1Aussies Tonked - Now to the Future

Eerstens 'n verskoning dat ek die webwerf nie veel laat opgedateer het nie - saam met die ander outeur van hierdie webwerf was ek op reis deur Europa.

Ons is nou al terug, so bang nie.

so, Engeland het op die laaste dag die as met 'n opwindende vertoning van die as toegedraai om hulle goed te pak en waarlik pak toe te stuur. Daar is al baie geskryf oor Engeland se optrede en, in die besonder, Stuart Broad se opvoering. Dit was uitstekend, einde van.

Dus gaan ek konsentreer op iets anders, 'n bietjie off-sentrum as jy wil.

Toe Australië 'n paar jaar terug op hul hoogtepunt was (lyk so lank gelede nou!) the one mis­take they made was not to blood up-and-com­ing young­sters so they had a chance to exper­i­ence the highs and lows of test match cricket.

Their side always picked itself and they stuck to an oft-quoted prin­cip­al of not chan­ging a win­ning side (fair enough). But when the golden gen­er­a­tion decided to call it quits the dearth of exper­i­enced tal­ent was imme­di­ately available.

Eng­land now are in a pos­i­tion of strength. Whilst it would be great to beat the Aus­sies 4–0 we have won the Ashes and won them com­fort­ably. There is no argu­ment – we are a far bet­ter team than they are.

Now would be the per­fect time to test a few young­sters in what will still be a com­pet­it­ive game (the Aus­sies still have sommige trots om te speel vir) in 'n geen-verloor situasie.

I’m not say­ing we should tear up the team sheet and start again but there’s no harm with test­ing a few lads.

Firstly I think we should look at who is going to be our next spin­ner. Monty Pan­esar has seem­ingly had a melt down and Simon Ker­rigan has leapt above him in the peck­ing order. Graeme Swann has been England’s best spin-bowl­er for years but he isn’t going to be around for ever and can be prone to the odd knock. Ker­rigan should start.

Tim Bresnan het goed gespeel, maar is nou beseer. Woakes and Onions have been called with one of them likely to take his place unless Eng­land break a time-hon­oured pos­i­tion and pick two spin­ners at the Oval. Per­son­ally I’m not that sure about Woakes but if Eng­land see him as the future then let’s see what he’s made of.

One pos­i­tion that is rarely talked about these days is that of wick­et keep­er. That’s a massive vote of con­fid­ence in Matt Pri­or who has made the pos­i­tion his own. Maar wie is volgende? Are Eng­land look­ing to have Jonny Bair­stow as his long-term suc­cessor? Or are they look­ing else­where? Hoe dit ook al sou dit 'n idee wees om hul tweede opsie in die toets-wedstryd arena te toets.

So dit is drie veranderinge reeds. Now what about the bat­ting line-up? Wel, Bell opsy, die top-orde het grootliks misluk om te skyn, get­ting starts but not con­vert­ing them and not bat­ting in part­ner­ships. Des­pite this the top order, with the pos­sible excep­tion of Bair­stow, will pick itself for the next instal­ment of the Ashes but there’s no harm in see­ing what oth­ers have to offer. Taylor is clearly in the select­ors’ thoughts but two York­shire lads –Gary Bal­lance (who hit a cen­tury for the Eng­land Lions vs the Aus­sies) is there or there­abouts as is fel­low Yorkie, 20 jarige Alex Read. One of the three should be con­sidered with any of the cur­rent bats­men (Bell en Cook opsy) hav­ing a rest.

Revolu­tion­ary stuff I know, and we do run the risk of los­ing the last match, but wouldn’t it be even sweeter if we still tonked them with four first-team­ers out.

As 'n eenkant sal jy trots op hierdie twee outeurs wees. When in Venice on our European adven­ture we got into con­ver­sa­tion with two young Aus­trali­an ladies. Des­pite their back­ground we both man­aged to avoid the burn­ing tempta­tion to men­tion the crick­et. Goue ster vir ons!