1ایشز کلشمردہ ربڑ کے ایک میچ میں - آسٹریلیا نے اپنا بالائی حصہ تھام لیا

دو دن اور آسٹریلیا کا یقینی طور پر اوپری ہاتھ ہے. لیکن تو کیا. ایشز جیت گئی اور اس میں خوب یقین سے جیت لیا. یہ ایک مردہ ربڑ کا میچ ہے اور ایشز سیریز کے پرانے کی بہت یاد دہانی کر رہا ہے جب انگلینڈ اچانک اچھ aی سے کسی اچھی کارکردگی کو ہیٹ سے باہر نکالا کرتا تھا جب آسن پر قبضہ ہوتا تھا۔. Play­ers who time and time again let the team down would sud­denly grab a five-for or score a cen­tury and their series aver­age to the his­tor­ic observ­er would look half-decent.

So now the boot is on the oth­er foot. Aus­tralia are try­ing to prove they can actu­ally bat des­pite all the indic­a­tions they can­’t and a lot of play­ers are play­ing for their futures. All the plaudits went to Shane Wat­son yes­ter­day and Steve Smith will get them today. What a load of rub­bish. Wat­son in par­tic­u­lar has let his team down a lot. When it mattered he went miss­ing. Smith has been little bet­ter through­out the series. All they have man­aged to do score runs off a bowl­ing attack with only three play­ers bowl­ing to an accept­able inter­na­tion­al stand­ard and then smash two debutants who looked a little short of inter­na­tion­al class (Woakes in par­tic­u­lar) چاروں کونوں پر. بہت اچھے. اوپر کیلا. اصطلاح, although not true in its lit­er­al sense, 'فلیٹ ٹریک دمکانے' ذہن میں اسپرنگس.

Some people have tried to take pos­it­ives from the Aus­sie per­form­ances this series. ایک بار پھر, rub­bish. ٹھیک ہے, had it not been for the rain in the third test then they would have been in with a good shout of win­ning (although Eng­land have a good recent his­tory when it comes to hero­ic rear-guard actions) but oth­er than that their bat­ting has simply not been up to scratch. Their bowl­ing has been OK but you can’t win a series without reas­on­able inputs from both. So many com­ment­at­ors have said: “Oh if it just wasn’t for this ses­sion” or “they matched them for most of the game but…” well that’s what test match crick­et is about. All teams should be able to com­pete for decent stretches but the best teams are marked out by win­ning the vital ses­sions, tak­ing the key wick­ets when it mat­ters, scor­ing the runs when they are needed. Eng­land have done that, Aus­tralia have not. Just think – oth­er than Bell, England’s bats­men have, by their own high stand­ards, been rel­at­ively short of runs. And Pri­or has had a bat­ting night­mare. If the they had all just made their aver­ages (تمام بار بیل ہیں, at the time of writ­ing, prob­ably about 20 runs under their indi­vidu­al aver­ages) then sud­denly there’s anoth­er 100 یا اس کے بورڈ پر چلتا ہے.

Maybe a vic­tory for Aus­tralia in this test will sud­denly thrust the momentum their way for when we start this all over again in a few months time, لیکن میں اس بات پر یقین ہونے کے لئے ابھی تک ہے.

***

Those knock­ing the decision to hand Ker­rigan and Woakes their inter­na­tion­al caps are, in my opin­ion, bark­ing up the wrong tree.

ٹھیک ہے, Woakes in par­tic­u­lar is not quite there yet when it comes to pos­sess­ing the neces­sary inter­na­tion­al class for test match crick­et and I’ve not yet seen enough of Ker­rigan after he was reduced to only 8‑overs on day one. But how will we ever know if they are not giv­en a chance. The view in the minds of the Eng­land select­ors, صحیح یا غلط, is that these two are worthy of con­sid­er­a­tion so why not give them the chance in a dead-rub­ber match which, because of the Aussie’s desire to restore a modic­um of pride, retains a com­pet­it­ive edge. Should they have been thrust into the lime­light for the first test? نہیں وہ نہیں کرنا چاہئے. Would Trem­lett have been picked for this match if the series was all square? ہاں وہ ہوتی. As I pre­vi­ously argued I would have maybe gone even fur­ther and giv­en a couple of oth­er lads a chance as well. I’ve not heard a great deal about Woakes but if what people say about Ker­rigan is true then it’s highly likely he will emerge much stronger after a dif­fi­cult start to life as a test crick­eter – and that’s got to be good for Eng­land because Swann isn’t going to be around for ever. And always remem­ber – Gooch got a pair on his debut. اس نے کیا برا باہر کی باری نہیں!

All this talk of debuts got me think­ing about how well, or oth­er­wise, the cur­rent team did on their debuts. Woakes and Ker­rigan are covered but what about the rest?

کک - کے سکور 60 اور 104; روٹ - 73 اور 20*; Trott — 41 اور 119; Pieterson - 57 اور 64*; بیل - 70; Pri­or – 126* اور 21; براڈ - 1wkt; سوان - 4wkts;  and Ander­son (a 5‑for in the first innings).

So all in all some very good debuts amongst the cur­rent crop – espe­cially amongst the batsmen!

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ایک تبصرہ

JSJon Scaife

مزید اتفاق نہیں ہوسکا. Aus­tralia have finally pro­duced a second total of above 300. At the 9th attempt. In per­fect bat­ting con­di­tions. Against 2 debutants. زبردست, Eng­land must be quak­ing. For com­par­is­on Eng­land have passed 300 5 times in 8 attempts so far. Des­pite only Bell show­ing signs of decent form.

To put it anoth­er way — England’s bats­men (inc Pri­or) have aver­aged 32.16 in the first 4 تجربوں. Aus­trali­a’s have aver­aged 28.8 (inc Had­din). So des­pite the poor form of our bats­men and Pieterson car­ry­ing a niggle we’ve STILL outscored their bats­men. We know our bowl­ing attack is bet­ter too. Ima­gine if just 1 of Cook, Trott or Pri­or had shown any form.

Of course Aus­tralia will do bet­ter with a home crowd and home con­di­tions, but they had a bet­ter team last time we were there and the score told the story. As someone on TMS said earli­er today — Eng­land have play­ers who deliv­er under pres­sure when they need to, Aus­tralia do not.

I don’t agree about the selec­tion though. Pick­ing 2 debutants at once puts too much pres­sure on them. If we want to give people a chance we have the T‑20, the 1‑day, and the Lions. Test crick­et is the pin­nacle and play­ers should be picked when they are good enough — like Root was judged to be. Woakes isn’t in that cat­egory. Ker­rigan could be jus­ti­fied, as long as he was picked along­side Swann and 3 (not 2) high qual­ity seam­ers. That way he can be giv­en a bowl at an ideal time against bats­men who aren’t set, یا, bet­ter still, saved for the second innings when there is lots of assist­ance in the pitch.

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