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Australia v England, 2nd Test, 4th December 0400


Fleagle said:
That’s a generally fair assessment. But a couple of caveats.

However much we luddites regret it, Awhatever happens this test we are never returning to the era when a team prepared for a test tour by playing several first class matches. No one does that anymore. They should, but they won’t. There’ll be no scrutiny of that.

And while the frustration with the current team is that they have promised more than they have delivered, a fair assessment of what they have delivered still requires comparing the end point to the start. When England were sixth in the world rankings with one win in 17. Because it wasn’t just good teams they were drawing at home and losing away to, they were losing to the bad ones as well.

That’s the story of the current era for me. They’ve improved significantly but still under achieved. The frustration of Perth is that they failed to close out a winning position. But I have been fortunate enough that this is the fourth time I have been out here for an ashes series over the last couple of decades, for a couple of games each time. And Perth was the first time I’d seen an England team even get into a winning position in the first place in a match where the series was alive. It’s a low base.
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Dobell stated that they were under prepared; he neither said nor inferred they could,should play several 1st class matches.They were here10 or so days before the 1st test and played 1 practise game. Presumably Dobell is better informed than you or I on how these days were spent. That's inadequate preparation for me. Perhaps there should be scrutiny on current pre-series preparation. The penultimate paragraph of his report was a true and fair reflection on how this era will be viewed. Can't see how the initial impetus of this era is relevant to the current teams methodology.
Probably a little unfair to draw too many conclusions on this forthcoming test,however, given its pink ball status
 
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Won the toss again? Good start. Let’s hope the early alarm is worth it this time.

Changed my seating position from the first test. Let’s go England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
 
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