Window Cleaner

We had a woman coach at Clermont for about 3 years, she did fairly well although it was in Ligue 2. moved on to the French Womans Team afterwards. A veritable dragon by all accounts, the Clermont boys were OK with it but not the slum zone princesses who always want their own way in the national side, got her sacked and replaced by a bloke in the end.

Watched the end of the Essex game, tight finish from what looked to be a comfortable position. Could have gone either way really in the last couple of overs.

But they called for a review instead, thus not confirming dead ball or end of over. There is a classic old tale of some ancient umpire talking to some ancient player during and interval about an possible lbw off the last ball before the interval. So at the restart the skipper calls Howzat and the umpire puts up the digit. How true this tale is , I've no idea but it used to do the rounds on TMS and the like.

Our health system is collapsing too, just overstretched. Theoretically it's not free but if you can't pay you get treatment all the same.

It's a very complicated issue but cultural gauchisme is part of it. Also a lot, and I mean a lot, of adolescents are just left by their parents or in many cases parent, to fend for themselves. They don't go to school or college, live in the periphery of drug dealers and other racketeers. The parents are only interested in the generous and constant handouts. This kid had no driver's licence,wasn't old enough, no justifiable revenue and how he was driving a hired car is for the instant, unknown. But he had previous, perhaps he came across the same cop twice in a week, doing the same exact thing. Many young people here do not identify in any way with the traditional french culture, see themselves as victims in a foreign land although they've been here all their lives. Plenty find their way in the world though but the hard core is just a lost generation.

But he didn't and I presume the TV umpire would know that....modern technology and all that. anyway this is the Ashes, win at all costs and by whatever means you can, it's endemic in the history of the series.

Can't quite see why we chose to bat first here. 4 down now and it looks like hard going.

Looked that way from the live stream anyway. Ball would have needed to do an awful lot to hit the stumps. Umpiring standards are getting worse. How many decisions have been overturned on review in tha Ladies test so far ?*

Won the toss, chose to bat. Different type of ball today. Middleton gone already , usual Hampshire foible, chasing one outside the off stump that should have been left well alone. Weatherly dropped in the gully already as well.

Apparently Prest may be back in contention for the last two group games. But before that some Championship cricket against Middlesex, starting tomorrow at the Rose Bowl.

Poor start after putting Essex in. Does pace bowling have any real value in T20 cricket.

Must admit I wasn't familiar with the notion of Bazball before I looked it up during England's first innings. Seems to be applying one day tactics to 5 day test cricket, could be wrong there though. Anyway Australia seem to be progressing steadily towards their target, still a fair way to go though. Must admit the selection of Moen Ali surprised me, I'd feel insulted if I were a younger player with the same attributes hoping for a test chance.

Good win, made it look easy, probably wasn't. The bowlers and batters all turned up today. Surrey on the other hand didn't.

Certainly shouldn't be batting at 5. Don't quite see why he is actually. We didn't need 3 spinners, could have played Albert for all the difference it made.

So, another defeat brought about, as per usual, by a disastrous first innings. This time compounded by some poor catching and quite a bit of soft to hit bowling. Abbott is toast, a great servant but he's doing nothing at all these days. We played 3 spinners but only the "part-timer" bowled any serious number of overs, got a 6 fer too. Two things you'd have to note about this game: The constant whingeing by Lancs for a ball change every time they were getting nowhere fast in our second innings and the awful umpiring by Mallender.....he needs to be put out to grass.

Organ seemed to get a fair bit of movement bowling into the footmarks left by Barker, him being a left-armer. Dawson didn't bowl all that much today, got hit in the face by a rebound from a failed catch attempt by Middleton. On that subject, our catching wasn't up to it's usual standard , apparently Middleton dropped Salt fairly early on in his innings. Crane and Vince also dropped what looked to be straightforward catches. We'll need to bat with discipline again tomorrow morning, cos with Brown in at 5 we look a bit short on quality, dependable batting.

Hah, doesn't fail often. Give them a bit of Saintsweb forum stick and they get wickets right away. Doesn't seem to work with the batters though

Watched a bit today. We don't look good enough in any department. Need a serious overhaul next season with at least one international class test batter added. For that we'll need to offload either Abbott or Abbas unless we can get an England man. No problem, neither of them looks particularly dangerous at the moment.

Another total debacle. Shîte batting and the bowling is no better. Lancs scoring at nigh on 5 an over. They need to get us a real opener, capable of seeing of the new ball in difficult conditions.

Yes, better now though. Bowling is awful. Second team bowling isn't what you need here.

Don't see why we should lose against Somerset this evening. We have every chance of beating them, just as they have a chance of beating us, the T20 is like that. As for Surrey , they've already lost two out of 6, same as us. Anyway we just need to make sure we don't have too many catastrophies against the poorer sides and we should make top 4. Turner indeed bowled well yesterday and Albert did some decent hitting. The fact that their leg spinner took two wickets and pinned us down to only 4 an over suggests to me that the wicket was especially prepared for him. Awful ground Radlett, seemed to have a filled-in irrigation trench running right across it.

Did we ? I thought the two innings were fairly similar. Early losses, then some decent hitting followed by a falling off. The worm thingy on the live stream showed a similar pattern. Wood and Whiteley got us back on track though. Ellis pushing back a certain 6 near the end helped no end.

Oh yes it is (was) !

164, probably not enough. We'll need to bowl well.