The 4th Test of the Ashes ended in a Draw after rain sadly washed out the final days play. The biggest loser of this result was cricket itself as England can now no longer win the Ashes series. With the series score stuck at 2-1 to Australia and only 1 game left to play there will be no Fairytale Ending for this series. It was a real shame because England were in a dominant position and had all the momentum. It also sucked because on the betting front this result has turned up another loss for me.
Once again I was happy with my analysis and am confident that I am seeing things reasonably well even though the results aren’t coming. I had backed England to Win instead of English Runs in the 2nd Innings and that was a mistake – mostly due to me being stung by an early English Declaration in Game 1. I put that mistake down to a bit of Recency Bias as if I’d gone with English Runs instead I would have had a comfortable win.
The chestnut piece of advice from my earlier analysis was that :-
It’s always risky to bet on Test Cricket when the weather is looking a bit dodgy
I ran the gauntlet on that call and was looking good at the end of Day 3 with England in a dominant position, but in the end I was beaten by the weather. Sometimes I need to heed my own warnings a bit more. I still think that the price I got on England to Win was good value but it just wasn’t to be. Day 5 was initially expected to be fairly clear with the worst forecast for Day 4 but Mother Nature had other ideas and that’s the way Test Cricket goes.
Plenty of other insights I was happy with. The pitch behaved about how I expected and the Spin options on both teams were terrible. I’m not sure if mistakes have been learned there because for Australia the Draw Result will mask their poor performance to some degree, but it will be interesting to see how the final Test shapes up. With the Ashes retained I think there is a very good chance that Pat Cummins will be given a rest with Steve Smith filling in as captain again like he did in India. This would be bullish for Australia in my opinion and I might lean toward backing Australia again in the final game if that happens – especially if they include a half decent Spinner in the squad.
The Final Test starts in just 3 days so not a lot of time to recover or deliberate. The only thing I know for certain is that the Urn is staying with Australia.