Austadiums Forum

And the Rugby League World Cup. sh*t. NZ is pwning Australia in World Championships at the moment.

At least we got Cycling to fall back on.

now we have pup and himbo running the show...a veritable manscaping metro advertisers wonderland

So we expecting anything to happen in Sri Lanka? How will Clarke go as his first stint as captain? No Hilfenhaus? Do we have any spinners? Will the media ignore the now black sheep of the family. lol

Hard to tell. Whichever spinner we pick, his confidence will be shot and the Lankans will probably take to him. Against England, our new ball bowlers struggled big time as well. The conditions in SL will not be as favourable but neither with the batting lineup compared to the Poms.

Selectors are f***ed. Care factor declining. CA trashing the most universal brand in Australian sport.

Come on. Nothing about Nathan Lyon?
Actually the best thing about Clarke taking the capataincy off Ponting is that Ponting feels the release of the pressure to perform, so he does perform. Clarke was pretty crap anyway, so we shouldn't really see a decline in performances.

Exciting but I have to wait until the end of the series. The pitch was a result one. A lot of the spinners we've tried could have done as well.

For shame Australia.....you we're so bad you killed Peter Roebuck RIP......
and what do they do....send Warner instead of Kato.........F'n knobjockeys.

Phil Huges......too many chances to shine?

He'll get one more chance in Hobart I think. Much as I've been a fan of his, that dismissal in the second innings was just horrendous. Doesn't say much for Langer's abilities as a batting coach either...

Bring back Kat. In form with both bat and ball. Solves so many problems. Will never happen of course...

Well that batting performance in Hobart was just embarrassing. Hughes will get the chop, but it's the senior players (Ponting, Hussey, Haddin and Clarke) that should hang their heads in shame.

Disgraceful.

It was the type of collapse that you could pay Pakistan to perform

I'll give credit to NZ. They didn't bottle it like they could have in the past.

As Malcolm Knox said, it was bettter we lost than won so that we can examine the team. The "don't change a winning formula" crap has held back the team.

Jeffles wrote:The "don't change a winning formula" crap has held back the team.

According to public statements by the captain and coach we can now be held back by the "valuable experience" of Ponting, Hussey, etc

They can find a cliche to justify anything!

Our record over the past two years is not a "winning formula". Selectors have been too conservative, they've promoted column inches ahead of old fashioned stats (Michael Beer). The best way to get into the test team now is not to score a pile of runs of take a bag of wickets in the Shield. The best thing to do is get someone from the newspaper to say you're the next big thing and have it backed up by a quote from Shane Warne/Greg Chappell/Justin Langer (delete as appropriate). Another problem, especially in the Ponting era, was how some favoured players would be given more of a chance than others when their form dipped (Martyn, Symonds, Watson).

Bold prediction: Hussey, Ponting or Haddin will get a ton within two Tests and buy himself another year in the side. The same thing happened with Mark Taylor at Edgebaston in 1997. Does the big score in that scenario justify selection? IMO if you put faith in a player for long enough, they might get a big score eventually. But is that worth all of the failures that came in between?