mvaughan

First things first. I've got no problem with the way England went about picking their XI. They chose the side that they thought gave them the best chance of winning the match and Samit Patel bowled well, taking two wickets on Test debut, which is a decent return. He misjudged the flight of a good delivery when he was batting but didn't look out of his depth at any stage. He didn't fare any worse than most of the England's batting order. England's problems lay elsewhere. Firstly they let Sri Lanka off the hook last night - Monty Panesar twice dropping Mahela Jayawardene, who cashed in after being given two lifelines. You wouldn't expect any less from a player of his calibre. We'll have to wait and see just how important those extra runs he scored will be but they could end up making all...

It's no surprise to see Graeme Swann head the England top series bowler market at around 2.8. After all, as a spinner he's more likely to bowl more overs than anyone else and these are turning pitches out in the UAE. Or are they? Whereas I expect these wickets to deteriorate by days four and five and for the spinners on both sides to have plenty of fun on them at that stage, I think it will the seamers doing the vast majority of the work for the first three days. And they'll get two bites of the cherry. They can be extremely dangerous with the new ball especially if there's a bit of morning dew in the wicket and then again when the ball is around 30 overs old and starts to reverse swing. Something that Stuart Broad, Chris Tremlett and James Anderson all have in their locker. Of these...

[b]England are the value ahead of the Fourth Test at the MCG but the form of Mike Hussey is a concern for would-be backers of the tourists. Either way, a draw is highly unlikely, says Michael Vaughan.[/b] So it's all square again with two to play. The bad news for England fans is that Australia are the ones carrying the momentum, the good news is that this pitch should suit England a lot more than what they were up against at Perth. I haven't actually seen the pitch yet but I'd expect it to have a little bit of grass on it early on and for it to flatten out a bit as the match progresses. It's very unlikely the ball will swing like it did last time or carry through with the same amount of pace and that should mean [b]Mitchell Johnson[/b] shouldn't be able to have the same sort of...