I was backing Eng at 300 earlier because I didn't have the bank to increase my red on Eng by lumping more on the draw & needed to reduce my maximum liability. I won 4 figures on the draw. But nigel & BJT are the pros

My Mrs reckons Shane Warne is a transvestite - that could be a scoop ?

Too much hair, obviously.

and the Aussies have totally outplayed England in the 3rd.

Erm, no they didn't.  England were only 165 runs behind on a flat wicket which was destined to send the match beyond 5 days.

lol i wasnt saying i had a big bank to show off, i was merely saying even with a big bank you can often find you have no money available. it adds up a lot quicker than you think. often i have most of my money tied up on silly stuff that cant realistically happen but either theres no money to trade out the liability or i dont want to throw money away trading out by backing things that cant happen. a big bank can seem incredibly small 90% of the time. today i had £3 available out of this big bank, with no imminent possibility of losing anything. apart from this test match, i have nothing that is even settled for the next 3 months.

obviously if you only bet or trade on one sport it will be a lot different and juggling probably wont come into it as much.

Although we've retained the Ashes, it's still a bit disappointing that today was a washout and saved the Aussies from a 5-0 whitewash

They're waiting for Clarke to argue that they should be out there playing...

why not, they've drawn a game - cause for celebration I'd say!

I'm sorry you disagree with me Mr Angry, but you seem to forget Australia declared their 1st innings on 527-7, could possibly have got 627 and a 250 lead.  165 runs even on a good wicket, is a massive lead and again Australia gave England a few cheap wickets 2nd time around looking to accelerate, their innings and declared again. Australia were 699 for 14 wickets and England were 405 for 13 wickets, now with those scores I would say England were totally outplayed, from start to finish. I'm English and want to see us drub Australia, every game, but it didn't happen in this game, as we were 2nd best in every aspect of the game.

Oz missed a trick - should have used more spin and crowded the bat when they were 575 runs ahead or got 700 runs ahead and forced the follow-on. With rain always on the cards batting once and batting long was the way to go.

I agree with your Sharkie,

The fact Aus got early wickets after the declaration means nothing as the pitch was still good enough for England to avoid the follow on, which, in the end was enough to save the match.

or got 700 runs ahead and forced the follow-on

Yes, I think this is the point.  On a flat wicket England were very likely to get 327 runs.  But with the pitch becoming increasingly good for the bowlers, they wasted time batting again.

What a f*cking joke. Australia lose because of the weather. Why the f*ck don't they just play another day?

If Man Utd are losing, shall we just get the ref to add on injury time until they score?

Oh...

Good point.  They should play for 25 days.  But to make it more interesting, they could break that up into segments of, say, 5 days, and take an interim result at each break.

Sometimes a score may flatter one team (windies beat us 1-0 then we beat aus 2-1 in 2009 then we drew away v saffers... All three series flattered one team imo but dont argue with the result) the result is the result.  Deal with it.

Blimey, you sound like youve been waiting ages to get the dinner threads thing off your chest.  It aint poison feller.

Just saying whinging about results is pathetic, in fact wasnt that quite clear.

all the time this us against them mentality exists im afraid that will keep happening badger.
people should remember this is a sport,and cricket at that.
bad enough with the ridiculous attitude when we play Germany at football,war and all that,but football is football and weve come to expect that.
we have now got to the stage when people who pay good money to watch sky sports actually want England to win so badly they would rather their money was spent on watching rainfall. so sad imo
I want england to win,but given the choice of watching 5 close matches and maybe losing at the end,i would take that everytime,rather than wishing for the weather to stop play.
nationalistic rubbish indeed.

badger,

plenty of people on here discus the issues some like to add a dollop of schadenfreude for a bit of fun.  Some like a bit of fencing with the opposition.  Take what you want from the post's and ignore the rubbish and wind up merchants.

Everyone knows England got lucky and sometimes denying it causes anger to the opposition.  To hear the whinging from the convicts about the booing of Warne was nectar from the Gods for me.  The only thing that could have made that better was knowing that some of them were serious with their objections!

England got shown up in this match for their fragile batting and use of Bresnan as a bolster.  Try as he does he is not a wicket taker and should be replaced with Onions at Durham and Finn or Tremlett at the Oval. The bowler should be able to take wickets, scoring runs is a bonus and not the reason for selection.

Australian batting came to the party for the first time and showed our attack can be limited on a flat track much as I have said before.  Cook should be rebranded as the Leaning Tower.  Someone needs to sort this out early in his innings.  What are the batting coaches doing?

Australia are weak but have a reasonable pace attack and need a top quality spinner, we knew that.

Nothing has changed really.  I doubt any English cricket fan believes this is one of the best teams we have produced!

If Aus bat first at Durham I will lay England ( pitch and weather considered ).