TOPIC:

there is the best of sports medicine working well for all concerned -- unbelievable

ArkRoyal wrote: BH remember what you said after last ashes series in England? 'I might never see an Australian victory in England unless the batting improves; it was a very astute remark 'bease'.

Broad and Anderson will be desperate to start the series
England can only get the little 'urn' back if Buttler and Stokes succeed the in the middle order.

And it will still be the case again this time around AR.
I dont have a huge amount of faith in our batting to be honest other than Smith & Warner.
If our bowlers can keep England to lowish totals then we can be a chance to outscore them but too many ifs, whats and maybes for my liking!

SS I think the Dorff is just a white ball specialist these days as he no longer plays Shield cricket as apparently his body cant handle the rigours as some other posters have already noted.

OK thanks BH, cant have guys breaking down mid test.

BH: yep, I am with you -- the trouble with Australia, as you pointed out so well on that occasion, is that even with Smith and Warner, on every tour of England in my life-time, they have been one batting collapse away from losing the series; in the 1990s, we were fortunate that great bowlling paperred over the batting cracks for us.

Anyone whom wants to traumatise themselves over how inept Australia's batting has been in England since, probably 1953, just have a bloody butcher's at the 1981 series. In Leeds, the majority of the top seven bats men were bowlled out by short deliveries at their bodies, at the hands of an ageing Bob Wills in slow conditions; only Hughes and Border got good seamers from memory.

AR our batsmen scored plenty of runs in the 1989, 1993, 1997 & 2001 Ashes series in the ol dart so it can be done but we had some quality batsmen in those series-

1989- Taylor, Marsh, Boon, Border, Jones, S.Waugh, Healy (w/k)
1993- Taylor, Slater, Boon, M.Waugh, S.Waugh, Border, Healy (w/k)
1997- Taylor, Elliott, Blewett, M.Waugh, S.Waugh, Ponting, Healy (w/k)
2001- Hayden, Langer, Ponting, M.Waugh, S.Waugh, Martyn, Gilchrist (w/k) (Slater & Katich also played Tests in that series).

It also helped we had bowlers the quality of Alderman, Hughes, Lawson, McDermott, McGrath, Reiffel, Gillespie, Lee, Kasprowicz, May & Warne to give the Poms something to think about in their turn at the crease!

BH all true -- they made runs in the 1990s because England's bowlling was rubbish, there is no other way to describe it.

Sidebottom
Newport
Foster
and the rest.

just three England seamers averaged under 30 or around it

gough
cork
caddick

gough averaged 27 in Australia which was a fine effort against all our batsmen of the day; just to put that further into perspective, Caddick averaged 40 with the ball in our country.

Lets just wait until at Test is lost & then we can all hammer crap out of the selectors, coach & players.
Same concept as football or politics

Sobering reality check for our ashes prospects overnight.
Dukes ball swinging around + test quality bowlers + Australian batsman's dodgy techniques = carnage