Who the fuck is going to open then?
Printable View
Who the fuck is going to open then?
Bairstow. :baz:
Bairstow is sniping them all, 100%.
We literally don't have another opener out there do we? Sending Crawley and Sibley out there to face Rabada and Big Vern would be like an Isandhlwana re-enactment. Might as well get Woakesy to do it and play six seamers rather than five.
This is like a club cricket dilemma when one of our openers goes to Pafos for a fortnight and the choice is between promoting some mook from number eight, or the guy in the 2s who is dogshit and can barely move in the field. I'm not sure England tours should ever really get to that point.
I think we should just leave Test matches against Australia at home to the big boys now.
At least in the ODI's we're a chance. I haven't seen a single day go our way this series. Not for lack of trying, but they are just a different class.
India will get demolished there next year and I quiver at the thought of us going there any time soon.
Crawley, Pope and Bess in or Burns, Bairstow and Archer.
At least we're decent at the toss these days.
Alright then Cetshwayo, show us what you've got.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
This would be a good time for Pope to get a big score. He's applied himself well so far.
It would, but the chances of an England batsman going on and converting a good start must be almost zero. It's the same every game, starts all round, no serious scores.
Even if if he does survivce to the close and gets a 50, say, before then he'll be out first thing anyway.
Well it's going to be a glorious 29 for Buttler before he gets caught out, then.
Yeah, we've gone shit or bust here. Hopefully one of these goes full Stokes-mode from last time down here.
The carnage of that innings. :drool:
It was beautiful.
Today's winner.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Can we give up on Buttler being a test player and bring back Foakes?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the man for his short form stuff but it’s just not going to happen.
:moop:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Maybe you could sell yourself as a world leading spot fixer?
Well I suppose somebody should benefit from watching England play cricket.
To be fair, fans of the opposition typically do.
The bad thing about this is that having watched Roston Chase roll us for an eight wicket haul last year, the likes of 220 all out on a flat one seem just par for the course, if not even a touch on the plucky side.
Every batsman gets a start and we chuck in a collapse as well. Groundhog day.
It's a disgrace that Broad is allowed to bat higher than 11, he's just awful (with the bat) and has been for too long.
Fair play to Pope for making the best of a bad situation.
Good work from Pope there. Won't last more than a few overs in the morning but gives the bowlers a little something to work with.
Jesus, I had us bowled out there and closed the cricinfo tab before they put the no ballup.
Rabada is basically bowling off 21 yards in this series so far, every side on replay he oversteps.
Does he normally have form for that?
Jimmy Anderson is a farce. 580th test wicket at the end of the day there and his average has just slunk below 27. Since 2010, in 107 Tests he has 432 wickets at 24.26.
I cannot imagine how shite we are going to be when he and Broad finally retire.
Funnily enough I was having that very conversation earlier this afternoon.
It's going to be bad.
Jofra and Sammy is a good start but unless the latter improves his consistency we won't have anything like the technician that Anderson is. Woakes has some more years of being a good home bowler but he's shite away.
I've been looking for the next Jimmy-style artist for ages but not sure I've found it yet. Lots of good young quicks with mechanical actions who spend too much time in the gym and will end up in Finnville. Lewis Gregory is the closest thing we have to a Philander type.
I have become obsessed with this type of bowling, this video should be on Pornhub:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKr-5oo006w
Having to listen to Talksport while cooking there because TMS don't have the rights. :sick:
Not good coverage.
The Cricket Social on BBC is very good, albeit it isn't ball-by-ball commentary but various people sitting around in a studio talking cricket for eight hours and occasionally crossing to Jonathan Agnew over there.
Today they have Ramprakash, Steven Finn (:(), Andy Zaltzman and a northern women's spinner whose name escapes me.
See I swerved the Cricket Social because I thought it was all going to be a bit hahaha bants but maybe I should give it a bash.
Nah it's been pretty decent every time I've listened to it. Think TMS but without the ability to do ball-by-ball commentary.
