If bresnan was still in id agree with you. However with our tail and broad who has done nothing with the bat this tour then he is going to attack. Im not defending the shot I just understand why he did it.

Did you really think he was going to not open up?? I'd have put money on that this would happen.

Can you put your ego on ignore as well.

I 'd expect him to open up that was just giving his wicket away.

How many times has he done this in the past though and hit the ball for a boundary or a 6. He basically had no confidence in our tail and I don't blame him. As for doubling his score..... Really?

Every England fan knows knows to expect of pieterson and this wicket shouldn't really be a shock when batting with our current tail. Once bresnan went then it was basically get me to a hundred as quickly as possible as our tail is basically shite.

I don't think I've ever seen him play a shot like that in a Test Match.

What did you think to the shot though, John?????

Once again all the talk is about how Pietersen gets out and not the fact he is the difference between the two teams.

Glad to see the Aussies knocked down a peg or two. A top six that includes Rogers, Watson, Smith and Bailey isn't a particularly strong one

For someone of his ability he's had a poor series.

I think people have talked about how he's got out is because he's hardly been got out by a good ball pretty much every dismissal has been self inflicted the last two down right shocking. A lot of the a England players are out of form, he isn't he looks in superb form. Throughout the series he has got himself out.

I think he's an intelligent bloke you can tell this when you hear him talk about batting and the way he tries to manipulate the field. Somewhere in the last few weeks his thought process has became a bit muddled somehow. I know he's not the only one but it has.

Haddin has papered over the most cracks. Although we lost by massive margins, without his knocks in Brisbane and Adelaide it could have been totally different. I don't rate this Aussie team at all and with Haddin, Rogers and Harris almost finished they will soon be exposed again.

KP is his own worst enemy though, he can still play hard and aggressively without playing risky ugly shots that have cost his last two wickets. It is frightening to think how many more runs he could have scored for England if he didn't give his wicket away so many times.

I dont rate this aussie team either.

But what the fook does that make england?

We have been slaughtered.

And any talk of papering over cracks is more relevant tp this match than any of the other three.

By the way I agree with pj over kp

I said Pietersen was too impetuous when the Aussies were in England and I got a slew of criticism. It's his game and that's fair enough, but you don't want your number four getting 20 odd. His record doesn't match his recent performance. He's getting found out.

Well that debacle has ensured there will be no cracks papered over.

This has to be the worst english test team of all time surely.

And it used to be one of the best.

And we can could still win this match.

But tbat really would be a joke and paper over the chasm as the cracks are that wide

Can someone please explain to me why I keep hearing Carberry has been a positive on this tour?

He hasn't made a significant contribution in four Test matches. I'd give someone else a go at Sydney.

Another nomination for the worst shot of all time today as well, step forward Ian Bell.

The batting has been simply shocking.

Carberry has got progressively woese game by game.

The batsmen are just shit scared of johnson and are jyst lashing out at the others.

Totally shit scared.

Absolutely. The series has re defined the word dispiriting. From an English perspective anyway.

One slither of hope is that the highest successful run chase is only 183. But it will take a miracle, the like of which Dean Hedley produced on the 98/99 tour, to save this test.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Only kp and bairstow played anything that looked decent cricket. The dismissals of root and bell were awful, what the fuck was root doing??

The tail is very worrying aswell. They are all shit and once again pieterson is forced to attack them and basically just give away his wicket. What has happened to bresnan and broad?? I have no gripes with Anderson or panesar as everyone knows they can't bat.

2 huge collapses in the same innings is just wrong.

As for hopes of a miracle, is be amazed if we won this test and being honest the next one aswell

Also what was cook doing at the start of the days play. We bowled 40 balls all short in a row, why was this the tactics to a number 11 batsmen. Line and length is just standard in this spot but we were just short every single ball allowing there tail to add a very generous 40 odd to their total.

Very poor Compton must be pissing himself
Bairstow got a lucky 20 but the tail-Enders from 7 downs tactics of just wildly swinging the bat back fired badly

Some of bairstows shots were excellent, I bet you were gutted. Hopefully he remains in the team. With prior out if form he thoroughly deserves his chance

Yep 21 runs this innings and 32 overall is probably his best test match for some time, he is not a test batsman, when our tail starts at 7 we are fucked, I like Stokes but if he is our number 6 we need a good batsman at keeper, hopefully prior gets his head together and comes back stronger as Bsirstow at 7 is weak as piss

He averaged 30 in the summer ashes series, this Test he averaged 16 so it is actually his worst Test for some time.

His wicket keeping was excellent to be fair.

If the future is Bairstow we are fucked, a few not outs may have inflated his average in the summer but overall he is not good enough, not the only one mind you

You should have said.

Did bairstow bum you as a child or summit??

Serious question??

No it's just typical England, if your face fits it doesn't matter if you aren't good enough, and that useless 'lovely lovely person' is the poster child for it

Can anyone explain why after 15 overs joe root is bowling??

Alastair cook has lost the plot here like

A useless 'lovely lovely person' behind the stumps as well it seems

Cooks captaincy waa questionable last summer as well.

