As I know there is at least one other person on these boards who follows the cricket, and given that there is currently a Test series on, I felt a cricket thread was in order.

On that note, who stole the England team and replaced them with people who can actually play cricket?

Steady on, there's a whole second innings to collapse in yet.

It's always the way with the England cricket team. They get just good enough just in time for us to get our hopes up that The Ashes might not actually be a debacle. About once every 20 years it turns out they actually are good enough.

Having said that the Aussies aren't really that great at the moment either so it's not actually that easy to call.

Jon

I'm a casual cricket fan. I don't pretend to be massively passionate about it or follow it religiously but I do watch some and play very occasionally.

Jon, I agree. Henman always used to start off well and fall to pieces so why should our cricket team be any different? Anyway, I hope we can keep the form up and put some good performances in.

Well the Windies only had 1 (or was it 2) warm-up games before the test match - no where near enough to get used to the swinging ball and "English" conditions.

I think you will find the Aussies are slightly better - they can catch for a start!

It would need to be very serious collapse if they can't make 30-odd...

32 to be precise. Poor Edd, walking home without this delicious piece of information.

Woot.

That is all.

Noooooo! Missed it all! Damnit!

Edd

It looks as though England are within a whisker of beating the Windies by an innings. This really is something.

And that's game over, an innings and 83 runs. That's quite a thumping.

Guessing we won then?

We did for once.

Now there's a shock!!

The Windies got blown away. An excellent Test.

An excellent bowling performance certainly but not an excellent test. Not a great atmosphere and, with the honourable exception of Chanderpaul, the Windies looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. Preferably a lot warmer, possibly with a drink in their hand.

I think the current form of the bowlers does suggest we may be able to get 20 wickets in an Ashes test; this is good. I'm less convinced of our batting apart from Bhopara. It will make for a very interesting summer though - like watching two football teams who are very good going forward but neither can defend all that well.

Jon