Quote:
Originally Posted by zaremba
You're spot on. Neither of these teams can possibly recieve any psychological boost or blow by reason of the fact that England avoided likely defeat at Australia's favourite ground, scoring 517-1, with their top 3 all getting big runs, none of the main Aussie bowlers taking a single wicket in 2 days despite having a big lead and the ability to set attacking fields, and their lethal hard-man fast bowler looking like the only member of the Village People who wouldn't get in the village cricket team.
And more importantly, you're quite right that it's a mystery why anyone would want to offer opinions about such matters in the "First Test at the Gabba" thread.
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Not sure I'm with you on this. The whole 'psychological boost' idea seems to me to be overrated. If anything its likely to inflate egos and in England's case possibly give them a sense of complacency. In Australia's case it may just give them the kind of kick up the backside that they might respond well to.
Look I'd like to think that England is a confidence team, but lets face it. Look at all our performances over the past year and a half and you'll notice a trend that we tend to perform better with our backs to the wall than when we go in with a heightened sense of expectation. We went into this test match with Australia in disarray and our entire batting and bowling with plenty of form under their belt and proceeded to collapse to 260 against some **** bowling. And when people thought we barely had a hope in hell we scored 517/1. Heck go back to SA series, at centurion when things seemed easy and a draw seemed inevitable we proceeded to collapse and nearly throw away the first test. Then when we went into the 2nd test at Durban as clear underdogs, we ended up confounding the bookies by winning by the not so significant margin of an innings and 99 runs.And yet when everyone thought we had the series in the bag, we proceeded to bat like nitwits and lose by an innings.
Do you see a pattern here? Fact of the matter is that as a team we respond to being under the cosh, we thrive in difficult situations and we prefer to be underdogs than go in as favorites. If you think batting like complete morons against a hopeless attack in the first innings isn't a cause for concern, or that only one bowler turned up then go right ahead and talk up how we have the 'mental' edge based on a day and a half's worth of cricket.