I will do the Stick Cricket Lark when at work, its too hard on the laptop!

Oh, CMON ENGLAND

Testicles!

Another fantastic batting effort from Cook and co we can really do some damage with another good start tonight.

good work

horrific leave from Strauss

Another unbelievable day.
I have to keep pinching myself to make sure it's not a dream.
After suffering through the 90s & early noughties how good is it to see the Aussies totally on the back foot?

I know it doesn't work like this but...

based on england 2nd innings score in the 1st test and our 1st innings in the 2nd test, our aggregate score is 834-3

I'm sure it will be working like that in Ponting's mind though, he must be sick of the sight of Trott and Cook. Also Pietersen looks like he will go on to a big total.

It's great OF and i think Ponting knows he's a dead man walking.

I'm going to be controversial here and say that enjoyable as it is to see England on top, I'm not sure England's current team is any better than the England teams of the 1990s who used to get hammered by the Aussies. I'm sure there's a few older players who would have loved to have taken on this toothless Aussie attack.

Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott are fine players but for me they are not in the same class as Stewart or Gooch. Looking at what Cook is doing to these bowlers makes you wonder what Gooch would have done to them, he'd have got a triple hundred at the Gabba and would already be well into the 200s now. In fact imagine if a young Hick and Ramprakash had made their Test debut in this sort of environment instead of against Ambrose and Marshall on a crap wicket in Headingley, Hick would have been chasing Bradman's records if this is what Test cricket was about.

Even our bowling today lets be honest its nothing special. Anderson is the modern day Phil DeFreitas, he's a good swing bowler when he bowls a tight line and length but he blows hot and cold. There's no current England bowlers who are as good as Gough and Fraser, and other than Ponting and Hussey these batsmen would all be backing away to square leg if Devon Malcolm was bowling at them.

The Aussies are unfortunately resembling the W Indies side when they were clinging to Lara and an ageing Ambrose and Walsh.....the danger is if the Aussies aren't strong then Test cricket loses a lot of its appeal.

It's a poor Aussie team, but you can not deny what he has achieved at a young age, only Bradman and Sachin had scored more test tons at the same age, Gooch iirc struggled to establish himself as a test player initially.

This is what gets me uncomfortable with the state of Test cricket today, look at the comparisons we can make in the record books....Cook with Bradman and Tendulkar! Its like saying Peter Fox and Richie Myler have scored more Test tries at a comparable age than the likes of Schofield, Hanley, Offiah, because they've plundered hat tricks and four tries in a game against the likes of Wales and France.

Gooch took about 5 years to establish himself in the Test team then he got three centuries against the West Indies, the bowling attack at the time was Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft. These were on dodgy wickets in places like Bridgetown and Sabina Park where England were being bowled out for 200 odd and Gooch was getting over half the teams runs. Cook wouldn't have done that, had he been an England opener in that era I would expect his career would have followed the likes of Tim Curtis, Martyn Moxon, Kim Barnett and Andy Lloyd. Similarly if some of those guys had been around today they would have scored a few Test hundreds!

Sally i see yer point but the majority of this squad have also won the ashes v Mcgrath ,Warne,Slater ,langer etc etc.
Whilst i think it's not a very good Aussie team the England lads deserve all the plaudits they are getting/gonna get imo and are a very good team/squad.

How do you know what cook would and wouldn't have done in that era?

The black caps are the only test playing nation he has not got a ton against, and only 2 of his tons came against Bangladesh. He has 15 tons by 25, Gooch was 35 when he was appointed England captain in 88 and it was from this sort of time he became so dominant, He finished with 20 test tons. A bit early to be writing off what he has achieved and what he might especially given the influence gooch has on him

Yes you can't argue with the runs he has on the board even if it is against moderate attacks. I find it hard to rate Cook in the highest class because I just think there's a lot of holes in his technique (which the likes of Boycott and Fletcher have been highlighting for years) which mean he can get away with it on good pitches against moderate attacks but would be ruthlessly exposed by top quality bowlers. There's a lot of inflation in runs and batting averages in the modern game compared to the 1980s and 1990s. Look at for instance the likes of Sehwag and Chris Gayle monstering double and treble hundreds....those are two players who IMO would have been sorted out by Wasim, Waqar, Ambrose, Marshall, Hadlee and McGrath. They are too streaky. When you look at guys like Kallis and Tendulkar though you can just see they are quality players against any bowling attack, even the best bowlers don't have areas to exploit them. In the current England team I would put Pietersen and Collingwood more in the era of timeless quality, Pietersen is like Gower in that he will only ever get himself out, he's never going to be dominated by bowling. Collingwood is a streetfighter like Thorpe and Stewart, against top world class bowling he will occupy the crease and accumulate a total.

Having said this I don't want to be arguing against Cook for the sake of arguing, it seems petty to be trying to find negatives in him when he is in such a great run of Ashes form. It has to be said he has got something which some other players didn't have, ie even with a slightly dodgy technique he has got the concentration to stay in and make runs, and he isn't a danger to his own wicket like say Pietersen is (in fact I reckon if Pietersen had a Cook style mentality, he would be in the Lara/Tendulkar class). There are other players like Ian Bell, and Ramprakash when he played, who looked far superior technically to Cook but couldn't get the same number of runs. I would also say that all the criticisms I said of Cook before, I said about Trescothick when he first came into the England team, I thought he would be short lived as a Test player and would get found out when he faced top bowling, but he got runs against a world class Aussie attack and against very good South African and Pakistani attacks, so I was wrong on that one.

300+ 1st innings lead, must be demoralising to be on the receiving end of this

Absolutely loving this.

Just hope the rain doesn`t turn up and ruin it

Herschelle Gibbs books sounds a good read zebra.book.co.za/blog/2010/11/01 ... the-point/

Herschelle Gibbs books sounds a good read zebra.book.co.za/blog/2010/11/01 ... the-point/

Paul Smith's autobiography "Wasted?" is a good read. When he was at Warwickshire he came home one day and found Keith Pipers car parked outside his house....Piper was inside doing his missus. Better than the John Terry and Wayne Bridge story. There's also a story in there about Smith joining the Mile High club with a girl in the toilets on a plane on the way to a Warwickshire pre season tour. I always liked Smith....could have been worth a shot with England, a bit of a Flintoffesque player, his effectiveness was better than his averages suggested, he was fast and got important wickets, and he could change a game in half an hour of batting.

So what's the strategy for tonight then? I'd try to rattle up another hundred quickly with Bell and Pietersen, and then declare. Even if they get over 400 (a day and a half) we could rattle off the rest in an hour or two.

I'd have a thrash for an hour..

Kinky.

The Aussie look absolutely shocking. England are just Embarrassing them, big time. And best of all there s no sign of rain! 600 is up.

Not much for the quicks yet.
Let's see what Swann can do.