This is where the absence of Warne from the Aussie squad starts to show.

If Warne had still been in the team we would have lost easily from the position we were in at the start of the day's play. By now we would be 7 or 8 down at least and Warne would be looking forwards to wrapping us up early on the final day then giving the Aussies two and a half sessions to knock off a target of 120.

As Michael Vaughan was saying in the commentary last night, in the past four Ashes tours down under, things would have been a lot closer, because some of the Aussie wins would have been draws without Warne, and there were one or two close games which could have been England wins.

A few streaky edges through the slips today, nothing to hand until Trott offers Clarke a gimmie which he then drops.

365-1

Fantastic stuff from Cooky. Long overdue and by far his greatest England innings

439-1.
Cook 201 not out Trott 100 not out

Nowt dodgy looking today

Can someone PM me and let me know where I can watch this game online. As, after 6pm here in Sydney, it won't be on telly and will miss the end.

Ta in advance

I'm disappointed that Strauss declared. What was the point of putting them in for a session, we were never going to bowl them out. The sole idea IMO was to try and get Ponting out to pee him off but now we let him get an unbeaten 50 and save some face. We should have made them stay out and chase the ball around the field for another sessions and let Trott try and get his double hundred, and Cook go for his triple hundred. Maybe if we lost a wicket we could have declared.

Anyway I wonder how many 'attacking declarations' Ponting will make in the rest of the series. What will be a safe target to set England to chase in the 4th innings...700? 800?

Just remembered another thing, what was it Mitchell Johnson was telling the press a few days ago, how he was going to stop trying to be a swing bowler and instead concentrate on bowling fast, and he was going to target Strauss with the short ball. How did that strategy go Mitch? 0-170, a duck and dropped catches. Johnson trying to talk like Glenn McGrath is like Audley Harrison trying to be Muhammed Ali.

Strauss would have been slaughtered in the media if he hadnt declared. We were never going to bowl them out but if Colly had held on to that catch we might have unsettled them.

Johnson maye well not be around for the next match, Bollinger and Harris have been called up.

Superb knock by Cook, this Test match he has started to look like the player he used to be, scored a lot of runs for a 25 year old so hopefully the summer was just a blip in his career. Great support from Trott to, to score 517 -1 in Australia at the Gabba is a great feat and should give us lots of confidence.

The question is does either attack have the ability to take 20 wickets? England could with Swann at his best, however once again the Aussies targetted him again today so it won't be easy for him.

I've seen both in county cricket and didn't see anything to worry about. Harris's bowling was ordinary in a short spell at Surrey two seasons ago, although he's a dangerous hitter at 8; he seems very injury-prone and has yet to make his Test debut at the age of 31. Bollinger bowled brainlessly when I saw him for Worcs against Surrey in 2007. Surrey were looking to bat out the final day to avoid a massive innings defeat with no hope of even making Worcs bat again, never mind winning. Bollinger repeatedly bowled four or five balls an over (sometimes all six) so short and wide outside off stump the batsman didn't even have to think about playing a shot. Surrey eventually scraped the draw after an unbroken last wicket partnership lasting 22 overs. Admittedly Bollinger's stats at Test level so far make it hard to understand how he didn't start this series; he'd be a fairly straight swap for Johnson now whereas I guess picking both and leaving out Siddle or Hilfenhaus would upset the balance fo their attack. Frankly though, if Xavier Doherty is the best spinner they can find I reckon they'd be better off going with an all-seam attack with North & Katich bowling a few overs of spin.

Johnson seems to have turned into an Aussie Steve Harmison. One golden year shortly after establishing himself at Test level followed by a mysterious and premature decline, never to be quite the same force again. His confidence and self-belief seem very fragile.


Difficult to judge at this early stage. After the first two days at Brisbane it was hard to see both sides batting long enough to draw a game. Only seven wickets fell on the last three days with almost 900 runs scored, but neither side was able to score quickly enough to set up a chance of a win. That just suggests to me the pitch became unusually docile. Even Harbhajan & Murali, the best two off spinners of the past decade, failed to make an impact in Australia. The omens don't look great for Swann, but he's clearly a confident and charismatic individual who won't easily be knocked out of his stride, so I wouldn't dismiss his chances of playing a pivotal winning role in the series just yet.

If they drop Johnson then I think it would be nailed on for Bollinger to replace him, he may have even started ahead of Siddle had he been fit for the first Test. Not seen much of him but I guess from an aussie perspective he can't do any worse than Johnson. Did you see his Harmison-esque delivery?

Swann has the character to come good and it's not like he bowled badly but the Ponting knows how crucial he is with regard to England having a four man attack and trying to nulify him is a way of trying to force the selectors to change the team.

If that did happen I would imagine Collingwood would drop out with Prior moving up and Bresnan coming in giving a fourth seam option and further strengthening the batting line up but I can't see any changes for the next Test.

England will not change their team but for injury IMO

You really don't know a lot about cricket do you?

I agree these Aussie bowlers don't bother me, Bollinger or Harris, they seem like the type who would never have got in a few years ago. You can categorise the Aussie pace bowlers over last couple of decades in a few groups
1 - world class strike bowlers (Reid, Alderman, McGrath)
2 - strike bowlers but could go through bad patches (McDermott, Whitney, Gillespie, Clark)
3 - workhorses (Hughes, Kasprowicz, Reiffel, Siddle)
4 - wayward and unreliable (Julian, Angel, Johnson, Rackemann)

When the Aussies have been strong they have had one from category 1 and then a couple of workhorses in support, plus a spinner, or maybe one workhorse and one of the less consistent strike bowlers. But whenever they have been short of the consistent strike bowler, they have been more vulnerable. Now for the first time since going way way back before Lillee, the Aussies don't have any sort of strike bowler, the ones they are looking to as strike bowlers are erratic. Siddle would have been a good support bowler 10-20 years ago and picked up wickets from batsmen who were under the pressure McGrath and Warne exerted on them, but he's not enough to knock sides over consistently on his own.

I would say at this point, England have at least Anderson who is in category 2, plus workhorses in Broad and Finn, which puts our bowling attack roughly where it was when we had Malcolm/Gough plus Fraser.



Swann is more likely to make a significant contribution with the bat, I bet he takes about 11 wickets in the series at an average of 40odd.

Isn't Shezhad (sp?) down there particularly to exploit possible reverse swing at Adelaide? May be horse$hit, but I'm sure I read this in the press somewhere.