leicsmac

Well done Sri Lanka. England paying the price for lack of focus after day 1 in this Test.

They've had the system tipped in their favour for so long now (electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression) that the idea of their worldview no longer having political power is anathema to them. So when those systems no longer work to keep them having power over other people and to dictate their worldview to them, they're perfectly fine with abandoning even the pretense of democracy in favour of a different system that allows them to keep power. Those looking to reason with them should take note, as you say.

Definitely wants to be a husband in Gilead, yeah.

The culture of (entirely fictional) "rugged individualism" and social media have their part to play too. It would be humorous and people could believe in that particular delusion as much as they like if it didn't have so much effect on the future of both the US and human civilisation itself.

Make this about 50/50.

It would be a shame if they threw away a chance for a whitewash summer with some careless play now.

There's not many sides that can live with English bowling in English conditions like this.

Well, that's a bit farcical.

Game was lost at the end of that first set. Still, he's shown that perhaps he's got enough to mix it around the top 10 if he's consistent. Edit: though I'll be honest, if he was going to be better than the above, he would have showed it before now, I think, sadly.

Still this, sadly.

Lack of experience starting to tell on big points here.

Sinner raising his game at the critical time there. Hope Draper doesn't capitulate now but I think he might.

It's pretty damn farcical that a match is being suspended for bad light in the middle of the day at a ground with floodlights. Test cricket is best cricket, but sometimes it does itself no favours.

.... let's keep this section of the forum open for at least a little while, please, guys?

And Draper accelerates over the finish line. Beat the world no.10 who you have never beaten before to reach your first Slam semifinal. Impressive.

Draper takes the first set, needs to maintain momentum.

Looks like a nice day. By all accounts it sounds like Travis Head went absolutely ballistic.

... and then the Aussies bled them dry and stomped on the corpse repeatedly.

Immoral, hypocritical, puerile and indicative of minds no better than the apes humans evolved from. In fact it's worse - at least when they fvck with each other, it's for reasons that are mostly honest and survival based. The worst thing about it, of course, is that long term it leads to only one logical outcome.

On the one hand, squeezing the club through the tightest of legal loopholes and out into safety shows a certain...moral flexibility on those involved within the club. On the other, the faux outrage from fans of other clubs who, to a man, would have no issue with their club doing exactly the same is absolutely hilarious entertainment. Spare us the spitting feathers, guys - it's both hypocritical and indicative that you take a game over which you have no control way too seriously, and perhaps you should get outside and touch grass a little more for the sake of your mental health.

... or perhaps society is no more violent and sadistic per capita than it always has been, and the reason we hear more about these things now is because a. more people will typically lead to more such incidents and b. greater news coverage on various media of such events. This is a fvcking awful crime and those involved need to have the book, the bookcase and the entire library thrown at them. But there's no actual evidence for the idea that thinking that kids as a whole are less moral and more violent now than they were fifty, a hundred or a thousand years ago, just prejudiced jumping to conclusions based on hearing about these very nasty events.

In all likelihood no, right. But these matches should still give us information - de Minaur will show us if he's possible top 10 material, and if he gets through that and plays Sinner, the manner of his performance will tell us if he might have the potential to go further.

Yeah, de Minaur followed by Sinner (probably) will be a serious acid test of his current form and whether he has the ability to cut it at the top.

Interesting insight from the BBC Panorama preview re. social media, teenage boys are being targeted much more than girls in terms of "hostile" content (violence, misogyny etc) on various platforms in terms of the content "recommended" to them. I guess "they" as the purveyors of hateful misinformation think for whatever reason lads are easier to manipulate using these tools, or there is greater payoff targeting them rather than girls.

Unless there's a dramatic collapse, Bangladesh are about to win their second Test on the spin against Pakistan. Great stuff from them.