David Kelly

Our batting has been pretty shocking other than when Stoneman and Vince were going well in the first test. Cook not firing at all is a problem and without Stokes the middle order doesn't look as strong as it has done. The fact Ali is playing in the tour game suggests he's been struggling for fitness and it seems to be effecting his form. It's a shame because with a fit Ali and Wood and an available Stokes I think it could have been a tight series. Now it's looking like we're on course for another whitewash.

I know what you meant but I'm still yet to see him do it.

We wouldn't as he's shit.

I'm not convinced Murphy is best suited to playing on the left. I'm not writing the lad off or anything like that, but from what I've seen of him he seems to prefer trying to get to the byline and he needs to be on the right for that. Ritchie likes cutting in much more so he also wants to play on the right. The one of the four wingers we have who seems to want to go down the left is Aarons (I think Atsu is reasonably comfortable going down the left but still prefers the right). I've always thought we've got the best out of Perez on the left wing though so if we did want to play that way, I certainly wouldn't be averse to trying him there.

I agree with you both there. My worry about a middle three is getting enough support for the striker. All of our wide players are wingers unlike the players who the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal, City etc have to play there. Perez might be player who could make it work.

Could always play Stokes as a batsman if he was available. I'd have him in the line up ahead of Vince or Malan any day even though they both did canny at the Gabba.

The ball sticks up front much better when Mitro is on. Of course he's not a great player, his touch is wank at times and he's always got a sending off in him, but if he was sent off half way through the first half, we'd get more from him than we're getting from Joselu at the minute. I don't think it's doing Joselu any favours keeping him either as his confidence looks really low. I'd also like to see us play with Merino and Shelvey together more. Against Chelsea I'd probably go with the three central midfielders and leave out Perez (who was no better after a few weeks out) but in general I'd rather see our two best midfielders playing. I know Hayden will probably give us a bit more bite but them two will keep possession much better and take pressure off the defence that way. And they're much more likely to create scoring opportunities.

Wood got a wicket but went for more than 4.5 an over for the Lions against Queensland by the way so you would doubt he's too close at the moment.

Aye that's what they're hoping for. As soon as Stokes gets the go ahead from the rozzas he's be straight in.

I've been trying to work out if it's something in my set up that's wrong but I have this issue of having to search three or four time before it will come up with the debrid links (or even most of the standard links). On the first couple of searches it either comes up with nothing or just a couple of standard links that don't work. It's not a massive problem because they appear eventually it just means waiting a couple of minutes while it goes through a few searches. I get this same problem whether I'm using the android box or my PC in my bedroom. I think with newer streams it's not so bad but if I'm looking for something older, say The Wire or Soprano's or an old film, the links rarely show up on first search.

From what I understand, you'll struggle to get Covenant now if you didn't already have the Colossus repo installed. This is the one that's just been pulled that CT was flapping about. But Fantastic is exactly the same anyway so go for that.

Crane wouldn't be my choice but he might be as good a bet as Ball. Despite getting Warner out in the first innings, he looks pretty incapable of taking wickets without a lot of assistance from the batsman, he's not economical and he's not great with the bat. Crane has got a bit of experience in Australia (although clearly not at this level) and took a few wickets in the warm up games when he covered for Ali. Personally until Wood can show some fitness I'd give Overton a chance. If nothing else he's got a better record with the bat.

Be careful because a lot of the repos that still work if you have them, apparently wont let you connect with them now if you don't. So I wouldn't get rid of them. Exodus still does work but I find I have to do a search three or four times to get a full set of links (the same goes for Covenant). Fantastic is working properly though and is just another fork of exodus. But if you're using an android box, I would recommend Showbox and Terarrium as (at the moment at least) they're much quicker and more reliable (although with Showbox in particular they perhaps don't have quite the same level of content as I could get with a fully working Exodus). For some reason there doesn't seem to be the same effort being made to shutdown these programs as there is apps on Kodi at the moment. I know Showbox has been going for years.

I can still get Exodus, Covenant and a new one called Fantasic working pretty well but I've also started using Showbox again and Terrarium on my android box instead of Kodi and they really are excellent. There's also a one called Livenet which has a lot of live channels. I've used it as a back up for my paid sports app. It buffers a bit and personally I wouldn't rely on it, but it's got really good streams of Sky Sports and BT as well as the movie channels and lots of foreign channels.

He's playing for the Lions out there at the moment. Couldn't see if he took any wickets but the article I read said he was praised by management.

We need root and Stoneman to see out another ten or so overs of the new ball and see where we can get to. The bowling in that last session was pretty fierce.

Good morning session. I enjoyed the six then the wicket greatly.

Come on Bally son

Usman looked worse there.

Hazlewoods tache is one of a fifteen year old kid. Me gran has more hair on her top lip. I guess the predictions about the pitch must be very different on channel 9 to BT. Pontin, Fleming and Gilchrist were all saying they expect it to get quicker tonight.

Would feel a lot happier if Root was still out there. But it's been a decent day for us really. The three inexperienced lads have all been positive in defence and attack albeit on a slower track than we're likely to see going forward. Should be good for their confidence though.

Stoneman batted really well. Had never looked in trouble before that last ball.

Fuck

I think when you look at the two teams they're pretty evenly matched and if anything we have the better batsmen (after Smith, Warner, Cook and Root pretty much cancel each other out). The conditions, the unavailability of Stokes and the ball gives them the edge but if we're mentally stronger than we were last time it should be a good series.

I noticed in the report on the sky sports website about this, they made mention that Staveley's lawyers are Freshfields. As far as I can see, Chris Mort is still a partner with them. I wonder if he's playing any role in this.