Hereward

England choosing not to play a game at Trent Bridge against the Aussies in next year’s Ashes is exactly the kind of stupidity I’ve come to expect from the powers that be.

Much better performance from England yesterday. The Indian run "chase" was truly bizarre though.

From now on, whenever I am having an epically crap day, I will assert that I’m having a total Kane Richardson.

The sensible thing to do is to give him the gloves and make Bairstow play as a specialist bat, however reluctant he is.

I don't mean to look like I am indulging in gleeful trolling, but this came up on my Facebook feed and I thought it was a fascinating read: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/what-turned-steve-smith-into-a-cheat-20180618-p4zm57.html

Sorry, should have indicated I meant Test captain.

I may well plight Josh Buttler my troth.

Great game. Buttler for captain.

That was another enjoyable game, but England never looked under pressure. Australia were at least 50 short.

Quiet in here!

I knew about the sandpaper placards. The ECB confiscated all the ones they could find and the crowd barely gave the Aussies any stick, as far as I could tell. That's some high-grade whinging about nothing. They should wait until Tuesday when they go to Trent Bridge. I'm pretty sure they'll give the Aussies something to complain about.

What did I miss?

Je suis heureux que les Anglais aient perdu, évidemment, mais ils ont été chanceux que leurs premiers scores aient empêché le massacre que leurs fragilités défensives méritaient.

@EsmenetLet's assume, for the sake of argument, that we don't care about inner city gun violence (God forbid in Trump's America). Let's assume, as a first step, that we only care about school shootings. Now, almost every one of the depressingly countless school shootings you have is committed by someone who owns, or is using, a legal weapon, legally acquired, right up until the moment they shoot the fuck out of a bunch of kids. Let us further assume that if guns were illegal, that these socially awkward loners would, instead of buying a gun at their local store, or borrowing one from their responsible gun owning relative, have to venture into the criminal underworld and negotiate with a scary as fuck criminal. Do you think that that might, in some small way, provide a barrier to shooting lots and lots of children?

It’s when you see a bird you’ve never seen before in your life.