Last night, as England started their reply to Australia’s massive first innings score, the television authorities showed us how many runs England needed to avoid the follow on.
As it stands, England are 3 for 53, so they need about 200 to avoid the follow on. If England score any more then 250 in their first innings, I doubt Ricky Ponting will be in any hurry whatsoever to enforce it.
The issue for England is time. They won’t be given a sniff of a chance to win this Test, the issue will be whether or not they can bat out 130 or so overs in the final innings on a fourth and fifth day track against Shane Warne.
England will have to bat out today. The runs column does not matter so much as the wickets column. Although given that Flintoff and Pieterson are two of the batsmen that England’s hopes depend, the runs should take care of themselves. Australia’s bowlers will be bowling to aggressive fields so there will be plenty of scoring opportunities.
However England will make their task a lot easier if they forget about the follow on mark. Unless they are totally routed this morning, it is unlikely to be an issue.
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By the by, I’ve noted online some English supporters are very unhappy about the aggressive nature of the Australian ground authorities. All I can say is that this trend has been going on for years, and is just getting worse and worse. As an Australian, I’d like to apologize to any stray Barmy Army readers who come across this post, because Cricket Australia really are unspeakable.
Our cricket team is wonderful and our administrators are deplorable. There’s nothing we can do about it.
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Greg Baum suggests divine intervention might be required for England. There’s no rain in sight, though. There’s been a nasty drought in Australia this year.
As I understand it the English need 350 odd to avoid the follow-on, and going on current form this is highly unlikely. It could have a positive impact however as it would mean they don’t bat last on a wicket that looks like it will become a dusty spinner after a series of 30C days.
Sitting in the stands yesterday the concensus around me was that there was Flintoff as the captain, main strike bowler and important batsman … and some other guys making up the English team. None of the bowlers apart from Flintoff looked like getting wickets on a regular basis, and the English top order batsmen looked less at ease than Brett Lee, Stuart Clark and Glen McGrath with the bat.
Australia continues to dominate this game, and honestly, that’s surprised me. I was surprised at how easily Australia’s lower order was able to take the score from 6/467 to 9/602, Australia’s highest score against England at home sinc…
Scott,
On the heavy-handedness of the stewarding at the Gabba, Australia is not the only place where bureaucracy and caution are clamping down on cricket being a fun spectator sport. In England, many grounds, but particularly the Oval, have become intimidatory, miserable places to watch cricket.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me whether I was getting any tickets for next summer’s Tests and I said I wouldn’t bother going to the Oval, it is simply no longer pleasurable. Lord’s, by contrast, remains in a liberal state of joy.
Actually, the Poms needed about 400 to avoid the follow on – which they won’t get.
As far as the Barmy Army goes – Scott, you’re talking out of your arse mate. They’ve moaned incessantly about samll and large things. They can’t all sit together because of seat allocations – as can’t many of us. So what? Despite CA trying to keep their numbers down, they still ahd access to many more tickets tha we did last year. At one English ground, none were available to us. The average, across five grounds, would have been about 2% at most. They’ve been told to shut that annoying trumpter up – again, so what? They’re at a hostile ground, and they have made much of how much they can influence a game. Why should we encourage that? As you should know, we have no culture of chanting at games, and after a while it becomes incredibly annoying. Why shouldn’t the comfort of local fans be given some weight? Most of don’t really appreciate the racket. As it happens, the reason they haven’t been chanting is purely because they haven’t had anyhting to get excited about.
By the way – I notice pretty much all of the flags the Poms have have ‘FC’ emblazoned on them. Shouldn’t it be ‘CC’, or are the Barmy Army more loaded with soccer thugs than they’d like us to believe?
BTW – I’ve just read that the trumpet ban was as a result of a council bylaw that has been in place for 12-odd years, rather than a decision by CA. And: seperating sections of the crowd is a standard tactic to avoid critical mass being achieved and trouble – potentially – starting, so even if the crowd had wanted to sit en masse, perhaps they still would have been spread. It’s not like British sports fans have done anything to inspire trust. Even with the vaunted improvement in behaviour over the last few years, they were typically appalling in Germany this year.
What’s with the approximations? England needed 403 to avoid the follow on.
Watching Test cricket, or just about any other sport is no longer a pursuit for the working man. Even at the “liberal” enclave of Lords fussy stewarding depresses the spirits. A friend who went to the Oval last summer was so hacked off with the rip-off prices for crap beer and greasy burgers, he’s sworn never to go again.
Not content to pick your pockets, they can’t even put on a show. Through the numerous interruptions for rain on the day, the ground authorities couldn’t halt the advertisements on the big screen to show highlights of the previous play. The next day’s farce, when the Pakistani sit in ended the game, was accompanied by a total news blackout from the EWCB.
So all football fans with FC on their flags are “soccer thugs”, please you may know loads about cricket but football fans with flags in the UK are less likely to be hooligans thans fans without, may be you are still stuck in the 70′S.
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