England's Tour of Australia - Ashes, ODIs and T20s 13/14

The way I see it , the England batsman are all scared shitless of Mitchell Johnson .They are so pre-occupied with him ,they're still worrying about him when they're facing the lesser bowlers and producing absolute rank bad shot selections and getting out to average deliveries .
The England bowling attack apart from Broad (1st inns ,1st Test ) as been absolute crap .
Australia have won this series by putting England under pressure and not letting up .
The senior batsman (Cook ,Pietersen ,Bell ,Prior etc) have let themselves down big time ,by their previous efforts .The "newcomers (Root ,Carberry ,Stokes) may be excused due to the lack of experience .
Swann's "retirement" halfway through the tour is as big an embarressment as you can get .No backbone or fight in him when the chips are down ,good riddance , is what I think .
It's time to say goodbye to a few underperformers and let the young 'uns get a chance now.

(29-12-2013 02:26 )mickster Wrote:  It's time to say goodbye to a few underperformers and let the young 'uns get a chance now.

Do we have any good young 'uns?

Anyway not much happening today except England dropping catches. The best moment yesterday was when Bresnan declined to walk, even after being bowled!

When they come home they should be flown into the smallest underused airport in the UK possible with no press waiting for them and the press should make any coverage of their homecoming as small as possible. To go from heroes to zeros in a few short months is just shambolic. They deserve as little press coverage as possible from now on until they find some backbone to make them worthy of playing for England again. Heathrow and Gatwick should refuse their flight permission to land.

The Australians have planned well for this series. They have work out all the weaknesses of the England batsmen and have followed it up with some acurate quality bowling. Add to this some increasingly hostile antics on the pitch.

England don't seem to have had a plan at all.
They take three tall fast bowlers and then fail to use them.
There's not one area of the contest where the England team has come out on top. Their fielding has been well below par, and I can't remember the last time that we dropped so many catches.

Cooke's had a nightmare as captain. He's constantly made bad decisions

^ Very fair assessment Charlemagne. Also been some mind games off the field that have been effective for the Aussies.

We all know the form of the teams go in cycles, it is a real shame that England's fall from the top came when playing the old enemy in their backyard.At least we have the memories of beating them on our last visit.Time for major changes, need Cook away from Captain, let him bat, that is what he is good at. Reached 8000 runs in fewer tests than Tendulkar, not much mention of that great achievement.New Captain, not sure who to go with? and find a genuine fast bowler, 90mph all the time....

Cook's interview was painful to listen to,basically he has no answers.I wouldn't be surprised if England decide to hand the ODI captaincy to Morgan just to get him out of the firing line.Although he has just played his best innings in this match.

(29-12-2013 03:02 )cosmonaut Wrote:  Do we have any good young 'uns?

It seems not. Dropping an underperforming Prior only leads to the inadequate Bairstow being picked. The same would apply to other established players. There are few genuine alternatives. People moan about Pietersen, but he's scored more runs than any other England batsman in this series. The truth is that the newcomers are worse than the established players. Bell has had a disappointing series, but still averages more in the series than Carberry or Root. Scott Borthwick will probably get a game at Sydney, so a decent performance from him may offer some hope, but in general the cupboard looks pretty bare. Look at how England have struggled to find a replacement for Collingwood and you see just how bare the cupboard is.

I expect Flower to resign at the end of this series, but the England team probably won't change much.

The whole point of letting the young uns get a chance is exactly that .They may struggle ,but I'd rather THEY got the experience rather than a handfull of old stagers ,who appear to have had their better days left in the past .
At some point they have to be replaced ,I'd do it now and make a clean break of it .