Headingley Betting: Off message Aussies primed for series defeat

Bat and ball / Frank Gregan / 04 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

Phillip Hughes dropped the biggest gaffe of the tour with his errant tweeting before the third Test

"One down with two to play is a time for prayers and risks and if the series is to be turned on its head Ponting and his selectors will probably have to make changes for the fourth test at Headingley starting on Friday."

The youngsters are tweeting when they should be pulling together for sake of team morale and that does not bode well for the Australian team's chances of winning the fourth Test, says Frank Gregan.

Before this Ashes series started there were many that believed that England would not win a toss let alone a test. Three matches down the line and and with the English enjoying a 1-0 lead there is a real possibility that the Aussies will be the ones to draw a blank. Australia have three days in which to learn how to deal with swing and find some sort of balance in their bowling attack, it's difficult not to think that perhaps they should have given these matters a little consideration earlier in the series!

One down with two to play is a time for prayers and risks and if the series is to be turned on its head Ponting and his selectors will probably have to make changes for the fourth test at Headingley starting on Friday. They need Brett Lee back, I can't believe the Aussie medical staff haven't visited the Lucky Dragon at the end of our road, they have loads of spare ribs! With changes in mind, all eyes are focused on Cricket Australia's new method of announcing their team selection - Twitter!

Phillip Hughes dropped the biggest gaffe of the tour with his tweet on Thursday alerting the media to his omission hours before the team-sheets were exchanged. There are times when you just have to hold your hands up and say - "yes, got that one wrong, sorry!" We've all been there and an apology would have solidified our empathy.

Instead we got an apology from Hughes's manager Neil D'Costa, "I look after Twitter for Phillip, I'm in India and I was dealing with all the stuff through Australia. Unfortunately, I am probably the fool in this situation. How our situation works is we get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed it into our IT guy."

Do me a favour! Bang goes your empathy Phillip lad! It's a tweet, it's meant to be spontaneous and from the author - it's electronic banter. Why on earth would you need an IT guy for Twitter?

I'm going to have to spend a bit more time on-line if the Aussies don't get their act together pretty pronto and turn this series around. I'll be on eBay trying to sell my golf clubs, Lindisfarne albums and a limb or two in order to fund my lack of patriotism and general mistrust of this generation of English cricketers.

Australia are now a massive [6.4] to win the series having traded as low as [1.39] when it looked certain they would go 1-0 up in Cardiff during the first Test. England are [1.9] and the draw is [3.15]. The weather looks set to intervene again during the fourth Test with at least one day likely to be rain affected so the back-to-back wins that the Aussies need to win the series seem unlikely. In order to try and rescue the position I'll be backing a drawn series at [3.15] and checking Twitter (@PH408) on a regular basis for updates on the Aussie team selection.

There is something about the Phillip Hughes affair that smells worse than a portaloo at Glastonbury. It's more than the 'Big time Charlie - I've got an IT man looking after my tweets' that goes against the grain here. It's the fact a young cricketer, who faces Freddie flying in and bowling at over 90 mph is prepared to let a faceless agent/manager take a bullet for him. Cricketing characters don't do that, can you imagine Shane Warne allowing his agent to make a statement along the lines of "it was my fault really, I look after Shane's texts. He was concerned about the young lady's choice of footwear and wanting to know what colour kickers she was wearing but I misheard him"?!