Wagging now. Come on Swanny and the legendary, the magnificent, the greatest man alive, Stuart Broad!

Come on jim, Blue n White Rover is already making it hard enough to inject a bit of positivity into this thread! We've lost 1 wicket for the last 175 runs. Take your point about the track but there was rarely a score above 400 in the 2005 Ashes, arguably England's greatest cricketing achievement. With 2 good bowling attacks I can see 350-400 being a decent total.

Good recovery so far. Always want "the Sherminator" to do well against the Aussies since Warne gave him that nickname!

Utter, utter garbage. 3rd best test side in the world, 3rd best one-day side in the world, recently beat you in test series home and away (the win in India being particularly magnificent given how the Aussies got on there just after). You're just a dick to be honest mate and you're going on ignore.

The struggle to find a decent opening partner for Cook looks like it might continue at this rate. Hopefully the man the media seem obsessed with labelling Mr.Boring can get us back on track yet again.

The factually incorrect bit is the line belonging to the batsman. The rest is just massively biased, as illustrated by Abbey's example of Tendulkar not walking for an edge and your refusal to even criticise him, never mind label him a shameful cheat.

Because if he's going to post nonsensical rubbish like "the line belongs to the batsman", call Broad a shameful cheat and then start bigging up India in an Ashes thread, then its interesting to know the reason this factually incorrect and massively biased opinion. Certainly no point in discussing the opinion itself.

Gotta love Abbey's ability to ignore the mods.

Because Yuvraj has nothing whatsoever to do with the Ashes! If I was at that game I would have applauded him, I always applaud the opposition for boundaries and wickets, not enthusiastically but I do it. So England are the first team in cricket to ever show any hypocrisy? No are they heck, every team has at some point or other. I don't know where your bitterness against England has come from considering you're English but its pretty contemptible attitude in my book. Very similar to all the Man U gloryhunters who live in Blackburn and have nothing but bad things to say about Rovers. I'm not having a go at your culture or you supporting India by the way, I'm having a go at the fact that you're English and for some reason you hate England instead of them being your second team. Have a read of that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23060582

Ah screw it, seeing as your motivation is now obvious (i.e. that you are english but don't consider yourself to be) I may as well point out what a hypocritical moron you are. India's behaviour was very far from sportsman-like in the Aussie tour a few years ago where both sides were almost coming to blows, you and them were an embarassment and disgrace to the sport. And its pretty rich you talking about the beautiful sport when you've waded into a topic celebrating it to pour scorn, cynicism and throw insults at a team thats just won a brilliant test match. Let me guess, you're exactly like the 90% of Indian fans honouring the beautiful sport at the Champions Trophy by practically never clapping an opposition wicket or boundary? A bitter individual with a pathetic vendetta who posts irrelevant clips of India in an Ashes thread. What a great exponent of the beautiful sport you are.

You can't stand your own country's national team, well thanks for clarifying that. I can happily proceed to totally ignore every post you make from now on. Can't stand traitors.

Are you English? Trying to decide whether that was a sincere load of garbage or a good wind-up. First off learn the rules, on the line is out. Second off there is nothing that says you have to walk, and most batsmen in the modern day don't. So there's nothing shameful about Broad's decision, unless you're judging England by a harsher standard than you do everyone else, which seems to be an incredibly common phenomenon by a lot of fans of every sport. And again, are you english? Gloating at one of our players gets smashed around, whats that all about? I'll look forward to seeing Yuvraj's face when we go back above India in the test rankings after winning this series.

Incredible test match, great start to the series. And gotta say well played to the Aussies too. Had a feeling the english media were asking for trouble unanimously writing them off and so it proved.

Bit harsh. His 50 to 100 conversion rate is significantly better than Trott and Bell.

Gotta say England have been on the wrong end of some diabolical decisions recently. Bell being given out against India, Agar not out yesterday, Trott lbw when he hit it. I mean they were all close run things but any 3rd umpire decision thats wrong is diabolical.

And yet one that they're winning.

Bairstow's gotta get us to 300 now, anything less is a disaster on a pitch like this.

Struggling at the moment, old man Siddle ripping through us.

Brilliant that.

Couldn't agree more. Its faintly hilarious the number of posts in this thread that have praised Morris and criticised Pedersen whilst failing or refusing to realise the first was largely dependent on the introduction of the second. I thought we were gonna have to bring Morris off at half time he looked that all over the place. Pedersen comes on and bolsters Morris defensively and King going forward, and you didn't see much of Zaha after that. This missing stuff through lack of perception or on purpose happens with Pedersen an incredible amount. I've lost count of the number of times I've read with disbelief criticism of him after he played a subtle but important role in a game. His steadying influence after coming on against Huddersfield a few weeks back being the most recent one before this. I'm not sure a lot of fans even realise they're doing it. Its akin to suffering paranoia, if you're constantly looking for suspicious occurrences, you'll start finding them everywhere. Too many fans are looking for Pedersen to fail, have been doing for years.

