It’s so stupid 
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True but he had got to that point. If all our batsmen got out in the 90s, we’d never lose.
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The last six times England openers have reached 90 in an Ashes Test, only two of them have gone on to make 100.
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Brilliant - another one goes. All these top edges trying to score runs from short balls.
This isn’t how you play test cricket coming up to 530pm on day two - see the fucking day out you bunch of fannies.
England will be all out for around 300 by lunch tomorrow at this rate, with a mountain to climb, and ashes that are slipping away.
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It’s a disgrace. Being taken in by the most obvious trick in the book.
Downright pathetic…
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It’s actually worse than that as it’s not even a trick. It’s a very simple strategy. A trick is to put 5 slips in then bowl at his head or put the field on the leg fence and bowl a yorker. Men on the legside boundary and bowling short is like playing long balls to a very tall strong striker.
C’mon Stokes…guide Brook thru’…
It’s more bemusing when Lyon is now injured. Could have put so much work into the legs of these bowlers. Instead three of them gave it away. Crawley also played a poor shot to lose his wicket (as usual).
Mindless, brainless, embarrassing, stupid…
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State from the Beeb
Duckett & Crawley put on 91 for first wicket - England’s best Ashes opening stand since 2013
WOW that is shit
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Thank goodness for Stokes bringing a bit of sanity to proceedings. Good day in general for England, but Australia still ahead with runs on the board and the tail two wickets away.
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Lyons injury might just save this 2nd test.
Apart from Root (who has so much goodwill in the bank he makes Klopp look close to being sacked) the other batsmen did actually score runs. Get out trying to hook a bouncer on 2, you’re a fool. Do it on 42 and your’re a fool who’s scored 42 and there’s a massive difference.
Thing is if you are playing that way it would be hard to shift without a break to do so.
Duckett gets to 98, a lot of reaction on Twitter and here but frankly I’ll take it over what we saw previous, that stat above tells you what it was like before Stokes and Mcullum.
Duckett:
“That shot has got me plenty of runs in my career,” he told the BBC’s Test Match Special.
“That’s how I was scoring runs before it got me out. I’m just gutted I didn’t get over the line, if I’d have gone away from my natural game, I’d have been more frustrated.”
He’s not thinking like this atm because McCullum is a cult-like figure around the team that can do no wrong, but when he’s retired, he will be judged on what he delivered. No-one is going to give a shit whether he played to his true style. As long as he can live with that.
I’m interested to see how Bazball works when players drop out of form. The philosophy seems more about taking one for the team - play attacking cricket at the cost of your own game, and career, because the coach makes you believe in that philosophy. Its worked so well so far because they’ve been on a good winning streak.
But in a normal cricket team, when you aren’t playing well you can tailor your game to suit your form to try to play yourself in. Will out of form players feel pressured into playing attacking cricket like their teammates and therefore getting out even easier? Will they be quickly discarded when that happens?
I am far more interested in seeing how Bazball copes with these ‘hard times’ situations than how it goes in the good times.
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I saw Duckett say afterwards that the Aussies wanted England to take evasive action and avoid playing shots. This is clearly the opposite of the truth, but is probably the mantra in the dressing room. Any philosophy that is based on falsehoods is doomed to fail eventually.
I like the approach and have been thrilled and entertained by it, but watching Joe Root throw his wicket away was infuriating.
There has to be a way of including some common sense when circumstances demand it.
I actually think the message is lost a little bit along the way on what Bazball was all about. From my understanding, McCullum mentioned that the death of Phil Hughes made him realise just how short life was, and how it can be finished in any instant, so much so that people should play cricket without pressure or regrets. Its a fucking cricket game after all. Part of that was about getting the players into a relaxed mindset and not having the pressure on them to meet certain performance expectations.
I’m ok with that philosophy. Everybody should be ok with that. But that definition of Bazball is not incompatible with playing sensible cricket at the same time. Surely playing positive and sensible cricket should be the order of the day? You play the balls that are there to be played. Leave the ones that aren’t. But have some understanding also of the match in play.
There has been an uproar about how England lost some silly wickets, but the same can be applied to Australia in that first innings. Travis Head’s and Green’s wickets were reckless, especially at a point in the match where we could have driven a nail into the match.
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Another huge session coming up. I’m probably in the minority, but I’d love to see England dig in and try to survive until conditions improve after lunch. Won’t happen though.
Either Stokes and Brook both reach 100 before lunch, or Australia face a tricky 20 minutes batting having blown the England tail away.
Don’t know whether the weather changed but the forecast yesterday was some dark clouds coming over in the afternoon. Just the Aussie’s luck 
Just the start we wanted. 
A lot hangs on these two putting on a big partnership now for England to get parity.
Would be interested to see Stokes’ record with the bat since he’s been captain. Historically most players seem to improve with the added responsibility, Stokes seems to have regressed.
That little slip catching montage of Green there is mighty impressive. Last big bloke I saw move that well was The Giant in WCW.