The Ashes 2013

[David Robertson]

Don't like this England team one bit. It's certainly radical. Indeed, it's reckless. Woakes at 6 is a colossal gamble. Given the performance of the top order to date, far too much is now loaded onto Bell. Both Woakes & Kerrigan deserve Test cricket. But to blood both in the same Test is too much. Nothing in the evidence so far (Aus 112-1; Watson 80*) to make me believe otherwise.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Closed at 307-4 (Smith 66*, Siddle 18*). Bit more respectable, but Australia will be happy with that. England would have wanted one or two more wickets.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Geoffrey's not happy.

[MartinCarpenter]

I don't think they'd have done two debutants at once if it wasn't a dead match.

Kerrigan just shows how hard this can be - they'll have been tracking him for a good while, he's played in several lions matches and at least one tour but you can't legislate for someone getting that horribly nervous. Hope he manages to bowl normally at at least some stage of the match.

At least with Woakes he was only nervous in his first spell and seemed fine after that.

Gently astonishing to see Watson get not just a century but a really big one. Australia have been behaving so like England in the 90's that I can't help being reminded of the very long history of English wins in these sorts of dead rubber matches

[Alex Holowczak]

Kerrigan just shows how hard this can be - they'll have been tracking him for a good while, he's played in several lions matches and at least one tour but you can't legislate for someone getting that horribly nervous. Hope he manages to bowl normally at at least some stage of the match.

It won't have done his confidence any good to see Trott brought on and taking a wicket.

[Thomas Rendle]

Final day of the Ashes, might as well have this thread going. England playing is just right, keeping wickets in hand and giving themselves a chance.

At Hove England's women looking good to take a 2-1 lead in their series at 128/1 from 19.3 overs chasing 204 from 36.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Bit of an anti-climax to the match. I wonder whether it crossed the umpires' minds to just let play continue. Was there any way they could have turned a blind eye and just let those last four overs take place? Was good to see both teams trying to win on the final day.

[Richard Bates]

Bit of an anti-climax to the match. I wonder whether it crossed the umpires' minds to just let play continue. Was there any way they could have turned a blind eye and just let those last four overs take place?

Hardly - there was only one team that could benefit from such a decision. It wasn't as if it was 20 runs to win with 2 wickets to fall. Australia would have been up in arms, and rightly. Especially as the game only became exciting because of their decision to go all out for a quick declaration. And we all know that England in the same situation would have tried to bowl their overs at 12 an hour. I think it was a fair result - Australia didn't really deserve to lose this one.

The crowd can hardly complain, although no doubt the talking heads will continue to pontificate on their behalf. The tickets for the final day were half price and they got more excitement than most test audiences get in two or three days.

[Kevin Thurlow]

The umpires did what the rules demand. Whether the rules are sensible is another matter!

There is too much time-wasting. Drink breaks used to occur if it were exceptionally hot (or cold - at a Yorkshire-Surrey match, soup was brought on!), now they occur every hour, and at the fall of any wicket. Bowlers bowl a practice over in the outfield when there's a bowling change etc. No wonder over rates are slow. The batting side calls for new gloves etc.

The current rules allow either side to deliberately waste time in order to save a match, and it was to avoid that, that the "20 (or 16) overs in the last hour" rule was brought in 45 years ago.

It was still a great day's cricket. Obviously, we want to thrash Australia, but one has to admire Clarke's captaincy. However, England were trying to add quick runs in the first innings, and that contributed to the declaration. I'm not sure if the quick batting by England in the first innings on the last day were intended to try to get a result, or if they didn't have the technique to play a long innings!

[MartinCarpenter]

Why should one admire Clarke that much? That target was always far more likely to be chased than England to be bowled out in the time allocated. (We've been consistently batting 120+ overs.).

It was either tough love or briefly forgetting he didn't have Shane Warne in his team 4-0 would have felt worse than 3-0 in a few months. His early declaration in the third test was simply misguided as they needed (even) more runs than they had then at some stage and were scoring very fast.

Personally I found the final finish incredibly amusing

[Phil Neatherway]

I guess we have all been too depressed to comment about the current series. I can see no positives for England at all, apart from Ben Stokes's centuery.

[MartinCarpenter]

True enough In many ways it isn't so shocking in terms of motivation - for most of this Australian team its the last chance they were going to get to win the Ashes while the English team had just won at home twice in a row, away in Australia only 2 years ago etc.

Australia also very 'sorted out' this series. Fielding the same team for 4 tests in a row (a first for nearly ten years?!!?), not randomly dropping Lyon for much worse bowlers, having Watson/Harris fit and MJ bowling well. Quite a useful team when they've got all that going for them.

Fascinating to see what England do in the summer. Obviously a much weaker team with Trott/Swann out, although Panesar is still a notably better spinner than we've often had in the past. Mostly rather less batting/fielding.