The Ashes? Forget it - this side would be lucky to beat Bangladesh

[vvvslaxman]

http://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/the-ashes/second-test-report-card-australia-fail-in-all-departments-in-their-embarrassing-loss-to-england-in-adelaide/story-e6frf3gl-1225966930363 Second Test report card: Australia fail in all departments in their loss to England in Adelaide By Martin Smith FOX SPORTS December 07, 2010 3:15PM Past glories ... Australia must be looking back to the good old days after their embarrassing loss in Adelaide. Source: Ray Titus / News Limited After Australia crashed to an embarrassing defeat at the Adelaide Oval, we've run a fine tooth comb over their performance and identified why it all went so horribly wrong. Batting - fail To be bowled out for 260 on the first day of a Test match is never going to be good enough. But that Australia did it after winning the toss on a flat Adelaide pitch makes their performance even more wretched. A combination of poor communication, bad batting and great bowling in the first half hour had the Aussies chasing the game from the start. Shane Watson looks to be in good form, but his knack of getting out when he’s made a start, which was once just an annoying habit, is turning into something more serious. Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin were again shining lights, but the rest are out of form and out of chances. Bowling – fail Massive, massive fail. Five wickets in 152 overs and over two days in the field is an embarrassing performance, even on a pitch ideal for batting. Ryan Harris led the way with intelligent and skilful bowling, but the rest of the attack was left wanting. Doug Bollinger was slow and unthreatening, Peter Siddle was miles off his day-one performance in Brisbane and the less said about Xavier Doherty the better. The Aussies have now taken a total of six wickets for 1192 runs over two innings, 304 overs and four days of bowling. Their inability to strike fear into the England batsmen makes a Test victory this series seem highly unlikely. Fielding – fail Australia's bowlers weren’t helped by another ordinary performance in the field. Jonathan Trott was the benefactor of Australia errors twice on day two – a simple dropped catch by Mike Hussey and a missed run out by Xavier Doherty. Doherty’s chance was far from straightforward, but that Trott had taken a similar chance in the first over of the match seemed to symoblise the gulf between the two sides in Adelaide. When compared to the smart slips catches taken by Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood on Monday, Australia’s fielding effort looked worthy of a club game. Selection – fail The selection of Ryan Harris was one of the few pluses in this match, but it was just about the only thing the selectors got right. Doug Bollinger looked short of a gallop while Marcus North and Xavier Doherty will be extremely lucky to survive the cut for the third Test. Ben Hilfenhaus, while he was ineffective in Brisbane, was unfortunate to be left out. However, in defence of the selection panel, it’s hard to think of one player outside the XI who would have made a significant difference in this match. Leadership – fail Allan Border told foxsports.com.au's The Last Word during the match that Australia lacked spark and aggro in Adelaide, the same qualities that teams under Border's captaincy had in droves. The sight of the Australia players laughing and telling jokes while the match slipped away from them seemed to emphasise Border's point. Just like in Brisbane, the lack of intensity in the field must fall squarely on the shoulders of the leadership group. Apart from Michael Clarke’s second innings, neither captain nor vice captain showed much leadership with the bat and their dismissals early on day one put Australia on the back foot. Ponting’s field placings verged on the bizarre at some stages, but he must be given credit for trying different things with an impotent attack on a flat pitch. It also must be noted that a captain can only do so much; he can’t bat and bowl for the others 10 players in his team. Overall - fail It's hard to find any positives at all from this match. Put simply the batsmen couldn't bat, the bowlers couldn't bowl and the fielders couldn't field. To make matters worse, England now have the momentum of a steam train, despite losing Stuart Broad for the series. Australia have seemingly reached one of their lowest points since the dark ages of the 1980s and only a brave man would back them to turn it around from here.

[EnterTheVoid]

It is raining so heavily here in Adelaide (thunderstorms, lightning), Australia could have escaped with a draw had they not collapsed so meekly in the morning. Well done England, you've avenged the ghosts of Adelaide 2006.

[ZodiaC]

So in short an epic :fail: :punter:

[The Dark Horse]

They never failed to fail:giggle:

[yoda]

This may be the worst aussie team since most of us started watching kirikut.

