leicsmac

If they can score 260 in two sessions in the same way England can, then fair enough. Would be one of the few situations where this England team would have to go for the draw.

If India are going to bowl England out, they'll need a target of 400+ and likely more than a day to do it. That means them batting until a pretty specific time period tomorrow afternoon.

Even ten years ago Indian seamers looked almost always all at sea in England (and Aus). That's certainly the side of the Test game that's improved the most for them, IMO.

Well, 200 is the magic number, then. Bowl them out for under that and it's gettable, over that and it's not and likely batting more than a day for a draw will have to happen.

... isn't targeting a spin bowler and notorious rabbit with fast and short stuff at the head rather unsporting?

I think he has to put his foot to the floor. He's got his eye in and with the new ball moving as it is time may be short.

Finally Brook falls for 158, just after the follow on removed from the equation. Would take an awful fourth innings collapse to lose from here, I think.

If Radacanu can spring the upset and Norrie wins too, that makes three Brits in the second week from an initial tally of 23. That being said, that's not much different from the days where you could place your bets on when Murray would stand alone.

Stat hat: Brook has until roughly the end of the end of this series to get to 3000 Test runs to be the second fastest of all time to do it. He's currently on a little over 2500.

It's clear that they back themselves no matter the situation and the spirit there is more than just platitudes to the press. and that's really important in general and specifically in terms of getting better results. It's one of the reasons why I think the approach being applied now is worth defending so much when things go a little awry and some folks jump on it.

Fourth fastest by an England player in Tests. All of those apart from the top dog have come in the last few years. I'd lay good money that sometime soon, Jessop's record will be broken by one of these players.

Smith into demolition mode before the drinks break there.

Anyhow, in more science related news, not much of it good again: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clynre7leyjo An $88m (£65m) satellite designed to detect releases of the planet-warming gas methane from oil and gas production, has been lost in space in a major setback for climate efforts. The MethaneSat satellite which had backing from Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, was launched only last year aboard an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket. It was meant to collect data for five years on sources of the powerful greenhouse gas, which is responsible for nearly a third of human-induced warming, to help curtail the worst offenders. The Environment Defense Fund, the NGO which oversees the satellite, said that communication was lost ten days ago and is currently undertaking an investigation into what happened. Space is always difficult.

But he does appear to be able to choose if those senators are elected or re-elected in the first place. Hence all the noise about primarying those representatives that don't follow his agenda to the letter.

And now we're outside the era of Fed, Nadal and Nole winning everything in sight, that could happen again. Unless Alcaraz and Sinner are good enough to step into that gap.

Good. Then absolutely don't go to archive.is and enter in the address of the article above for the rest of it then As you intimate, there's no real good choices here, but perhaps the best bad choice is swallowing a bit of pride and getting closer ties on this matter with the EU and the Commonwealth nations. I will say though, authoritarian as they are, at least alignment with the Chinese on this particular matter may end up being a necessity to maintain civilisation as it is. Hopefully other places will pick up the slack that the US is leaving, but I see no reason whatsoever to believe that the current administration are going to do anything other than take a buzzsaw to science R and D (other than that which serves their interests, read; can be used to directly harm people) and a few senators squabbling about pork barrel spending isn't going to stop him, he's shown already that he's both able and willing to replace such senators that don't carry out his will with those that do.

Enough of a win against the current incumbents at the ballot box ASAP to hamstring further legislative changes and so prevent more "direct action" by those wanting to disregard the whole process which may then escalate things would likely be the most optimal way forward, but of course that carries risks of its own. It would likely be the best bad course of a whole series of bad courses, unless someone else has any bright ideas. Edit: As per my OP though, I really really hope that I'm wrong, for many reasons.

Get your money on, people. Value bet looking better by the day.

You may be right. I think it's reasonably true though that the greats - or most other than the one Slam wonders - in history tended to make their presence felt before that, though.

And a whole host of other names, too. It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem anyone capable to tread in Murray's footsteps.

Agreed. His best chance in terms of opponents is on grass, but he needs to get better on that surface quick, if today is any judge. As an aside, it's rather funny how different tennis, cricket and football crowds are to each other. Imagine what it would have been like if Cilic had been talking after the match at a football crowd after beating the home favourite today.

Exactly. Nightmare opponent for an early round, and so it proved. Just shows how much of a difference there is between the nearly men and the greats.

And again it shows just how barren British tennis is in terms of consistent high level performances and how much of an outlier Murray was in that regard.

Well, I'm torn between thinking that was piss poor when it mattered from Draper or Cilic winding back the clock. Maybe a bit of both.

It was rare that he starred in a bad movie. RIP.