Staff Directory

Personally I would have liked to see Stokes score more last night, fully accept the circumstances, but if we are too passive and cautious this too can assist the Aussies. One thing for certain we can not rely on Butler getting runs if he comes in early today

We really need both stokes and root to get a century, not too confident with the rest of the batters left

Well very pleased to see England close the day on 156-3. Very controlled and patient batting for most of the day from Root and Denly have gotten us to this stage. Stokes in the last hour of the day came into bat at 5 in survival mode and made 2 runs (not out) off 50 balls. The first session of tomorrow's play will decide the outcome of this test match (and the Ashes). If Stokes and Root can survive the first 8 overs of play unscathed. At which point the new ball is available to Australia. They will then have to contend with the new ball and the threats that come with it. If they can get to lunch unscathed after the new ball I think that is when the test becomes ours to lose. At this stage I'd happily take England scoring 30 runs all session if it meant losing no wickets. It will also be England's highest ever run chase if we are successful.

Our problem has been that we just don't score goals, we've been amongst the lowest scorers in the championship both pre and post our 1 season recently in the PL. This season, although it's early on, seems to be going the same way. While Britt does get goals, he's not what you'd call prolific, we've been set up as a defensive team for a few years now through different managers and scoring has been an added bonus to not conceding goals.

No worse than some of the goals our players have missed, and he also scored today. Hugill has scored 3 goals so far this season. That's more than our top scorers. Imagine if he'd scored at the same rate for us as he is now - we might have gone up! Not sure what we do to our strikers - they always seem to do well for everyone else but do less well for us. Bamford a possible exception as he did well for us, although he's really banging them in for Leeds at the moment.