Ashes Blog – Adelaide day 3

This is roughly what they use to play

Kevin Pietersen’s unbeaten double hundred was nothing short of majestic at times, smashing the Aussie bowlers all around the park with consummate ease and a certain swagger that only emerges from Pietersen when he is absolutely on top of his game. Pietersen was well supported yesterday firstly by Alistair Cook, who scored another immaculate century, and then by Paul Collingwood (42) and Ian Bell (41no). England are currently 517-4 and have a lead of 306, so the question for Andrew Strauss will be when to declare? I feel that England will probably want to bat for another couple of hours and give Pietersen a license to tee off first thing tomorrow, get to a lead of around 400-450 and then give themselves five full sessions to bowl the Aussies out and win the game.

So what about the Aussies? Well if the last two days in Brisbane required them to do some soul searching, then the first three days in Adelaide have surely been soul destroying. Having made changes to try and bolster their bowling attack, another failure will leave the Aussie selectors with a massive headache about which attack they pick to bowl England out. Ricky Ponting has looked flustered throughout this game and is certainly a man under pressure. There seems to be tension across the whole Australian team, and yesterday we saw bad bowling and crazy field settings allow England to take full command of the game. The Aussies know that bar a miracle, they can’t win this game, and they will have to bat very well for two days in order to avoid defeat.

So England will head into tomorrow full of confidence and looking to win this test match. The question is, can they do it?

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