Oh dear, Aussies just seem more pumped and up for it than we do at the moment. Lyon getting it to spin and bounce and Swan who is his superior, struggling to find the same level of turn/bounce. It's a strange one.
Just how good is Michael Vaughan's commentary becoming?
When I woke up this morning he described Jonathan Trott as having scored the worst 9 runs he had ever seen from a test number 3 from a technical, from a match situation and from a temperament point of view, and that there was absolutely no chance whatsoever he would survive the spell from Mitchell Johnson. Johnson got his man for 9 a couple of balls later.
Cook's form is poor, Trott's head has gone completely, KP is KP, Joe Root is very talented but has huge technical flaws (eg learning how to play shots on the front foot), Prior is hopelessly out of form, and the tail which usually wags looks rather brittle. Mr Bell we don't know yet, and Mr Carburry is doing his best, but I'm not sure if his best is test level.....
I think in our 3-0 series victory in the summer, we were flattered by Stuart Broad and Ian Bell playing at their very best - the rest of the team were either average (up and down) or in some cases very poor, particularly the batting unit. We failed to score over 400 once if I recall, but Australia were even worse. The fact that Australia had bowed to press pressure and dropped Mitchell Johnson, the fact that Mr Warner had scuppered his own chances of playing and with some extraordinarily strange selections not helping the Aussie cause (who will forget the specialist spinner who could bat but not bowl)........probably prevented the tourists from winning that series or at least making it a nail-biter.
Evidently there is generally a huge diversity between the England batsmen's averages against the 3 teams that have decent fast bowlers ( Aus, SA, Pak ) and the rest.
Our batting is shocking, we cannot play the short ball. What do they do in the nets? In addition to that our bowlers have lost a yard of pace. Aussies are bowling high 80's we are bowling low 80's.
These particular Aussies have always been faster than these English bowlers. Tremlett yes has apparently lost a few yards, but England's main two pace bowlers, Anderson and Broad have never been out and out speed merchants and are still great bowlers.
The problem is much much more in the batting. Quite apart from the fact that as a batting unit they just are not nearly as good on faster bouncing pitches against good attacks, some players have just got out of form.
In particular, what the heck has happened to Trott ?! I had noticed that over the last year or so he seemed to have turned for him relatively quite a bit more aggresive, now his technique seems to have gone to pot. It was great for England having him as a pretty reliable, boring, run accumuler at no 3. But that player seems to have pretty much gone for now.
I still believe that England are winning this, but it's obvious that the pressure is getting to them. I mean... we can grumble all we want about how the Australians are behaving, but the Barmy Army was equally severe on Johnson (and the English players like KP joined in, hmm), so there's no question of a moral upper hand. Of course, this kind of thing has been going on for decades, if not forever, and hatred will just breed more hatred.
And I'm fairly confident that Trott is coming back to international cricket after a few months of rest. Age is still on his side.