Well I don't know about memories and reputations but experience counts for a hell of a lot. The difference between our stirring last month's survival fight in 2011 and our pathetic capitulation in 2012 was experience and character. That got thrown away in the big Kean clear out that many of our fans were actually calling for at the time, and a spiritless spineless campaign swiftly followed. Pedersen and Dunn are the 2 remaining links on the playing staff to a time when not even mid-table in the Premiership was good enough. They've been there and done it, and at a higher level than most of the mediocre youngsters in our squad will ever achieve. That's worth something in the dressing room, on the training pitch and sometimes during matches. To answer your questions directly, maybe he will play a significant role. He's always been a confidence player and lord knows some "fans" make sure to never give him any, so he seems to rely on it from the manager. He was made a pivotal part of Big Sam's team and produced accordingly. I fully admit he's lost his way since but I think he can play a role. As for the type of player he is, well personally I disagree that you need to focus on grafters and youngsters that run around all day to get out of the Championship. You need some of that but if you wanna be at the top end you also need quality. He should be judged against is his competition, what does he bring that they don't? On the wing neither King, Marcus Olsson or Nunes can cross or head a ball, Pedersen can. In the centre Rochina can't defend, Dunny is always injured, and Jones and Williamson tend to have some kind of mental seizure when they get within 10 yards of the opposition's penalty area, Pedersen has decent positional sense, a decent shot, and can pick a pass. I'm not saying he's brilliant or even a guaranteed first-teamer, but he gives us an alternative option, as Saturday pointed out quite clearly. Maybe he should be on a bit lower salary than he is now, but that's what happens with older, experienced players, they get worse but they have contracts. You could say the same about any number of over-30s players we've had down the years. We've got him, we may as well use him. And personally I don't begrudge him being on a bit more than he should when there's been hundreds of players that have been in and out of this club who were on a lot more than they should and never actually did anything at any point that they could point to and say well you got that out of me. We've got 4 top half finishes, 3 cup semi-finals, 3 European campaigns and 8 Premier League seasons out of Pedersen. In 20 years when playing in the PL will probably be just a half-forgotten memory, it'll be astounding if anyone looks back and says he ripped us off.

Thanks!

A disgrace to the colours?? Thats an incredible statement. He played a big role in the club's longest post-war top flight spell. He was phenomenal in the season we came within 4 points of the Champions League, our best finish in a decade and likely to be our best finish for at least 5 decades more. He finished top or near top of the assists chart every season we were in the PL. He's scored more goals for us than Tim Sherwood, has played almost as many games as Tony Parkes, and has been featured heavily in the team by 10 different managers. He never sulks when he's not started, never gets wound up by bullying fans, never gets himself in trouble off the pitch or brings the club's name into disrepute. And has been an ambassador to our decently-sized Scandanavian fanbase and wider fanbase in general, believe it or not but the vast majority of the wider football world think he's pretty good. That you would twice lump him in with Murphy and Orr is disgusting. Those 2 between them won't achieve 1% of what Pedersen has at this club.

What I'm sick of is people comparing Pedersen to the Pedersen of old, or comparing him to an unspecified, usually unrealistic benchmark that few of our other players reach. The only meaningful way to judge Pedersen is against the other players we have that play in his positions. On saturday his competition was Gomes, he was miles better than Gomes, thats all there is to it this time round. Some fans would criticise him if he scored a hat-trick and missed a one-on-one for his 4th, its starting to resemble a form of long-term mental illness.

The best thing I'm taking from the result last night is it opens up a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel again. At least now we've got a second chance at getting it right next season. It'll be tougher because I expect our wage bill will have to decrease over the summer, but if we can drastically improve on the managerial situation we've had this season, that should more than compensate. Bowyer is the difference now, he's set a high benchmark which I'd hope will force Venkys into either a high quality appointment, or make them stick with Bowyer. Either way I think we can at least challenge for the play-offs next season (provided we keep Rhodes or sell him for a lot and re-invest the money). Of course there's nothing to say Venkys won't make the same mistake again, and the re-introduction of Singh into affairs suggest they're already going down that path. But at least we've been given a reason by Bowyer and his stabilising of the club to hope they won't. Also, wanna say a massive thanks to Gary Bowyer for saving our season. Him and Rhodes are the guys I'll really be clapping on the lap of honour on saturday.