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Australia stun England

Australia won the second Ashes Test against England in Adelaide in a match which I thought England could only draw at worst.

I expected England to go through the last day at their own pace and then declare at some stage when they knew the test was safe but that wasn't to be because Sharne Warne rattled England batsmen and in the end England second innings of 129 was not enough.

Its good to see that Australia believed that they could still win the match on the fifth day and just went on searching for victory. Although Australia lost four wickets, with an hour to go you could tell that victory was the only result.

As if they didn't know before, England should now know that its not enough to play excel in the first innings and then do nothing in the second one. A paltry score of 129 and a top score of just 34 by Andrew Strauss was never going to be enough against a confident Australian side.

If we go back to the first day all talk was about England winning the toast and then Kevin Peitersen and Paul Collingwood in particular did their bit to pile up the runs putting England in what looked then like a comfortable total which was followed by a declaration.

Now when Australia got the chance to bat England's bowlers Steve Harmison, Ashley Giles and James Anderson failed to take wickets and restrict Australia to a lower total and I think that was where the Test was lost.

Australia now need to win one more test to regain back the Ashes whilst for England its now an uphill struggle requiring at least two wins and a draw to retain the Ashes. To me that sounds like an impossible task.

If you look at this Adelaide test again maybe it was a question of snatching defeat from the jaws of a draw!

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