Cricket

Oh dear. Maybe they thought Pattinson would be like Neil Mallender.

yes, SA only have to score nothing and stay in and don't they know it.

Smith looks in ominously good form. BTW, are there any South African ILXors?

Mitch Lastnamewithheld was from SA, but I'm not sure if he posts anymore.

I guess they'd be round these parts gloating if there were any.

Kallis gone, 2 quick wickets tomorrow and it's game on.

Bet the sun comes out and, it turns into a batting track tho.

I desperately want to wring the umpires' necks. Especially that miserable fundie Christian cunt Bowden. SA should be 5 down.

Also I doubt we'd have collapsed but for that toilet decision Cook copped.

Having watched the highlights, Flintoff will bowl them out tomorrow.

Amla out. Apparently it wasn't lbw. Can't wait to see Pattison on the highlights tonight.

Harmison = match winner, but he needs to be in exile for a while...I can see him playing next summer.

Would be good to see him firing against the Aussies, perhaps roughing up Hayden a bit.

I was def thinking of him roughing up Ponting.

Harmison should def not be taken on a winter tour. Home tests only, and maybe only the next Ashes.

Tom Courtenay, talking in the lunchbreak, has revealed that Omar Sharif is apparently a big Hull City fan.

Can we just give up and go home now?

Harmison is back. Broad will be dropped supposedly if Sidey is fit.
I would rather have Jones back. It's just been too easy for Harmison to get back in the side without much effort and a change of attitude.

41 first class wickets at 21, appaarently bowling around the 90mph mark. He couldn't have done much more in my book.

I fucking hate Steve Harmison. He's a complete moron and he'll always get cheap wickets in county cricket, put him against the South Africans and watch him wilt. Stuart Broad will be twenty times the cricketer he is.

Doesn't Jones need more time?

Unfortunately, 'will' isn't good enough Eng need the 'now', and Harmison is as good a bet. England are in flux, the nucleus of a v good team is present, but some we're in short supply of form.

What was the idea behind Pattison's selection? Moving on from Fletcher is fine n' all, but you can't go all workmanlike and do it for the sake of it.

Harmison simply doesn't deserve to play for England. That is all. I don't care if he's bowling at 90 mph. He has forfeited all rights he has to play for the England team as far as I'm concerned.

As for who should play instead, well, I'm a Worcestershire fan so I'd better shut up for fear of bias accusations. All I'll say is that we have two English bowlers on our books who have done magnificently this season, with better figures than even Harmison.

LJ is a bit harsh, I like harmy, but i dont think he has the right attitude, plus he will just get homesick and bowl like shite in the winter tour as always. He shouldnt be brought back until next summer IF he continues good form. Has he taken 5 wkts in an innings this season?

The one major bias I do have is a bias against stupid cricketers, which is why Panesar isn't a favourite of mine. He, however, at least has (something like) the right attitude.

Monty rules so shut it

Monty is one of the most brainless cricketers I've ever seen. His interviews betray a mind utterly empty of anything except "bowl it in the right areas". I've met him and when away from the cameras he punctuates with "fuck" and "fucking". His boon is that he is a bowling-machine, a single-minded sportsman with one talent, that for plonking it in the right place with spin. But he is not by any means the sort of vibrant spinner that I so thrill to watch. Sri Lanka just trounced India thanks to two men, one old one new, who purvey the beautiful art in an intelligent and profoundly innovative manner.

If Harmison bowls really well it would be hard to NOT take him on a winter tour: one more pathetic crack at solving this enigma, which isn't an enigma at all and just attitude, as you say. So yes, I'd hope they would resist any temptation. xp

Not sure it's entirely attitude to be fair. He's a bowler who needs lots of bowling to find a rhythym and he's not always had that on overseas tours. Hardly his fault if he's undercooked going into a test due to lack of warm up matches. His attitude is a factor though.

Not sure that Monty's stupid either- he has a degree from Loughborough, and always seems quite thoughtful to me.

Anyone watching the 2020 finals today? Might try and catch some of it down the pub later...

A degree in computer science. His final mark is unsupplied. Let's face it, his cricketing ability probably had a say in his acceptance, especially at Loughborough. Let's just be glad he's an international cricketer rather than a video-store clerk, eh?

I'm listening to the cricket, might watch the final up t'pub before Selzer's big do. Anyone going to that, I'll see you there!

haha louis being snobbish about a degree. Damn oxbridge student!

I'm not being snobbish about a degree, I'm merely saying that having a degree doesn't necessarily mean that one has much intelligence, especially creative or constructive intelligence.

Harmison being interviewed on 5LSE, happy to be back in the Test squad apparently! Well done him. :-|

Maybe it'll turn out I've been ridiculously harsh and he's genuinely found himself again. But as things stand I feel he's very lucky to have been given another chance after he threw the last one away in such a pathetic, profligate manner.

So, Harmison is not being selected after all, with Collingwood in for Broad. Weird. Whatever you think of Harmison, it seems bizarre to go to the trouble of bringing him back into the squad, then not to bother selecting him.

Selectors have a lot of questions to answer this series.

When I was at university, a degree from Loughborough was pretty much another way of saying "I R dum but gud at sprtz"

Very strong on library studies, believe it or not!

They also had quite a good physics department ;)

I AM NOT CONTENT

let's solve our bowling crisis by replacing a bowling all-rounder with an out-of-form batsman who happens to be good mates with the captain

GRRR

Broad should not be dropped.

This pitch does not suit Harmison though, he should have been in the last match.

the only changes should have been sidebottom in for pattinson, foster for ambrose, broad up to bat at 7, flintoff at 6, foster at 8, anderson 9 etc

oh and bopara/shah for vaughan, KP captain, but that's personal grump coming through

Broad's bowling not good enough yet

Fuck it then, Broad to bat at 6, he's got the talent and the composure to make it there. 5th bowler duties for him, Flintoff 7, Foster 8 etc.

"I reckon the lad needs to go back to goundy grigid, learn his trade a bit... I didn't get where I got to, as the greatest human being in the universe, without first learning my trade with Yorkshire Goundy Grigid Glub..."

Boycs actually wants Broad in the team, as a batting all-rounder.

For me:

Strauss
Cook
Vaughan (C)
Pietersen
Bell
Collingwood (will come good again IMO and bats well with Fred)
Flintoff
Ambrose (until the end of this series anyway)
Sidebottom
Anderson (had no luck at Headingley, Edgbaston should suit him)
Panesar

Broad needs a rest and to get some overs under his belt at county level. No doubt that he could be a proper all-rounder in future though.

And I've totally repeated the cliche Tom D lampoons above!

Yup,

Broad is currently better at both bowling and batting that Collingwood, move him up the order make him 5th bowler, take the batting pressure off Flintoff.

Flintoff was an all rounder that was supposed to be a better batsman than a bowler but it turned out to be the opposite, perhaps Broad will go the other way.

I like the idea of having differently weighted all-rounders in the squad at the moment.

Broad's never batted higher than 7, has he? Relying on a 20 year old bowler to stiffen yr batting line up, Sarf Ifrikans would be loving that.

Until he takes a hundred off them. Anyway, if he fails, there's a safety net beneath. In theory.

A long tail, in other words, and particularly if Freddie doesn't score any runs.

Long tail wouldn't matter if the batters could bat!

Hey, not forgetting our stirling wicketkeeper.

There is the argument we should go the other way and pick Matt Prior to bat at 6.