[Sachin=GOD]

Aussie media call for Warne return

A Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter Fitzsimons called for Ricky Ponting to be axed as captain and Shane Warne brought out of retirement in his stead. The hosts crashed to an innings-and-71-run defeat in the second Test in Adelaide as England went 1-0 up in the series - just one win away from retaining the urn, possibly before Christmas. And their country's press were in a predictably unforgiving mood. The return of Warne had been floated as an outside chance - albeit as short as 6-1 with British bookmaker William Hill - and exercised Fitzsimons' mind as he penned his column. "I am told from a reliable source that while Warne would be honoured to be asked, he wouldn't even consider it unless he was made captain, and even then he would be unlikely," he wrote. "I say, OK. "Ricky Ponting, we love you and thanks, but it just isn't working. You're on course for setting a record by captaining Australia to three Ashes series defeats, and we need to make a change. No hard feelings. "I say Shane Warne - who guided the Rajasthan Royals to a stunning triumph in the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League - should be offered the captaincy of the Australian cricket team he has so long coveted, if he will just make a three-Test comeback." His colleagues at the newspaper were just as damning, with Richard Hinds noting - under the headline "The Ashes? Forget it - this side would be lucky to beat Bangladesh" - that "Australia has a snowball's hope at the 2022 [football] World Cup of regaining the Ashes" and Peter Roebuck noting simply that "The gap between these sides has become a chasm". The Courier Mail's Robert Craddock also called for a major overhaul, insisting: "The 11 lost souls who succumbed to one of Australia's most humiliating Ashes losses will never play together again following a shake-up that will leave blood on the selection room floor. "Half of the Australian team who were part of the second Test loss ... will have their positions scrutinised in the most forensic detail." However, Craddock's proposed solution of "a team of Phil Hughes, Shane Watson, Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey, Brad Haddin, Steve Smith, Michael Johnson, Ryan Harris, Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle" is numerically contentious and will not please absent vice-captain Michael Clarke. Craddock's selection of 19-year-old Queensland Academy batsman Johnson ahead of near-namesake Mitchell will also raise eyebrows. Former captain Mark Taylor, quoted in the Herald Sun, advocated a seemingly more likely recall for the left-arm seamer to bring the team "an X-Factor", adding: "He's the sort of guy who gives them a bit of aggro, and that's exactly what they need". Taylor and former opening partner Michael Slater also backed the claims of New South Wales all-rounder Steve Smith to take the place of Marcus North. The Australian's Malcolm Conn claims: "Not since Australia's darkest days in the mid '80s has the Test team played so badly. Has the national side which was so recently ranked number one in the world really fallen this far?" Conn later adds: "At least Allan Border's battlers had an excuse, they had been gutted by rebel tours to South Africa. But Border pugnaciously held the side together with his bat." The prevailing mood, though, was perhaps best captured by a headline on the homepage of the Adelaide Advertiser's website. "POMS GO ONE UP - Aussies humiliated in defeat".

http://www.espnstar.com/cricket/the-ashes/news/detail/item543683/Aussie-media-call-for-Warne-return/ :giggle::giggle:

[Mamu]

The Ashes? Forget it - this side would be lucky to beat Bangladesh http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/the-ashes-forget-it--this-side-would-be-lucky-to-beat-bangladesh-20101207-18oct.html :cantstop::cantstop: Wow - Never seen Aussies getting creamed so badly in the media. They are really tearing these guys off

[Anakin]

The OZ media is all over the team and selectors. Feeling a bit sorry for :punter:

[Desi Cartman]

Thats not rain. :punter: cried so much that it caused a flood in Adelaide

[EnterTheVoid]

Not merely because their ineptitude means the closest they will get to holding the Ashes is on a sightseeing tour at Lord's, but because they allowed the Barmy Army to complete the most chilling invasion of Australian soil since Japanese bombs rained down on Darwin. Listening to the endless choruses of Jerusalem and God Save Your Queen, you would have thought Adelaide was a small city in Shropshire, not the local home of mullets, serial killers and Christopher Pyne.

****ing brilliant

Marcus North, in his last match for Australia, provided a reminder of his significant place in the game's history - he was, according to Cricinfo's archive, the only Test player whose surname is also a point on the compass. North failed at the crease. But, without him, Australia might have lost all sense of direction.

:hysterical:

In the second innings, Michael Clarke showed his backbone to someone other than the team physiotherapist. Yet he remains the most baffling figure. While you could easily forgive Clarke's decision not to walk on the (hastily tweeted) grounds he was devastated by his dismissal to Pietersen in the last over of the day, his later admission that he was trying to push the ball around the corner for a single so he could get off strike is not the type of revelation you want from the captain-apparent.

