There's also stories that and agreement was brokered after ashort time but Javed Miandad re-wound Rana up to waste more time. Miandad wasa brilliant batsman, but lets say not the friendliest of characters.

having woke up a bit early i've been watching australia against sri lanka on sky. awesome stuff. no other side in the world could recover from 10-3 in the third over to post over 360. bastards.

must be nearly 10 years since Andrew Symonds left Gloucestershire, we could do with someone like him these days.

Oh dear

Oh double (or possibly triple) dear

Freddy as Captain though - it could be interesting...

A good debut for Cook, 104 not out in his first Test ( coupled with 60 in his first innings)

Tomorrow should be interesting

Turns out that it wasn't particularly eh? Still, with the injuries and all that, I thought this was a superb performance and shows that, at last, there are some decent English cricketers in England. Cook is a find and looks to have a long career ahead. Hoggard proved, once again, that he is a steady bowler who can do just enough to cause problems for even the very best of batsmen. Bring on the 2nd test.

I don't know, after the tea interval it started to hot up a bit

fucking ace. at any other time between 1978-2003 we would have lost in 3 days, whereas we were fucking superb. cook excellent, hoggard fucking excellent and panesar showing as much potential as warne or murali.

Unless there's a miracle tomorrow (Monday) England England are going to lose the 2nd test ...... why haven't we learned to be patient in the sub-continent ??

England 400 all out.

India 89 for 3.


I'm up at 05:45 tomorrow and off to work

Woo and indeed Hoo !!

7 wickets for 25

I know that it only meant a drawn series but in the circumstances it's almost a win.

thanks to a stinking cold and insomnia, i had the privilege of watching almost the entire match.

all the back up players are contributing, and the first choice XI is ever so strong, I feel that we will march into australia next winter and retain the ashes.

but for about 3 sloppy sessions in pakistan, we would have either won or drawn that series too.

make no mistake everyobody else in the world is scared of this england team in the test match arena.

yeah we are running scared...what a joke..the aussies cant wait for the ashes 2006-07.
you just manged to win the last series , you played at your very best and we were very poor. you fell over the line in the 2nd test , and won 2 tests when our main bowler was out injured. whilst you played good cricket , in fact great cricket , we played badly . we couldnt play that badly again
you had your moment in the sun. you couldnt win a series in the sub continent , how you going to win in australia ?
have you been watching the tests results since the last ashes ? we are yet to be beaten..

SA haven't been doing too badly against you in the one dayers though have they?

I fucking can't wait to beat the Aussies again - the above just makes me more excited about the prospect!

don't quite see the relevance of this, australia went 40 years without winning so much as a test in pakistan, and in the last 10 years have lost 3 of the 4 series they have played in india.

our runmakers prefer the ball coming onto the bat, which sydney apart, will be the case on australian pitches.

our seam attack has just proved that it can bowl sides out anywhere in the world.



very true, but these days the west indies struggle against everyone, and south africa are now ranked 6th in the world and clearly on the wane. it was england who knocked them off 2nd spot and they have been sliding since.

Blimey !!

Brilliant, i hope brendon is loving every minute of this test match. I mean, if you can't knock Bangladesh over for less than 400 how you going to regain the ashes?

Only Ponting, Warne, Hussey and Lee are truly world-class at the moment. The others are either on the decline (Hayden, Langer, Martyn, Gilchrist, McGrath, Gillespie, Kasper), still on the up (Clarke, Johnson, Clark), or simply not up to it (Symonds, Tait). Come the Ashes the team will be full of names we haven't heard of, and players like Lee and Hussey will be expected to carry the side.

Australia save game

humiliated in victory.

great...debate about cricket...
first to you sarah lady.. one day cricket big deal...let south africa win all the one day games they care to. The only people in the world really interested in one day cricket are the indians .Lets face it is the games 'cash cow'. it is only there to finance test cricket. There is so much of this boring cricket . Memorable matches are few and far between. Look at recent times in australia we played our vb series then flew to south africa to play another pointless 7 games.now we are in bangaville and we play another 5 one day games against them. Really who cares ?

my fear is.....that after all this boring one day cricket , this new 20/20 will be equally as boring and detrimental to the game...well who would want to be a bowler in this game of slogging....please may this game only be used sparingly as an 'exhibition' style match , i fear the day we have a 20/20 world cup

to you moster,
it takes a truly great team to come back from where we( the aussies ) did against the banga's...we have had and problems and excuses..ashes series, west indies series, home and away series vs south africa.last test eneded in south africa on monday fly to bangladesh for a test series starting on sunday. injuries , langer , warne ( who didnt bowl late 1st day or any of 2nd day ) mcgrath , tait. i THINK are carrying injuries and tired .very tired . And the banga's were playing good cricket.
it was a great comeback by our boys, who could have thrown in the towel . i dare say if they were english they would have thrown in the towel and accepted defeat .
So i know you took delight and enjoyment from our 1st test struggle but remember , every team has a bad test every now and then. This was our worst performance in a while. a bad test match , but also remember that england has just ended 20yrs of bad test matches not the one game that happened to the australians

finally , i was delighted to see england win the ashes. it was a brilliant performance. after australia's dominance of world test match cricket for the past 10yrs and dominance in ashes cricket since 1989 , it was great to see such a competitive series . The english deserved the win.
But it will be hard for england to repeat these performances and carry on. hence my comments re the sub continent .
and yes the australians have yet to answer quite a few questions themselves. i think many agree after the ashes series when we beat the rest of the world team , then the west indies , we thought that we had solved our problems . but we havent

Australia's problems are very simple McGrath & Warne are both getting old. Once they've gone Australia's bowling looks very threadbare. The good side if that the batting is very strong. I still think that if Aus had picked Hussey & Symonds last summer England wouldn't have won the ashes.

oh come on, i'd have backed norfolk's 3rd XI to turn that around. the simple fact of the matter is that a good side, never mind a "truly great" one, would never have gotten in that situation in the first place. bangladesh have only scored more in an innings against zimbabwe, and are much more used to scoring less than 100 than over 400.



injuries, sminjuries. at various points this winter england have had to be without ashes regulars trescothick, vaughan, giles, simon jones and harmison.



it's been a few years since england did that against anyone.

