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Australians.
Skive
Posts: 15,286 Skive's The Limit
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Weekender Offender
Post edited by JustV on
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Have to agree with Ponting about the state of the wicket at the Oval though. Doesn't change anything as both sides had to play on it, but the quality of that pitch was embarassing.
I thought you were going to switch allegiances now that England have won?
Not sure I agree with Puter to be honest. Yes, the pitch was designed to force a result, but three factors determined the result ahead of the state of the pitch:
1) England won the toss thus making sure Australia would bat last
2) Australia batted like morons in the first innings which effectively lost them the series
3) Puter seems to be trying to gloss over the monumental error of judgment in not picking a recognised spinner. The Oval, especially after a couple of days will always take spin. Why Ponting didn't choose Hauritz is quite beyond me. I bet Shane Warne would have loved to have bowled on that wicket.
Australia played better all series, but England won the key moments and that has won them the Ashes. They weren't as convincing as 2005, but won all the same. The survival in Cardiff, Fred's 5-for at Lord's and Broad's spell on Friday mean that the Ashes are coming home.
What also gets me is that a lot of them are moaning about foreign-born players in the England team. Firstly, don't they know that's what we do? Secondly, the player they would have dearly loved to have brought with them were it not for his discipline problems, Andrew Symonds, was born... in Birmingham!
We should have had a spinner, definitely, and I think we've badly missed Brett Lee as well as Symonds. I also think Ponting made a huge mistake in not wheeling the big guns out sooner at Sophia Gardens.
I still think the number of foreigners in the England side is a bit of a joke. Symonds was born in Birmingham but his adoptive parents moved to Oz after two months...
They never left mate. Even if Australia won, we never let them take the actual ashes from England.
But yeah, they normally stay in the MCC vault, either in the England room or the Australia room.
Bloody foreigners, coming over here, winning our Ashes for us
Trott and Pietersen, fair enough (though neither of them played together during this series so we only really had one proper foreigner in our team at any one time). Strauss moved back to the UK when he was six, hardly an age at which they could have forseen his future cricketing greatness, similarly with Prior who moved back when he was eleven.
I think the Aussies can moan about that if they want, but at the end of the day, failure to get one of Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar out in Cardiff, an England-esque batting collapse at the Oval and the decision not to pick Hauritz lost them the Ashes.
It is a bit of a joke when half the England side are usually Aussies or Saffas though. Not quite as big a joke as the whole 2005 squad getting an OBE though...