Daily Result: £269.31
Oh dear. A sad day for English cricket. Crashed and burned as the Aussies turned up the heat. And unlikely to make a phoenix like revival from the flames this series no matter how much the old heart wishes they could. At times like this the head takes over. England were simply outthought and outplayed today and the result was a disaster. The player's must be feeling gutted, the press is bound to turn against the team and the target of everyone's anger will surely be Duncan Fletcher himself, whose stubborness about team selection and tactics in his immediate post-match interview was simply cringeworthy. So much so that I had to Sky+ it just to check I'd heard him right. :-(
As for today's profit I made around £180 on the game. Decided at the start of the series that I had too much on to stay up all night for the tests so had only been watching the first hour or so of each day's play and hadn't really been involved. But when I got up for today's 1st ODI between Pakistan and West Indies it was, as expected, abandoned. Which meant I could watch the last few hours of the 2nd Test. Great for trading if painful to watch. Followed that up with a quick £90 or so having a look at the second innings in the Zimbabwe v Bangladesh ODI.
Not really a day to focus on the trading though. I love my cricket and stupid as it sounds the result from Australia hurts. Cliched yes, but it's like I've been walking around with a dark cloud over my head all day. I'm not going to go into massive detail about how it all went wrong. That is painfully obvious and the stats speak for themselves. England simply got it wrong tactically on the 5th day and were too negative. Here's some pretty stark numbers that illustrates it all.
For starters England managed to knock up a world record. Their 551 declared is the highest 1st innings score by a losing side in over 130 years of test match history. Yesterday's first session saw England score 30 runs in 28 overs. That's not a typo. They really did average just 1.07 runs an over. In the 54 overs they faced in total yesterday they socred 70 runs - at 1.29 runs an over. And in the process of bogging themselves down they managed to lose 9 wickets for 60 runs. Which left Australia needing 168 runs from 36 overs. They managed it in 32.5 overs. And ok, yes, they were chasing not defending. But that was still at 5.16 an over. Put it this way - they scored 168 runs in considerably less time than it took England to score 30.
Ok. Enough doom and gloom. Let's look to the future. Well, unfortunately things don't get much brighter. No team has ever gone 2-0 down in a test series in Australia and won the series. But, I guess England "only" need a draw to retain the Ashes. So let's take it match by match and just look at the next test in Perth. Well, I'm afraid again the omens aren't great. Of the last 10 tests England have played there they've won 1, lost 6 and drawn 3. And I doubt they were ever as psychologically damaged as they are now having just snatched a defeat from the jaws of a draw.
Which brings me back to Duncan Fletcher. I'm not the type to call for heads to roll and I won't here. Yet. The man has done a lot for English cricket. In the test arena at least. And England are obviously understrength with Trescothick, Vaughn and Jones out from the 2005 Ashes winning team. Harmison is a shadow of his former self, Flintoff appears to be playing through an injury and the loss of bowling coach Troy Cooley - who went to Australia - has obviously had a big impact on the performance of the English attack.
But for fecks sake man. Injuries or no injuries there's still the job of picking the best team available. And recent selections have been more than a touch bizarre. To win a test match you have to take 20 wickets. No ifs. No buts. 20 wickets. So it's no surprise the country is asking why we are playing Ashley Giles instead of Monty Panesar when Monty is clearly in better form. And isn't playing his first competitive matches after a year out injured. Fletcher's answer? We need Gilo's batting. What? The same batting that was seen him score a total 74 runs in 4 innings. While taking just 3 wickets in 2 tests at an average of 87.3?
I appreciate the batting argument. But it's such a negative approach. Effectively you're saying you can't rely on the batsmen. So we won't play our best bowlers. So we end up with a team without the best players in their disciplines. No wonder the Aussies are openly laughing. The 2nd test could have been so much different if England had taken a few more wickets a little more quickly. And if Giles hadn't dropped Ponting in his 30s before he went on to make another century.
Ultimately I'm just an armchair pundit. I like Giles and Fletcher knows more about cricket than I ever will. But it's time for change for the 3rd test. Maybe wholesale change. Stuart Broad? Ed Joyce? Sajid Mahmood? Monty Panesar? They're all names I hope Fletcher is at least looking at in possible team line ups. Unfortunatley I don't think he'll give them more than lip service. Just carry on like he is now. Claiming his team selection is great and it's all the batsmen's faults.
But will he really dare leave Monty out again?
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9 comments:
Congrats on being the official Betfair blogger. Time for a name change to DJ Betfair Trader? Best of luck with it all, anyhow.
Hi Prekladatel. Thanks for the congratulations and kind wishes. It's nice to know someone at Betfair Towers thinks the blog it's worth featuring :-). But there's really nothing official about it. They just asked if they could use my content as and when and I said yes as long as they linked back to me. I'm not in any way employed or censored by Betfair and will continue to write about things as I see them.
As for DJ Betfair Trader. Hmmm. Not sure what you mean there but I'm not Ed if that's what you meant! Anyway, I was always a crap DJ - my mates used to call me DJ Double Beat!
DJ is Dead
Long live the 'Betfair Trader'
please send all correspondence
c/o
The Betfair Trader
'Betfair Towers'
London
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:-)A
Hi wandered into your Blog. Regarding the cricket, I'm still abit, well I suppose sad about the result. It wasn't just the defeat but the manor of it. I looked at the cricinfo blog for the game. Official attendance for the game was around 20,000 but with an hour and half to go they opened the gates for free entry. 136,761 was the attendance for the last session. Amazing.
Anoymous 1> I'm tired, my head hurts and I'm more than a little confused by that! Straight overt my head!! But if anyone really can be bothered to contact me just do it through comments on the blog or via email - my address is at the bottom of the right hand column. :-)
Anonymous 2> Really?! That sounds a lot. If you check back could you point me in the direction of the blog? Cheers.
