions, then technically that LBW doesn't matter, because their 8th wicket was an incorrect decision too.

Fact is, umpiring mistakes happen, so it's no point saying 'but if this hadn't happened'. It did happen. And fact is, they shouldn't have gotten that close in the first place. That said, not all of that blame is Pontings, VVS Laxman can just do those things.

While oblivious himself to any sporting matters, my good father was happy to indulge my infant passions. Possibly, too, he suffered pangs of guilt about sending an eight‑year‑old away to a freezing monastery boarding school at the beginning of the most bitter winter of the century, and for my first time hoorayingly home for the holidays 64 Decembers ago Dad had organised for me an alarm clock and a bedside wireless set ready to be tuned expectantly to the BBC's world service once I'd woken at dead of night. It was the week before Christmas and I swear I can remember vividly still that telling first moment I twiddled through the hiss and crackle, the strident squeals and seashell static to deduce from a faraway voice with a metallic, self‑satisfied colonial twang that Australia had declared at 659 – Barnes 234, Bradman 234 – and England were on the way to a slaughter.

That was Sydney, December 1946, and tonight, more than three-score winters on, I'll be re-enacting that boyhood initiation – except that it's called the radio now and reception will be as crispy-clear as an Aussie day. Stumps around dawn, then a doze, before this greybeard'll bank up the old log fire and settle down, mid-morning, to watch the television highlights.
Back in that new year of 1947 I see we'd returned to school to face the brunt of that brutal winter long before Bradman's just as pitiless Australians had finished beating up Walter Hammond's pallid Poms. During the fourth Test at Adelaide on 1 February I'd sent my much-missed mother a one-line birthday card (she never threw it away): "Dear Mum, Happy birthday, Bedser bowled Bradman for a duck, Your loving Francis x."

The radio ritual has been a quadrennial winter-warming rite for solemn Ashes observance. Crucial to me is that the richest flavours of remembrance need the BBC box to be full of Oz commentators' ripe vernacular as the ball hits "the pickets", not the boundary fence; that extras are always "sundries"; and that the scorecard numbering is forever eccentrically reversed, as in that inaugural score back in 1946 when it was eight for 659 and not the other way around.

Four years on from that first enlightenment I was at senior school, imprisoned by different monks, and now we listened under the bedclothes on scarcely audible homemade crystal sets as England's 1950-51 lot took another licking. By day, nice Father Dunstan turned our classes into ongoing Ashes symposiums, imagining bluff captain Freddie Brown as an intrepid Captain Cook, and encouraging study of the various derivations of Aussie place-names – from the euphonious Aboriginal Toowoomba, Dandenong, Kellerberrin to, of course, the onliest Woolloongabba; or those imported direct from Britain (Ipswich, Liverpool, Perth, Newcastle), and those commemorating actual folks back home: Gladstone, Salisbury, (Queen) Adelaide, (Lord) Melbourne and, naturally, Sydney (the home secretary when good Cap'n Phillip RN established the first Botany settlement).

Us Anglos were not the only ones learning as we went along and I have hoarded for years a paragraph of a near contemporary Oz, the Nobel novelist Thomas Keneally (also a monastery schoolboy in Sydney): "We may have been small boys from a callow race, but we knew there was at least some divinity to our cricket, which was the way out of our cultural ignominy, for the crowning glory to us boys was that although no Australian had written Paradise Lost, our Don Bradman had scored a hundred before lunch at Lord's."

My last winter at school was 1954-55 when Hutton let loose a typhoon called Tyson and at last Australia were laid to waste on their own parched fields. We listened on the wireless through the nights, and took unblemished pleasure in the tuckshop parties each day. I remember, too, the all-night bedsit party around a radio in London when Captain Illy regained England's Ashes in 1971.

