Flintoff "was fit" for Headingley

[GIMH]

That was the very one. Athers mentioned it during the lunch break of day 4 at Lord's; said that when he lost his wicket to a no-ball in that game, he wasn't bitter that it was a no-ball, just miffed at the way he'd got out and said that Katich probably felt the same

[andyc]

Originally Posted by BoyBrumby

Wasn't that the test we lost 7 wickets after tea on the final day to lose? Shep missed about 3 wickets off no-balls if memory serves. We should've probably got away with the draw, but it is us.

Pakistan must've bowled well.

[Pigeon]

Originally Posted by BoyBrumby

it's all part of the dastardly IPL conspiracy to destroy English cricket, clearly.

I second this. The Flintoff decision to last this Ashes is clearly a golden **** off extended to the ECB by the IPL.

[wpdavid]

Originally Posted by andyc

Pakistan must've bowled well.

Yeh - Saqlain cleaned up at the end of Day 5 on one of our more spin-friendly surfaces.

[Jamee999]

Originally Posted by BoyBrumby

Wasn't that the test we lost 7 wickets after tea on the final day to lose? Shep missed about 3 wickets off no-balls if memory serves. We should've probably got away with the draw, but it is us.

Nah, if the ball was moving around, there's no way to lose less than 7 wickets. Fact.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by wpdavid

Yeh - Saqlain cleaned up at the end of Day 5 on one of our more spin-friendly surfaces.

As I recall he barely got a ball off the straight all game, and the tail-end wickets he picked-up were due to England ineptitude rather than his own skill. Only Waqar Younis came close to bowling well that Test, for mine.

Pakistan winning that Second Test was more about England doing a Pakistan (dropping ****loads of catches, bowling dangerously but waywardly, batting brilliantly then diabolically in the same innings, having fortune conspire against them with the wickets off no-balls to compound their own ineptitude) than Pakistan playing especially well.

If England had played at Old Trafford as they had at Lord's - ie, caught the catches, bowled accurately and batted consistently through the order rather than one or two top-order doing the job and everyone else falling off the radar - then Pakistan would've been wiped off the turf same way everyone else who'd faced England for the previous 12 months (except Sri Lanka at Galle) had been.

BTW I agree that they were streets ahead of any other two-Test-pre-Ashes series we've had - but when that amounts to Bangladesh and a West Indies who were only pitched there on a random whim and clearly had precious little interest, or quality, then that's really no achievement. Pakistan of 2001 were still very much not strong or strong-ish. Wasim and Waqar were past it; Shoaib was ill; Saqlain was neutered by the pitches; Saeed Anwar was past his best; Mohammad Yousuf was then what he is now, a flat-track bully; the also-rans were either hopeless (Azhar Mahmood) or being completely mismanaged (Abdur Razzaq being asked to open the batting? ). The only quality players on that tour were Inzamam and, of all people, Rashid Latif, who was never more than a decent wicketkeeper-batsman.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Jamee999

Nah, if the ball was moving around, there's no way to lose less than 7 wickets. Fact.

It wasn't moving around though. That deck was flat as a pancake, with no seam or turn, and the ball didn't swing very much in that game or at any point that summer or the next five summers.

Still, even though you were only 8 at the time, don't miss the chance of a smart-aess comment.