There is no valid short-term reason why Green keeps getting a game ahead of Webster, I'm not interested in a debate just posting an observation.
Webster has done nothing wrong at every opportunity and struggles to get a game, Green has done little right and can't be dropped.
I'm assuming Boland has some injury or issue because he's bowled well but got just a couple of overs before they brought Green on and Nesser back.
Smith's a great batsmen but tactically he's a dud captain, he's lucky he's captained in an era through which we have dominant individuals including himself.
I don't know who to blame for the lack of a front line spinner, but regardless of the game outcome it's biting them on the ar5e at the moment. They have taken their foot of the throat of England, did they do this for the good of test cricket or through stupidity?
I think it's just a fundamental nature of tyrants, and there are tyrants on all sides of this issue, there is no good will evident from any angle.
The more disturbing aspect of this latest series of events, is that RedTrump did not even consult his own caucus in the planning. It's a sign he no longer holds regard for the political process, he has become bolder and bigger than the GOP. As a result I doubt he will abide by the next election result, and I suspect the fundamentals of the US constitution are now at very high risk, more so than at any time previous and previous events were alarming enough.
We went into a SCG test without a spinner, batting so deeply Starc is at 10, and we sent out a nightwatchmen.
There are so many wrongs with the current state of Test Cricket I don't know where to start, the sport of cricket is doing this to itself, it's like Test Cricket is now an unwanted obligation rather than the pinnacle of the sport!
RedTrump, Maduro, Rodriguez, Putin, Xi, Kim, etc., etc., are basically all grifters lining their own pockets at the expense of the societies they live in, they are a den of thieves and cannot be trusted in either words or actions.
I feel the only way to get them into line is for society to threaten their personal wealth, but I have no idea how that could be accomplished. I'd like to see far greater personal risk attached to their investments, with much longer term liability.
Brazil did well with Bolsonaro, but Brazil is a rather unique politically active and highly motived culture that has a history of defending it's environment.
After all the calls for Green's head, he's now bowling early on a wicket that so far this season looks like the least helpful wicket for fast bowlers, and they've gone into the game without a spinner on what appears to be the most spin friendly pitch cut to 6mm.
Furthermore, he's bowling ahead of Webster who seems to have him well covered as a change bowling option in domestic 1st class.
I'd assert on display is the full bullsh1t of Cricket Australia.
It reminds me of AFL players who put end at the last possible moment before the contract is signed.
King Taco might try to grab low hanging fruit but he didn’t earn his nickname lightly.
Putin, Xi and Lil Kim assassinate domestic opponents and occasionally a foreign based dissidents, but not foreign bureaucrats or leaders, in this regard they are somewhat smarter than RedTrump.
RedTrump is a two bob bully, and bullies never pick on someone who is capable of fighting back!
It seems to me this event has exposed a major weakness in the USA, they are desperate for oil. Obviously the US domestic reserves aren't anywhere near as abundant as the GOP claim, otherwise they'd be busy enacting the "drill baby drill" protocol in their own backyard, instead they embarked on an exceptionally expensive foreign incursion.
The pitch, prepared by the diligent Matt Page, was perhaps a day shy of ideal, its early moisture and grass yielding unpredictable bounce and seam.
Batters from both sides crumpled like autumn leaves in a gale. Wickets tumbled in clusters, scores hovered in the low hundreds, and the crowd, that vast sea of 90,000 souls at the MCG, was left cheated of the epic they deserved. What shocked me most was not the conditions themselves, for cricket has always been a game at the mercy of the elements.
No, it was the batters’ reactions: gestures of disbelief, muttered oaths, wry smiles as they trudged off, as if they alone had been cursed by a rogue delivery in the sport’s long history. They behaved like novices encountering adversity for the first time, oblivious to the blood, sweat, and sheer willpower that have sustained Test cricket through far worse trials.
The media are jumping on Stokes pitch criticism, but he is speaking with a forked tongue.
Stokes and his coach know all too well that to have any chance of winning a series let alone the odd test, the Bazball regime needs dead flat pitches. So what do the media and public expect, to hear him praising pitches with a bit of bowler assistance?
Bazball is basically cross bat cricket, deviation, turn or variable bounce are it's natural enemy.
The tragedy of the MCG Test is that the Aussies went soft letting the Poms win against the trend, they've used the pitch criticism as cover for their own abhorrent lacklustre play! When stoicism was needed to crush the opponents hope, we folded and left the doors open.
You could see the complaining apologists setting up for the barrage of pitch related excuses yesterday, and as you mentioned it came overnight.
These people are apologists for sh1t cricket, they expect the batsmen to be delivered billiard tables not a turf pitch.
Go back to the days of playing on the hession matting and it'll give this lot something to really complain about! Back in the day when 1st class was rained out, we would play against test bowlers who would come back to grade cricket to run out the cobwebs on the mats. We played in one such game where a certain bloke bowled short on the mats for 6 byes.
In Benaud's day, tests were played on hession mats when the pitch was deemed unsafe.
Yesterday's pitch was a good 1st day wicket 10, 20 and 30 years ago, now in the T20 era it's labelled a death trap by some extremists who think batsmen have the right to run at the express bowler regardless of the conditions. It's sh1t cricket, and as sad as I am hearing about Border losing the plot he's probably saved from watching yesterday's rubbish!
I'm growing weary very quickly of the media apologists defending shizen cricket by bashing the pitch.
There wasn't much wrong with that pitch by traditional cricket standards, what it isn't is it is not a T20 pitch!
It's clear to me T20 $ has made modern cricketers soft and weak minded, the greats of the past made hundreds on pitches far worse than anything this modern lot play on!
FFS, Green's home ground in Perth was similar and as many wicket fell, and today the same bloke, the one most of us have calling to be dropped ran himself out when the side was 5 for not many!
The pitch complaints are a smokescreen, camouflage for shizenhouse cricket delivered by a bunch of soft overpaid pseudo-professionals.
At the moment the USA is burning, companies are going to the wall at an alarming rate, RedTrump's reports aren't as useful as dunny paper. He's used a government shutdown to boost the short term figures, another version of his faked results, as fake as his tan!