When, out of the blue, Gatting's boys did the same all of 16 years later the radio satellite signals were by then as clear as Big Ben's bell and could be listened to with an earpiece, so as not to disturb any sleeping partner – or not, as the case may be, for during that victorious 1987 England trek the Observer published an unforgettable letter from a reader, Vicky Rantzen, who told how her best girlfriend was making love to her husband at dead of night when, just as mutual passion was reaching its heady heights, she noticed something in his ear.

Ardour dampened, she pulled away and asked him what it was? "Be quiet, woman, I'm listening to the Test match from Brisbane."

thought this was a really nice article, something that can be relatable to both sides when at home listening to the Ashes in Brisbane or
Birmingham

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/nov/24/ashes-memories-frank-keating

Pick 1 - greatest Ashes character

Jon Anderson From: Herald Sun November 24, 2010 4:48PM

JUST who has been the greatest character is Ashes history?
The answer probably depends on how you determine a character.

Is it someone such as David Gower, who combined batting artistry with a dry humour both on and off the field?

Maybe Shane Warne and Ian Botham, two giants of the game who had personalities that loved the big stage.

Then there are the plain bizarre, men such England’s Derek Randall and our very own Rodney Hogg.

Randall came to the attention of the cricket world in the 1977 Centenary Test at the MCG, scoring 174 and nearly winning the game. In the first innings, he infuriated Australian paceman Dennis Lillee by doffing his cap to him after a vicious bouncer. "No good hitting me there, mate," he called out, "nothing to damage."

When the same thing happened in the second innings and Randall ended up on his backside, he rose to his feet and saluted Lillee.

The following year he walked out to bat at Sydney to face Hogg. The Australian greeted him by throwing a rubber snake on the pitch. “Thought it was a good idea at the time,” said Hogg.

Historians would point to W.G.Grace as being the greatest character of all. It was Grace who once said on winning the toss you bat. If you are in doubt, think about it – then bat. And if you have big doubts, consult a colleague, then bat.

He was also moved to replace the bails after being bowled first ball, explaining to the bowler “they have come to see me bat, not you bowl”.

But my choice in Pick One for this week is Kevin Douglas Walters. There was no way of telling from Walters' body language whether he had scored a duck or century and surely no cricketer has kept the same late hours yet still averaged a tick under 50 in Test cricket.

In the Centenary Test Australian debutant David Hookes was unsure of where to stand at fourth slip. Walters quickly produced a queen of spades from his pocket and told Hookes to use it as a marker.

Prior to the game Australian captain Greg Chappell had told the players they would have to yell twice as loudly given the crowd would be around 100,000. Walters, who hadn’t spoken through the meeting, suddenly piped up “Greg, given we normally play in front of 25,000 won’t we have to have to yell four times as loudly?”.

Walters will do me. What about your greatest character? Tony Greig, Darren Gough, Merv Hughes or even the great Keith Miller?


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/the-ashes/pick-1-greatest-ashes-character/story-fn67w6pa-1225960324288

How can Australia dismiss the England top order?

Robert Craddock From: Herald Sun November 24, 2010

A THROWAWAY line dropped by Don Bradman to Greg Chappell in an Adelaide carpark should echo all the way down to the Australian dressing room for the first Ashes Test.
The two champions had a chance meeting as they were leaving the Adelaide Oval just over a decade ago where Chappell took the chance to ask the incomparable batsman what sort of deliveries caused him most trouble.

"Ones which were pitched right up near the bat," Bradman said.

The truth is no ball troubled Bradman much, but one quirky feature of his stunning record is that being bowled accounted for a remarkably high one in three (32.9 per cent) of his Test dismissals.

Many top batsmen are around half this figure, with Chappell himself a standard 15 per cent. Chappell recently urged a conference containing all of Australia's first-class coaches to follow Bradman's advice and encourage bowlers to pitch the ball up, bringing dismissals such as bowled, lbw and edged catches into play.

The lesson is never more apt than the Gabba where so many teams waste helpful conditions by bowling too short.