****ing awesome. This guy has got an awesome sense of humour.

[maniac]

Australia has a very strong domestic system and a good pool of players to choose from...I guess the selectors need to be patient but still how a guy like North gets to play 21 tests is beyond me. I am looking at the Aussie squad for the last test and let me be honest they don't look as weak as we are making them out to be.Some times a team hits a rough patch.Not to forget they almost won the 1st test in India. I can still bet that it won't be a cakewalk for the English in the upcoming tests

[jf1gp_1]

australias fall is scary will we be heading in the same direction in a yr or two ? All our replacements are so young that in a tough situation we only have sehwag for direction and lets not forget sehwag is 32 we will have to start looking for an opener as soon as we are done replacing our middle order

[Desi Cartman]

australias fall is scary will we be heading in the same direction in a yr or two ? All our replacements are so young that in a tough situation we only have sehwag for direction and lets not forget sehwag is 32 we will have to start looking for an opener as soon as we are done replacing our middle order

Over the next 1-2 years we need to find replacement for only 2 batsman ie Dravid and SRT. VVS can play for another 3-4 years. This kind of transition ( 1 player each year ) is not too bad

[expoking]

I can most definately see Dravid and Sachin playing into their, Dravid to a lesser extent. If we can keep those guys and Laxman in the team for a few years until the next generation is truly ready, our fall should not be anywhere near as steep as Australia's has been.

[The Outsider]

I am not so much worried about our batting. I feel we have adequate talent in the reserves to sufficiently cover up for the loss of Dravid, Tendulkar, and Laxman if properly phased out. Not replace them to the tee, but cover up without feeling a huge pinch. It's the development of our bowlers which I is more bothersome. Zaheer has maybe 2 years at his best left and even so there will be periods of injuries. Harbhajan has not been able to cover up sufficiently for Kumble and we have been hacking our way through 20 wickets from here and there on occasions. Sreesanth and Ishant really need to develop into world class bowling options over the next 2-3 years. They have a good enough experience, grounding, and a winning team culture to build upon, but fast bowling in India is a tough job and the next 2-3 years will determine their strength and whether they can be counted on to take 20 wickets for the side 5 years down the line.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Sachin=GOD]

Aus were always known for their bench strength but now that has become a thing of the past and even after 2-3 years of their retirements, Aus have not been able to find adequate replacements for Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Hayden, Martin etc and that is a very worrying thing for them. As far as India is concerned, I think we have many good players like Pujara, Raina, Rohit, Kohli etc coming up who will be ready to play test cricket by the time Sachin, Dravid retire. We would have some problem in the bowling department because bowers like Sreesanth, Ishant, RP Singh, Munaf etc, although very talented, are not consistent and are very erratic and that IMO is a very big problem we will have to face in years to come.

[gult]

Why are they ignoring brad hodge? Age shouldn't be the issue as long as the performance is upto the mark.

[vamos_rafa]

I am not so much worried about our batting. I feel we have adequate talent in the reserves to sufficiently cover up for the loss of Dravid' date= Tendulkar, and Laxman if properly phased out. Not replace them to the tee, but cover up without feeling a huge pinch. It's the development of our bowlers which I is more bothersome. Zaheer has maybe 2 years at his best left and even so there will be periods of injuries. Harbhajan has not been able to cover up sufficiently for Kumble and we have been hacking our way through 20 wickets from here and there on occasions. Sreesanth and Ishant really need to develop into world class bowling options over the next 2-3 years. They have a good enough experience, grounding, and a winning team culture to build upon, but fast bowling in India is a tough job and the next 2-3 years will determine their strength and whether they can be counted on to take 20 wickets for the side 5 years down the line.

I would not agree to it... Now if you see mos of the batting reserves that we see are more in the slam bang category. Be it the Kohlis the Rainas or even M. Vijay. The only one batsman who is technically good is Pujara. And he still needs to be pitted into the international conditions whereby we would come to know of his worth. It's one thing scoring huge scores in India but when these batters would step out in countries like SA,Aus,Eng against real pace bowling that would be the true test of them. Right now our batting is in a very safe cocoon of some of the best batters of all times. So these youngsters can feel secure with the atmosphere that they are in. Imagine the kind of impact a Sachin or a Dravid can have on a batsman making the debut. They would be getting ample guidance from them. But when you take out these names then these youngsters need to play the leading roles in the side and that would separate the mens from the boys....

[Bradman99]

Why are they ignoring brad hodge? Age shouldn't be the issue as long as the performance is upto the mark.

He retired from test matches unfortunately. It's a big shame... However, I see no reason why they are also ignoring him for ODI's. He averages 109 this year in one dayers and has scored something like 8 centuries in his last 17 one dayers for Victoria.