Can I have £500 on that overreaction Mr Trader! Seriously. A couple of days ago the Aussie and English media were mourning the end of two great careers after Warne posted his worst test figures and McGrath got 0 for a hundred and plenty. A large part of that was down to the pitch but look at Hoggy...
We through it away. The Aussies did not win it. Make no mistake about that.
Why the fuck we came out and batted as we did I don't know. Bell getting run out, Pietersen sweeping his first ball from Warne after leaving the shot in the locker during the first innings. It was a free kay for the Aussies - we were never going to post a score larger enough to put them in with enough time left to knock them over so they could set some stupidly attacking fields.
I agreed with the Giles pick in the first test as Bris is a graveyard for finger spinners. Giles's batting would have swung it. But at adelaide we could have done with him without question. I suspect we will see him for the next test.
I suspect Mahmood will also be back for Jimmy A who has looked short at this level one too many times now. (Not that Saj hasn't but unless we recruit Broad from the Acadamy side we do not have much choice).
This Aussie side is on its last legs but the problem is they still seem to intimidate us. I hope they go into Perth with only 4 bowlers. I thought at the beginning of the series that we could retain the Ashes and I still believe that.
Strauss is in good nick and is due a score as long as he leaves his hook shot at home, KP has scored well, Colly is on fire and its nice to see a good bloke do well, Bell is also in good touch. The bowlers are below par and we miss my man of the series last time Simon Jones. If Harmy turns it on (he clearly needs overs under his belt and hopefully will play in the weekend games) and Mahmood can pose more of a threat than Jimmy A our seam attack looks good as Fred and Hoggy are bowling well. That just leaves the spinners spot. Bring on Monty.
I could (and have over the past couple of days) ramble on for hours on this. If anyone wants a tip out of this I think a lay of Aus as the Series winner at 1.04 with the intention of backing at a later point is a good looking trade.
James A> Thanks for taking the time to post such a great comment. And I couldn't agree more with most of it. There's certainly no doubt England threw it away in my mind too.
I know all the talk is about The King and Monty and as a result Anderson is creeping under the radar somewhat. Wouldn't surprise me if Fletcher drops him and goes for both spinners. Or, if he does go for Monty over Giles, bring Broad or Mahmood in. Mahmood is a like a rabbit though in the face of pace and wanders off to join the the square leg ump. I've not seen much of Broad batting but he looked competent enough in some televised domestic stuff earlier in the year. Would love to see how his bowling fares in a test.
There's little downside in the 1.04 lay obviously and a big potential profit if we win the 3rd at Perth. It is a big if though and I wish I shared your confidence that we retain the Ashes. (Now that would be a proper celebration!) I'm not conviced Flintoff will play yet though and will await any injury news with dread. For me the batting is good enough if they come off. The bowling isn't. So that's where the changes are needed. Not much to lose now, maybe time for a gamble, so let's see some new faces is my shout. Just can't see us taking 20 wickets with the current line up.
No problem, glad you enjoyed it. I have been going on like an evangelical preacher to anyone who will listen (and some that won't) since we lost.
Actually, I felt I owed you a post as I came across your blog about a week ago and having been devouring the archives since. Very insightful. I am also grateful for the link to the Sports Trader's blog. We actually have a lot in common as I too get married next year and trade mainly on cricket. I do not get involved with the BF forum, not for any particular reason but perhaps I should...
All the wedding stuff is heating up now, the big day is 27 October (it was going to be the 6 October but this was a schoolboy error on my part given that is right in the middle of the rugby world cup - for any ladies reading I should defend this by saying that as half the audience will be Aussie can you imagine if England are playing Aus on that day in the quarter finals?... enough said). It's all a bit overwhelming but I was given some advice that has stood me in good stead. It was "you may have been planning this wedding for a few months but she has been planning it since the age of 6 so let her take control!". Wise words.
Back to the cricket, I agree with you that on current form we do not look like taking 20 wickets but if Harmy gets back to somewhere near his best and our fourth seamer can chip in we will be looking strong. I don't know the situation with Fred but his original injury was ankle spurs which were removed so it is unlikely to be a recurrence of that. The ankle may just have lacked the strength to cope with a full bowling load and needs a bit of rest. Fingers crossed. As for Monty, he could do without the pressure of being seen as the saviour!
One other thing to remember is that Langer, Gilchrist, Martyn, McGrath and Warne are all over 35. They will not be around for too much longer. Who do Aus have to replace them? There are other capable batsmen out there but no wicket keeper-batsmen as destructive as Gilly. McGrath and Warne are two of the greatest ever to have played the game (Warne is the greatest as far as I'm concerned) and these bowlers do not come around very often. Aus have been lucky to have had two at once. In contrast we have a relatively young side. Let's look forward to a decade of Ashes dominance!
James> Congratulations and best of luck with wedding preparations. I never had the faintest idea there was so much to organise but luckily the future Mrs BFT is well on the ball as you say!
Don't know if you've seen the comments by the guy who keeps losing everytime his mother in law comes to stay with him. Reckons it's psychological! So be warned. :-)
You're right about Monty. Weight of the nation's expectations on his shoulders now if he plays. And you could easily make a case for saying he shouldn't because of it. But after "that" dropped catch he's shown he has character and I reckon he'll adapt and come through. And I like the sound of a decade of Ashes dominance too!
Anyway, if you do ever drop in on the Betfair forum I'm bf trader on it so do say hello. I know the quality of discussion on it is not always the greatest but the cricket forum is at least one of the better ones and I'm sure it would benefit from your knowledge and insight.
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