Australian coach Tim Nielsen said he agreed with the message and had already been working away on that principle.

The full-pitched ball under heavy skies should be the key plank of Australia's game plan tomorrow.

Here is how Australia might try to shoot down England's top order ...

KEVIN PIETERSEN

Xavier Doherty will pay his way for his first Test if he can continue Kevin Pietersen's troubled run against left-arm spinners.

New Zealand's Dan Vettori (four times), Bangladeshi Shakib Al Hasan (four) and West Indian Sulieman Benn (three) have all had big moments against him and he regrooved his technique by getting his front pad out of the way. Most recently, Australia A's Steve O'Keefe bowled him (left).

Last time in Australia Ricky Ponting ordered his players not to call the Englishmen by nickname and Pietersen texted Shane Warne during the Brisbane Test, saying, "What's this Kevin business?"

After he smashed short balls from Brett Lee at The Oval in 2005, Australia may have been over-deferential in deciding not to over bounce him. But he is out of form and it might be worth a try. If his eye is in and his mind is right, he's trouble.

ANDREW STRAUSS

Mitchell Johnson wants to bounce him but he must be careful - he could get smashed if he gets it wrong because Strauss has built his game on square-of-the-wicket shots, the cut and pull.

Plan B will be to pitch it up. Much like his first hero, Dean Jones, Strauss senses trouble when he reaches forward and wide to the point where he used to write in his diary, "I must not play the cover drive".

Started his Ashes career with a nightmare run against Shane Warne - who has dismissed him more than any other Test bowler - but has improved his play against spin and is the only English batsman to score two centuries in a Test in Asia.

Failed here last time when he had great battles with Brett Lee, but no current bowler has dominated him.

ALASTAIR COOK

For an emerging batsman of such vast experience (60 Tests) he has a surprising weakness: he struggles to move his feet forward early.

Tall and quite stiff-legged, Australia identified this foible early last tour and instructed its pacemen to pitch the ball up and catch him on the crease to try to get an off-side nibble.

It worked - he was caught by Adam Gilchrist off the fast men six times.

JONATHAN TROTT

Balls pitched up do most damage at the Gabba, but the bouncer comes strongly into play against this robust, highly respected competitor.

Often he bats four at Warwickshire - a spot lower than here - so he may not be fully conditioned for the brutal new ball, hard wicket, up-your-ribs assault he should get here.

Australia's spies will have noted the two times on tour when he was dismissed skying short balls he attempted to pull from outside off stump. Like Paul Collingwood, plays very strongly through midwicket.

Bowl him a straight ball and he will work it on the on side. He is reportedly trying to broaden his technique, but it will be hard to tinker now.

In four of his past six Test innings he has been caught behind off the fast men so the baited hook on off-stump is worth a try again.

His poor record against Australia - one 50 from 19 innings - could not help his fluency.

IAN BELL

Mitchell Johnson is the man here. Got him four times in the last series - three times for single figures - with balls angled across the body for he tends to open the face of his bat under pressure.

The prettiest players in the world are not always the champions.

Beautiful player to watch with an excellent technique. But does he have the mental game to match it with Australia? Looked timid as a player and a man when Australia first saw him in 2005 but seemed to have grown as a batsman and man. Averages 25 against Australia.

PAUL COLLINGWOOD

Tough old campaigner, scored 206 in Adelaide last visit but has faded late in both full series he has played against Australia.

No surprises with his game. Big on-side player who loves shovelling the ball to midwicket for ones and twos. Also cuts strongly.

Australia respects rather than fears him and his career average of 35 against Australia tells of an even struggle. Had a poor summer.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/the-ashes/how-can-australia-dismiss-the-england-top-order/story-fn67wltq-1225959740559

Oh man, cricket starts tomorrow and I have an assignment due by 5pm.

Sidenote: computer is in my room, away from tv

stream the cricket on the net?... Radio is always a good alternative

Grandstand FTW