Ashes 2023
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And Root breathes a sigh of relief as Crawley is the one catching the edge 😉
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Someone needs to explain to Jonny bairstow that if you are going to make jokes, you need to fucking score runs to back it up
Otherwise you look like a stupid fat ginger fluffybunny who got out by being dumb, can't keep for shit, and can't score runs
Also Australia are in a bit of a pickle at the moment
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The Telegraph's Simon Heffer goes completely OTT on the MCC identifying & discipling members for their behavior towards the Oz players at Lords - hysterical stuff. link
This is an over-reaction: it stinks of a witch-hunt; and although the schoolboy code of honour where sneaks are concerned is doubtless precisely the sort of thing the modern MCC wishes to eradicate, reeking as it does of elite public schools, such divisiveness is hardly designed to create a happy atmosphere within a club already riddled with cliques and internal hostility. One struggles to avoid comparisons with life in Castro’s Cuba or occupied France, where the authorities governed through a network of universally-detested informers. In any case, the video footage suggests a large number of offenders.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Ashes 2023:
The Telegraph's Simon Heffer goes completely OTT on the MCC identifying & discipling members for their behavior towards the Oz players at Lords - hysterical stuff. link
This is an over-reaction: it stinks of a witch-hunt; and although the schoolboy code of honour where sneaks are concerned is doubtless precisely the sort of thing the modern MCC wishes to eradicate, reeking as it does of elite public schools, such divisiveness is hardly designed to create a happy atmosphere within a club already riddled with cliques and internal hostility. One struggles to avoid comparisons with life in Castro’s Cuba or occupied France, where the authorities governed through a network of universally-detested informers. In any case, the video footage suggests a large number of offenders.
Comedy Gold
Behind the Paywall
https://archive.md/LDl3t -
@mariner4life said in Ashes 2023:
Someone needs to explain to Jonny bairstow that if you are going to make jokes, you need to fucking score runs to back it up
Otherwise you look like a stupid fat ginger fluffybunny who got out by being dumb, can't keep for shit, and can't score runs
Also Australia are in a bit of a pickle at the moment
To be fair, over the last year that has not been his problem.
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@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
I'm not bitter, I just hate cheats.
So, with absolutism you'd include Martin Crowe and Chris Pringle on your hate list? They took a bottle cap on the field to scratch the ball up
As well as Atherton of course, with the dirt in the pocket.
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@nzzp said in Ashes 2023:
@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
I'm not bitter, I just hate cheats.
So, with absolutism you'd include Martin Crowe and Chris Pringle on your hate list? They took a bottle cap on the field to scratch the ball up
As well as Atherton of course, with the dirt in the pocket.
Yup
Funnily enough I'm ambivalent about Lance Armstrong. There a reason they didn't award the TdF titles to second place for his 7 stripped titles, cos they know so the top riders were doing it.
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@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
@nzzp said in Ashes 2023:
@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
I'm not bitter, I just hate cheats.
So, with absolutism you'd include Martin Crowe and Chris Pringle on your hate list? They took a bottle cap on the field to scratch the ball up
As well as Atherton of course, with the dirt in the pocket.
Yup
Funnily enough I'm ambivalent about Lance Armstrong. There a reason they didn't award the TdF titles to second place for his 7 stripped titles, cos they know so the top riders were doing it.
I'm reminded of the Noel Coward quote: "The lofter the righeousness, the lower the morals"
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@nzzp said in Ashes 2023:
@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
I'm not bitter, I just hate cheats.
So, with absolutism you'd include Martin Crowe and Chris Pringle on your hate list? They took a bottle cap on the field to scratch the ball up
As well as Atherton of course, with the dirt in the pocket.
Firstly, I feel there are degrees. It’s first class sport and as @NTA said, there are no angels. The sandpaper thing was just too much of a thing and it was not one bloke cheating, it was an orchestrated strategy. But the worst thing was that Smith and Warner bullied the younger guy into doing their dirty work and hung him out to dry. Those two fluffybunnies are back in the team and Bancroft has lost his whole career.
It’s fucking shameful.
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@Catogrande By that token, Armstrong is also near the top of the tree. A team orchestrated doping programme and a systematic discrediting and humiliation of anyone who tried to blow the whistle
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@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
@nzzp said in Ashes 2023:
@Machpants said in Ashes 2023:
I'm not bitter, I just hate cheats.
So, with absolutism you'd include Martin Crowe and Chris Pringle on your hate list? They took a bottle cap on the field to scratch the ball up
As well as Atherton of course, with the dirt in the pocket.
Yup
Funnily enough I'm ambivalent about Lance Armstrong. There a reason they didn't award the TdF titles to second place for his 7 stripped titles, cos they know so the top riders were doing it.
Fair
I thought the Aussies copped everything they deserved - not just because of the act, but the 'hard but fair' 'keeper of the line' bullshit they trot out to excuse being collossal arseholes. And of course, believing that this was a one off thing, and that none of the bowlers or rest of the team knew anything about it is naive.
It is a matter of degree though - factually, what Crowe (one of my favourite cricketers did) was similar; taking a sharpened bottlecap onto the field to screw the ball. The fact that everyone (well, the Pakistani team) was doing it may morally make a difference, but the reality is that every cricketer will push the line at some point.
WHat has happened is reverse swing has large disappeared from teh game. Which makes you look at all the really good bowling units in history and wonder.
Anyway, Bairstow's dismissal was fine, Murali's runout was fine, and I clutch at pearls over SandpaperGate far more than scratching up a ball in the subcontinent in front of the umpires. I'm morally comfortable with my stance. Lance was a filthy cheat, in an era of everyone else cheating as well - but it enabled him to succeed; you still had to be a seriously tough bastard to do what he did.
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England will probably be happy with the state of the Match, especially from where they were after the first couple of wickets in the morning session.
They just have to wait until they are five down with bat, and then Australia will likely send the field back to the boundary and feed short balls and long hops to them for runs. Of which Australia will need to score a few more with the bat first.
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Grey and raining in Wales
Hope Leeds isn't the same
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M. Marsh, 3 overs 1/9 was strangely underbowled on Day 2.
With Stokes and co trying to bash everything after lunch, I wondered if it might be better to throw the ball to a T20 expert first, ahead of an early career offspinner, once Starc and Cummins started leaking runs.
Credit to Murphy as he got Stokes in the end though.
