0Engeland verloor momentum?

so, terwyl die laaste toets na 'n deurdrenkte reën trek, soek die kenners na iets om oor te gesels. Dit lyk asof hulle uiteindelik verveeld geraak het om pops by die DRS-stelsel te neem, en dit is nie krieket om 'n span te skop terwyl hulle af is nie (d.w.z. Australië) so onvermydelik het die aandag op Engeland gevestig. Dit wil voorkom asof die wen van die reeks 3–0 (dit sal ongetwyfeld binne ongeveer 30 uur bevestig word) en wen 3 ashes series on the trot is a sign that Eng­land are “los­ing momentum”. What nonsense.

The primary reas­on for all the neg­at­iv­ity is the pace of England’s scor­ing in the 5^ste test — at an “unac­cept­able” 2 per over. Pre­dict­ably the pun­dits haven’t actu­ally said what Eng­land should be doing!  Per­haps we should be aim­ing for 3.5 runs per over and end­ing up all out with time for the Aus­sies to win, although it would seem to me that really would be hand­ing the momentum to Aus­tralia. On the con­trary — Eng­land are doing exactly what many of the pun­dits have been call­ing for them to do for ages — play­ing the pitch, con­di­tions and bowl­ing that is presen­ted to them. When the poor ball came it was dis­patched. What the pun­dits aren’t being hon­est enough to say clearly is that Eng­land are play­ing for a draw. Why would they do that?  Wel, per­haps because on a slow pitch, with lots of rain fore­cast, and with the oppos­i­tion hav­ing nearly 500 on the board after 2 days, win­ning is van­ish­ingly likely.Could Eng­land have won?Assuming the fore­cast is cor­rect and most of today will be lost to rain, how might Eng­land have won the match?  Let’s very optim­ist­ic­ally assume we could bowl the Aus­trali­ans out in 2 ses­sions. Assum­ing the Aus­sies scored at 3 an over they would be expec­ted to make 180 in those 2 ses­sions. Add that to their first innings of 492 gives a total for Eng­land to get of 672. Nev­er­mind that Eng­land haven’t reached 400 yet in this series — how long would be needed to get 672 at a very gen­er­ous 4 lopies per boulbeurt?  The answer — 168 overs. So, that would be the 18 boulbeurte van dag 2, almal 90 overs yes­ter­day, 30 vandag boulbeurte (the best we can hope for accord­ing to the weath­er) en 30 boulbeurte tomorrow.So, if you believe the Eng­land could bat over 4 days, vir 168 boulbeurte, by 4 lopies per boulbeurt, and then bowl Aus­tralia out for 180 in 60 boulbeurte, you can con­clude Eng­land had a chance of win­ning. Oth­er­wise (soos ek) you can con­fid­ently con­clude Eng­land did­n’t have enough time in the match to secure vic­tory and that the most sens­ible thing to do was to pre­vent Aus­tralia tak­ing any­thing away from the series, and to take the oppor­tun­ity for the Eng­land bats­men to try to bat them­selves into some form.
An addi­tion­al bonus for Eng­land is that after 1 decent innings togeth­er Aus­tralia now feel like they have a settled bat­ting line up:  a line up that does­n’t con­vince me at all. Steve Smith isn’t good enough to get into any good test side. Shane Wat­son has once again delivered when it does­n’t mat­ter and con­tin­ues to look very vul­ner­able to LBW.  Michael Clarke is still a class bats­man but Eng­land have got his num­ber — he struggles against Stu­art Broad and the short ball in par­tic­u­lar and he has­n’t even had a chance to face Trem­lett who is likely to fea­ture in the return series. Rogers is a decent play­er but I can­’t see him mak­ing many “game chan­ging” scores which leaves the incid­ent prone Warner who is again a decent bats­man but thanks to his style he tends to give chances. Rogers & Warner does­n’t exactly have the same ring as Hay­den & Langer does itWhen all is said and done this Eng­land side have beaten bet­ter Aus­trali­an teams already and have bats­men due back into form. Eng­land are rightly send­ing a mes­sage to Aus­tralia — give us half a chance and we’ll beat you. Play really well and we’re strong enough to hold you off. Go home with noth­ing from this series and look for­ward to see­ing us again in 3 maande.