The terrible no-plan bowling of the last half hour, and the way that Starc and Hazlewood have capitalised on it, is going to be the deciding factor of the Test.
The terrible no-plan bowling of the last half hour, and the way that Starc and Hazlewood have capitalised on it, is going to be the deciding factor of the Test.
Yep. Very impressive last partnership. Starc might have just been knocked over but they maneuvered the ball really well and ran well between the wickets. Another 36 runs on this pitch is absolute gold.
I love it when the pitch starts to act up on the last days of a test. We need more wrist spinners and pitches made for them.
Go Gazza! He just seems to be getting better and better.
Love this quote from Cricinfo.
“I know he’s your captain, but you can’t seriously like him as a bloke” Paine says to Vijay about Kohli
Ha! How many opposition players could have said the same about Warner forever?!? In truth I am liking the Indian’s in your face attitude in this series, especially when the Dhoni teams of 14/15 and 11/12 looked like they didn’t want to be there for the most part.
Really has the makings of an excellent series here. Nowhere near the GOAT series of 2001 as a lot of the quality is way down, but in Australia it is if anything odd to see and Australian off spinner v the Indian quicks being the main contest.
Rahane gone! That’s almost as important a wicket as getting Kohli out, given how Rahane was going about his business. Good catch from Head seeing he was looking into the late afternoon sun.
Great win today. If we can replace Marsh and Handscomb with some quality and move Finch down the order we will have a good team
Mainly relief tbh. Huge monkey off the back as first test win since the South Africa fiasco. Great effort and Lyon is just brilliant. Now to win one of the next two
Cracking test match with the wicket doing enough to keep things interesting - much prefer a game like that than on a road where the first innings is 5/607 declared
As for the coverage of Paine/Kholi getting into each other, it is ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with some combative interactions - as long as there is nothing about race etc and no cheating it just makes for special entertainment.
I know that I’ll be glued to the first day of the boxing day test which wasn’t the case after adelaide
It was interesting when I was listening to a radio broadcast kicking off one of the mornings and one of the guys remarked that “it seems like they’ve turned up the volume on the stump mic because we can hear the guys out there speaking louder”…
No doubt the media are sweating on any meaty interactions and conversations out there.
Isn’t it an ICC thing that the mic’s are left on between balls now. Previously they would be turned down after the ball was bowled. Leaving them on means players should be more thoughtful about what they say.
It’s up to the broadcaster whether or not they want to use the audio.
Channel 7 declined to, but Fox Sports were all over it. I think 7 will cave eventually, seeing how much attention it gets, and jump on board.
Take a drink everytime the commentators mention how big the boxing day crowd is or how special the MCG is.
2 drinks when “JB” says something about AFL
This MCG pitch has been a fucking disgrace for the Boxing Day test the last few years. This year is no exception. Will struggle to produce 30 wickets over the five days. Winner takes all in Sydney it is then…
I’d rather not die before the tea break. Fox it is, then.
Fox really could have done without Shane Warne.
When he’s commentating games not involving Australia, I actually think he’s one of the better commentators going around. Its understandable he wants Australia to do well but he gets far too opinionated for mine when they’re playing. In I think the first Test, he said “that’s it, I’m off” when he was frustrated with something the Aussies were doing, and it seemed to put everyone else off for a little while and trying to explain his thinking. So hopefully Fox won’t tolerate that kind of thing for long, but he does seem an integral part of their advertising, especially for their BBL Supercoach competition, so I’d be surprised if they turfed him any time soon.
This pitch is a joke.
Haven’t followed it this morning. What’s wrong with it?
It is as dead as Dave Warner’s test career.
Even if India don’t get the win (very hard to get 20 Oz wickets on this) they can still make our quicks bowl themselves to death with the short turnaround to Sydney.