Quote:
Originally posted by Jon But why not just carry on with thier innings and run up a unbeatable score? |
Because if they did that, and didn't leave themselves enough time to bowl Australia out then the game ends up in a draw. England don't win.
So they need to make sure they had enough runs on the board to force Aus to bat agressively enough to have to score runs to have a chance of winning so they had more chance of taking wickets. The other side to that coin is, if they set too high a total then the chasing side could look at it and decide it's too much and just play defensively for the draw, making it hard for the bowling side to take enough wickets to get them out and win.
It's a subtle game cricket.