evertonfan said:
H'd also bring a 6-pack of toilet roll for afterwards too...
In fairness to Fletcher though, maybe he was just trying to show confidence in his players. Maybe he thinks it's testiment to them that he makes this particular statement.
Or it will just fire Warney up in the same way writing someone like McGrath off does.
There was no reason to say anything really, KP had clearly got on top of Warne, and the batsman played him fairly well, although it says everything of the man that he still got 4 wickets. They should have just let it fester, Australia didn't feel the need to come out before the first test and try and unintentionally fire Harmy up, they just let him live with his own doubts and then rub it in when it goes tits up.
Once again, and this is happening too many times recently, I am left to hope Fletcher knows what he is doing, and not that these are merely the final days of someone long since past their sell-by date.
Basically to actually contribute a serious post for the first time in a while, we did play Warne better than we have done, but at the same time he still got 4 wickets, and we could hardly have played him worse than in the past.
We've come up against a lot of quality spin since the start of the last Ashes, and there has been notable improvement with the exception of the first test in Pakistan where half our batsman got out trying to sweep. Warne was certainly not easy pickings, but he was for the first time in my memory played with some degree of competence by the English batsman.