Damien Martyn

[Dipper]

I'd just like to say what a pleasure (sort of!) it's been to watch this guy bat, the rest of the Aussie batting line up was full of the same old suspects but I've not seen Martyn in Tests before.He really is a a beautiful player to watch, he probably upsets the purists with his lack of foot movement, but this makes a pleasant change to those batsmen who just plant their front foot down the wicket accross the stumps & then try to play round it (Hayden,Hussain,Stewart etc).
In a series where there have been some really fine innings by the Australian batsmen-the butchery of Gilchrist,the lazy class of Mark Waugh & a couple of quick scoring ones from Ponting it's the batting of Martyn that will stay in my mind-if there's a better off side player in the world at the moment right now I'd like to see him.His cover drives & cuts really are top notch shots.

 

[anchor man]

Good player

He is certainly a delight to watch when he is going.He was rather harshly treated by the selectors for an indescretion during the South African tests here some years ago.Some believe that he cost us a test match but it really was a very harsh call on him.But it may have been a blessing in disguise as he certainly has matured as a player and must be considered one of the premiert batsmen in the world at the moment.
Dipper do you think that there is a player in the English side who would fit into the Aussie side?

 

[Dipper]

.........Well I reckon Phil Tufnell for Shane Warne & Alan Mullaly for Glenn McGrath would strengthen the Australian bowling attack.

Err on a slightly more serious note there are none that stand out really at the moment are there?-if he'd been fit for the whole series I think that Thorpe would have shown himself to be a real world class batsman but Australia are so strong from 3 to 6 that I wouldn't reckon anyone could have made a good case for him to replace any of them.Brett Lee was a major disappointment for the series & If he took his wickets at 60 against England just think what they would have cost if he'd been bowling at Australia,even though Gough looked severly jaded in this series compared with his exploits of the last 18 months he still bowled better than Lee but then you still probably wouldn't want him ahead of Lee as you'd be hoping that Lee could get back to the form he showed in his first few Tests.
So really the only England player that you could make a decent case for to take the place of an Aussie is Trescothick for Hayden-I'm not sure what there respective averages were for the series but to me Trescothick looked more assured than Hayden considering he was facing much stronger bowling-I suppose you could even swap Butcher for Hayden as Butcher is naturally an opening bat.But in reality is Hayden one of the best two openers in Australia, I'd have thought Hussey is making a pretty good case for one of the opening slots.

It's not too good from our point of view is is?the only consolations are that Australia are so much better than anyone else that I still think we can give most of the other sides a good game & that Rod Marsh is taking charge of a load of our young players who are going over to Adelaide this English winter so hopefully he can wave his magic wand & create a few Test players-& maybe some of them will actually come back with fully formed backbones.