So suddenly one day cricket is boring? I mean hello? What planet do you live on?

The one day series' and 20/20 games is what gets your average punter interested in cricket - try explaining playing for 5 days and still being able to draw a game to an outsider. They're not interested, not until they've seen a few one day games and got the hang of the intricacies of the game. I know this from experience with lots of people who I've taken to one dayers.

They really are very odd in Oz...

Sorry Sarah but one dayers can get boringly predictable if they are one sided.

Also cricket doesn't have to be whan bang thank you mam (from Suffergette City) to be excisiting

The most gripping session I saw in 2005 was when Yorkshire's last 3 batsmen held out for a draw against Lancashire. The 9th wicket actually went down with about 90 minutes to go. So that for all of the last 90 minutes Lancs could win of any ball bowled if they took a wicket. The tension was almost unbearable. At the end of the game we Yorkies celebrated as though we'd won not held out for a draw.

The 'new' C&G 1 day 50 over league started today & it just felt like 2005. Unless something changes very quickly the only team Yorkshire wlll have any chance of beating is Scotland ..... & I wouldn't like to be on that one.

sarahlady , you are misguided...just because england wins a few one day games and 20/20matches , it becomes interesting. take off your rose coloured glasses deary....one day cricket , as red star agreed is boring as bat shit.......as i said when was the last truly memorable game. they all blend into one another.i couldnt care less about one day cricket cos it is BORING
Australia could win the next 73 consectutive world cups and it would still be boring

Excellent start to the season for the 'Shire. Scumerzet twatted aside by an innings, and Piddlesex bowled out for a piffling 95.

With Spearman back in form, Lord Harvey returned to his rightful county and the best bowler not to have played in a English test side in Jon Lewis, I can only see a season of success.

COME ON THE SHIRE

I hope you're talking about my 'Shire Mo?!

Brendan - I wasn't talking about Australian one dayers, I don't want to watch your lot at the best of times, I'm certainly not going to make an effort if they're not playing England.
I meant the limited overs games as a whole, something that is rampant in the UK and much excitement is to be had.
I didn't say that test matches/ 4 dayers weren't exciting, just that they are less penetrable to the less enthusiastic potential followers.

Lord Harvey fucks scumerzet 7 ways backwards, and glos trounce them for the 2nd time this season.

If i was a woman I'd want his babies.

England 536-6 - are they going to declare anytime soon?!

551 for 6 declared
Sri Lanka currently 58 for 2

Hope that the Edgbaston test is good, I've got a ticket for the 2nd day

88-6. Piece of piss.

Hopefully justice will be done for the next test and Jon Lewis will be picked ahead of Plunkett. Lewis is without doubt the best non-capped English player, if he played for Surrey or Yorkshire he'd have about 30 caps by now.

Sri Lanka 91 for 6.

Bad light stopped play.

Lewis is a good county pro but one I think will struggle on pitches that 'don't do a bit'. Remember A Glouc bowler who was picked at Headingley a few years ago (Smith ?) & go 0 or 1 for a lot.

But then I've never rated Sajid Mahmood. Last year he could only get a game for Lancs when everyone else was injured so what do I know. At Headingley we were disapointed when Mahmood got taken off for running of the wicket atfer a few overs in the Roses match as he was bowling a right load of c**p.

I remember that game well, we lost by an innings. Smith didn't take a wicket, though Elliott, who went on to score nearly 200 I think, was dropped by Thorpe in Smith's first over. It was a regulation overhead slip catch. Who knows what may have happened had it stuck. I also recall an interview afterwards when Smith said it was the first time all summer he hadn't swung the ball. He wouldn't be the first player in the world to suffer from nerves in his first test innings, especially with the pressure of knowing you are going to get limited opportunites because of who you play for, and that you've had to longer than others for your chance. He was never picked again.

Both Smith and Lewis relied/rely on movement through the air rather than off the pitch. Believe me the lad could hack it, the pitches wouldn't be a problem. He also took 9 wickets to Plunkett's 4 in the 'A' team match against Sri Lanka the other week. They both bowled the same amount of overs. He is simply a better player. I know it's a different game altogether but he also did nothing wrong in the 1 dayers last summer.

Still, if he's not going to be picked with the current injury crisis, he's never going to get picked at all.

Henry Blofeld has just accidentally referred to Monty Panesar as Monty Python during his commentary

Me too

Another amusing moment during the commentary yesterday was a discussion about Hoggard 'Bouncing the hell' out of a batsman during the last Bangladesh test whilst wearing a 'Make Bullying History' wristband

'Mike Gatting has a pork pie in one hand, and a piece of cake in the other.............'

some things never change!

sri lanka in the lead, plunkett with match figures of 0-121.

England could do with JON LEWIS right now.

Jayawardene - OUT !

Hmmmm .........It's all gone a little bit wrong

You're telling me. 472 - 8 and a 113 lead. Two quick wickets needed.

Sri Lanka 151 ahead at tea

Sri Lanka 526 for 9.
Bad light stopped play

That'll be a draw then...

Bugger.

9 dropped catches tells it's own story. You can throw in some poor captaincy as well yesterday.

Look on the positives, we effectively dismissed them almost 3 three times in the match despite having 4 (count 'em) front line bowlers unavailable through injury.