Talksport was bilge. The main commentator was paints ("He's built like one of those traditional 1930s blacksmiths!") and they were doing an admittedly not very exciting interview with Makhaya Ntini and his son at lunch. An interview that despite being prerecorded and them knowing how long it was they managed to cut him off halfway through his last sentence.
Outstanding
PSL 2020 league live streaming
PSL 5 live score
PSL draft
PSL venues
PSL 2020 Live
PSL schedule 2020
PSL T20 draft 2019
Go Watch Right Now For Free
You can't make me, Ameen.
It's not even started yet but fear not, Liam Dawson has re-signed for the Peshawar Zalmi which should see them go one better than last year's losing final.
Loving the live text this morning, with people lambasting Sibley for playing slow and boring.
IT'S A TEST YOU THUNDERCUNTS. LET THE MAN PLAY PATIENTLY.
Didn't think it would take long for that. His innings here has quite literally won us the match, in all probability.
I was absolutely delighted yesterday that although they didn't all hang about for ages like Sibley we had a top order who were all, by and large, approaching it properly. Hopefully this is indicative of what Sibley's capable of and him and Burns can stodge their way to glory for the next few years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byron
Proper test cricket.
Also when I first scanned your post I saw it as "Thundercats" and was much confused.
Sibley is quite a limited player in that he doesn't really drive or cut the ball (especially against pace) so needs to be incredibly disciplined leaving outside off to drag the bowling straighter, where he is proficient.
However, he has always had that discipline in the first class game and in this innings he has translated that against a top class attack including one of the premier surgeons of the day and two quick men. It's encouraging. The first challenge for him will be to maintain that patience when teams don't leave the off stump channel. The next challenge will be to resist the England setup and media trying to make him be more 'positive' outside off, which I'm not sure, with his technique and setup, would be a good idea - it'll open up way more dismissals than are available when he plays like this. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Did you see Gooch talking about this on the Debate the other day? Talking about batsmen positioning themselves so their eyeline is just outside off for the sake of "positivity" but it also means they don't actually know where their stumps are and encourages them to chase any old wide filth that gets flung down. As you say, the key thing is for him not to cave and think he has to start waving his bat after everything.
Also, speaking of the Debate, why have they bumped it up to 45 minutes now Bob is gone? :mad:
I didn't but will seek out. Buttler in particular gets into lots of one day positions in Test matches, where he plants the feet on fifth stump to give him a power base and then the hands just follow the ball. In fact, though less exaggerated, I'm 99% sure that Root's plateauing form in Tests has come about from something like the same phenomenon, where he is so keen to get bat to ball from his white ball methods that he can't resist feeling for 5th/6th stump deliveries he should leave alone.
Bairstow is a bit different in that he just seems to miss the thing.
101 overs and not a single no ball in this innings. Hard to believe.
I was saying to somebody the other day that it used to feel like Root used to take ages to get into an innings. Feeling his way in and sizing up the bowling, letting the bowler come to him and then starting to score the runs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Now he gets earlier runs but barely converts them into anything, possibly for the reasons you've said.
I assume the Gooch comment would've been on the Debate for the first day of this test. Whichever one had him and Ebony Rainford-Brent on.
This innings has filled me with hope for the future. Hopefully no pressure is put on Burns, Denly and Sibley to score at a quicker rate, because we have that explosiveness down the order to capitalise on the tired minds and legs of bowlers who have been ground down by a solid top order.
218 runs in 79 overs yesterday sets the platform, and we've walloped 150 in 26 overs before lunch today. Perfect.
Declare at this point, Shirley?
Maybe a 20 minute dart after lunch? Keep the openers guessing a little as to when they come out.
We're 400-and-odd ahead now. Batting longer feels like when we used to try and pile up a sodding 500 run lead just to be safe and left ourselves too little time.
Or let me put it to you this way: this pitch, that iffy crack aside, has been good enough for an England opener to bat a day and a half.