There again who in the world could captain that shower of shite.

Even the bowlers are not free from blame.

What they bowled yesterday to the last wicket was deplorable. And just made them look like thick not nice people.

Dont think most of them have actually put more than foot off the plane all tour.

Its not umfair to say most have played like they dont want to be there.

No hunger. No desire. Just terrified batters.

We have to look at why we have played reasonable in spells and then, like magic, someone flicks a switch and we are embarrassing.
Or is it more sinister than that?????????
I am assuming the powers that be are watching betting trends very very closely and in what areas the money is put down.
I am not accusing anybody of taking bribes but some of the events were very questionable.
It would be very hard for instance for Bell to have offered a better dolly than his last effort. It was very strange that our bowling for the last wicket was so short. Why did Bairstow refuse to dive for a wicket keeper's catch, as did Prior in a previous test??? England have been playing as if they don't want to win.............I want to know why.
Something is not right here and the whole farce needs a good coat of looking at.
I'll warrant there were some very tasty odds available against what has happened and I want a full and complete investigation to rule out any shenanigans before I am satisfied because some of the events over the last four tests beggar belief.
We have thrown away promising situation after promising situation since day one of the first test. That makes me suspicious.

They have a long wait in the departure lounge they don't home until the start of February!

I keep reading this 'terrified' and 'scared' stuff from certain people it's a nonsense. I can assure you non of the England batsmen and scared of anyone. Quite a few are badly out of form, some of them have technical limitations one or two aren't up to it. The collapses have plagued us for four Tests some of the shots have been awful but nobody apart from one or two of the tail at times nobody has taken a backward step. We just haven't found any sort of balance between attack and defence or just proper Test match batting. Take Carberry for example I watched him in the summer score a brilliant T20 hundred for Hampshire playing stylish shots all around the ground. That innings the other night was fucking painful 12 off 90 balls or something. He's 33 I'm sure he's faced round the wicket bowling before he looked like he didn't have a shot in his locker. Then on the other hand you had Pietersen in the first innings thinking because we'd gone 7 down he had to try and hit the ball back to Heathrow after grafting hard the day before.

Our minds have just been completely scrambled on a tour were everything has gone wrong. From the second day at Brisbane it's been a disaster. It has to be said they have bowled very well and have a good bowling attack but our batting has been as poor as I've seen from an England team. But the back to back series have seen a pretty unique situation of bowlers working out plans over 9 Test matches to certain batsmen and staying on top. Cook has barely faced any sort pitched bowling for example they've just worked on the channel on a full length on or around off stump.

A line needs to be drawn under it at the end of the day, I don't think Cook has been faultless in his captaincy but he hasn't had an easy job all captaining a team that has resembled a rabble at times. Talk of him losing the captaincy is premature. This is the first series he's lost as skipper let's not lose sight that four tests ago the suggestion would have been laughed off.

People don't become bad players and the rebuilding towards getting the urn back starts now.

I'd get rid of Flower, Giles and all the coachFing staff though. That needs freshening up.

In terms of performing below your ability Bell has been a disgrace
Also to go to the tour with only one regular wicket keeper set the scene for having to put a half wit behind the stumps yesterday with expected results

For the summer I'd go along the lines of something like this for a starting XI:
Cook
Root
Bell
KP
Ballance/Trott
Stokes
Barstow/Prior
Borthwick
Broad
Anderson
Onions

Disagree with PJ about not looking scared of their bowling attack, in particular Johnson. You only have to look at the crazy run that Joe Root took at Adelaide for the penultimate ball of the day where he should have been run out, it was evident that he was desperate to get off strike. Johnson has beat us mentally, he's barely bowled at he stumps all tour

Pj you say we have lost forn and our brains are scrambled yet they are not scared?

That makes no sense.

Yes the brains are scrambled but this is much worse tgan a loss of form.

There has to be a catalyst for such a loss of form, collectively. Its not just one or two players.

That catalyst is johnson. And our players are shit scared of his pace.

Our team would have been shite in the 70s. Imagine then having to play against thomson and lillie. Or garner and holding. Amongst others.

There is no other reason.

Test cricketers are not 'scared' of fast bowling, the suggestion is completely laughable. He certainly has the wood on a few of them and they probably want to avoid facing in fear of getting out but that isn't physical fear.

The scrambled thought process is the struggle they are having to find the balance between attack and defence some of them are going completely one way others completely the other, the art of building a substantial innings seems to have been lost of a few of them because the team are getting beat and they are getting stick from several different angles. What Johnson has done consistently is blow away the lower order and tail, again though I don't think even any of those are actually 'scared' Broad keeps walking in front of all three stumps and getting out LBW for example. others are trying to smash every ball whenever we get down to the tail. Confidence is gone not bottle.

The other bowlers have had just as a big an impact on the series and England's top order because they've not given us bad balls and we've not had the skill to hit them off line or keep the scoreboard ticking over. We've been beaten by a good bowling unit not one bowler.